Joyce Uptown Food Shelf in Minneapolis, Minnesota is stepping up for a community in crisis. Following the official end of the Federal Operation Metro Surge, the food shelf says innovation remains important as they work to meet neighbors’ needs.
The Federal Operation Metro Surge, launched in December, brought several thousand agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) into Minneapolis. During this period, Department of Homeland Security agents shot and killed two Minneapolis residents, 37-year-old Renee Good and 37-year-old Alex Pretti, as well as taking children into custody. The White House reports that more than 4,000 arrests were made.
Although the Trump-Vance Administration recently announced the surge’s end, many immigrant families report they still fear leaving their homes, including for school and work.
Over the last few months, Joyce Uptown Food Shelf shifted their processes to ensure that households can still access food and other necessities. For Matthew Ayres, Executive Director of Joyce Uptown, this flexibility will remain important to keep families safe.
Ayres says he began to see the number of drop-ins decline months before the start of Operation Metro Surge, as federal agents began moving into the city. “Two years ago, we saw a huge influx of Ecuadorian families coming in… and they disappeared, starting in September, October,” he tells Food Tank.
Located within two miles from where both Good and Pretti were killed, the food shelf has become a prominent site for donations and volunteers, both locally and nationally, Ayres says. At the height of the Surge, he estimates the shelf was running at 130 percent capacity, with an approximate 120,000 pounds of food going out in February.
When asked how things changed after the killing of Good, Ayres tells Food Tank, “We started getting money and attention and volunteers and donations. Everything changed for us, but not for the people that were getting food.”
The organization altered their model to help get food to families unable to visit in person. In the past, long-term clients came in to shop at the shelf, while others picked up pre-made bags. Today, Joyce Uptown fills emergency food bags stocked with essentials: apples, potatoes, onions, eggs, chicken, rice, beans, pasta, milk, and canned goods.
Through a partnership with local schools, teachers come by to retrieve the bags for their students, or the food shelf delivers the bags to the schools themselves. Patrons of the food shelf and other volunteers are also bringing bags to families unable to leave their homes.
Ayres says that Joyce’s Volunteer Coordinator didn’t have a model to work off to deliver groceries at the start. “She really created this from scratch,” he says.
The food shelf also streamlined their processes to deter ICE, Ayres says. “People move through here so fast. It used to be a five to eight minute wait, now it’s one to two.” They found that if people aren’t lingering at the food shelf, ICE is less likely to use it as a staging area.
Although Ayres says the work is exhausting, he also calls it deeply rewarding. “Random people are coming up and giving us hugs or crying… this in particular is the center point of hope, but also despair.”
Ayres tells Food Tank that since the end of Operation Metro Surge, “Joyce has seen a few more Spanish-speaking shoppers come in, but [their] deliveries and school pickups are still steady or growing…You still have tons of families sheltering, classroom chairs are still empty, and people are still pretty reluctant to get out.”
But since the start of the year, organizations like Joyce Uptown and other mutual aid programs “have finally found a rhythm,” Ayres says. Processes have become streamlined and mutual aid groups have professionalized.
To food pantries across the country who may need to step up similarly in the coming months or years, Ayres shares what he’s learned: “Connection to schools is important…[so is] listening to and learning from mutual aid groups.” He also sees the importance of defining clear roles. “My lane is being able to purchase large scale eggs, beans and potatoes. Those schools need to be getting produce.”
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Photo courtesy of Joyce Uptown Food Shelf
