A Fairlington resident from Minnesota has been providing snow shoveling services in exchange for donations supporting immigrants in the Twin Cities.
Megan Moos Detweiler, a teacher and Fairlington resident who grew up on the East Side of St. Paul, Minn., launched the “Shovel ICE Out” fundraiser to help immigrant families at her alma mater, Mississippi Creative Arts Elementary. Since last weekend’s storm, it has received about 300 donations, including $5,600 through GoFundMe.
The fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers, combined with enhanced enforcement against immigrant communities in Minnesota, left Moos Detweiler wanting to help. She decided to put her Minnesotan snow shoveling experience to use to assist her hometown and Fairlington neighbors.
“I just feel like the message should be, help thy neighbor,” Moos Detweiler told ARLnow. “Minnesotans are always getting out. Whoever can wake up the earliest to shovel their neighbor’s sidewalk — that’s like a competition in Minnesota.”
As of yesterday (Thursday), Moos Detweiler had shoveled about 30 vehicles out over four consecutive days and received help from other volunteers.
“My kids were out helping, and my friends were saying, ‘oh, can I help you shovel a car?’ or even strangers were like, ‘I’m so mad about what’s going on. Can I help you? Can I take a car for you?'” Moos Detweiler said. “I just got a lot of help with shoveling, and I got a lot of help with the donations too.”
Mississippi Creative Arts Elementary sits in the middle of a section 8 housing community where immigrant neighbors have been afraid to go to work, Moos Detweiler said, leaving some families struggling to pay expenses. The fundraiser supports the school’s efforts to help families with grocery, laundry and rent assistance.
“I’m a teacher here in Arlington, and so I know what it’s like to teach kids who have a lot of trauma,” Moos Detweiler said. “If there’s less trauma on these kids and their families, then they’ll just be better set up to learn and to be successful and to not have this huge learning gap in their in their K-12 career.”
Moos Detweiler said St. Paul residents are feeling the impact of enhanced immigration enforcement. She pointed to the example of a Venezuelan family taken by federal officers and later released when federal officials could not produce a warrant.
Another incident involved Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers reportedly detaining a Hmong man without a warrant even though he is a U.S. citizen. Moos Detweiler’s former neighborhood in St. Paul has a significant immigration population, including Hmong people who spied for the U.S. during the Vietnam War and fled as refugees.
While heightened immigration enforcement is affecting Minnesota right now, Moos Detweiler says it could happen to other communities.
“I think it’s important to look to Minnesota as an example of a state that won’t stand for people not following the law and not giving everybody who’s on our soil due process,” Moos Detweiler said.
The Fairlington resident hopes to run the snow shoveling fundraiser again and expand it to other communities.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
