Three months after it began, the story of President Donald Trump’s siege of Minnesota has been one told with violent imagery. Masked men smashing windows and dragging women from their cars. A smiling mother behind the wheel of her SUV, a rattling of gunshots, a dashboard sprayed with blood. Outraged Americans shouting at government agents amid clouds of choking gas. An ICU nurse prone on the pavement.

The images told the story of the streets, but even as the administration moves to wind down its historic immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities, announcing a drawdown of operations this week, another story unfolds behind locked doors and drawn curtains. It is the story of tens of thousands of families living in terror, too afraid to venture into their communities for life’s most basic necessity: food.

In response to unprecedented conditions, an underground army coalesced to bring sustenance to families in hiding.

On the ground in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and communities across the state, this is the reality that has kept people up at night.

In response to unprecedented conditions, an underground army coalesced to bring sustenance to families in hiding. The Intercept was recently invited inside a nondescript Minneapolis warehouse to observe their operations in action.

It was delivery day, which meant volunteers stuffing boxes with oatmeal and spaghetti, flour and chicken, rice, tomato sauce, vegetable oil, and more. Six hundred boxes were prepared the day before. Hundreds more would be added by day’s end. Inside, volunteers left notes telling recipients they were missed, and that they hoped to see them again soon.

The packages were loaded into a fleet of station wagons and SUVs. Alongside the food was baby formula, medication, and other essentials. Many of the vehicles were driven by teachers taking supplies to the families of students who haven’t been to class for weeks. They would proceed carefully on their mission, one eye on the rear-view mirror as they ferried their precious cargo.

As the latest in a series of dragnets targeting Democratic-led cities and states, Minnesota’s “Operation Metro Surge” saw 3,000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol personnel deployed in early December. Across the state, immigrant families went into hiding.

Joe Walker, director of nutritional services at the Sanneh Foundation, a local charity that operates a mobile food shelf in the Twin Cities, saw the impact immediately.

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Not only were families no longer appearing to receive food, Walker told The Intercept, delivery vehicles were being followed, and distribution sites were being staked out by suspected federal agents. To volunteers on the ground, it felt as though the government was weaponizing hunger to root out a foreign enemy.

“We have to play by all the rules,” Walker said. “They don’t.”

Building an Aid Operation

Guiding operations at the warehouse visited by The Intercept was a 24-year-old soccer coach named Mu Thoo.........

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