“If they were all deported, we’d probably be in trouble with getting labor,” Steinhaus said.
In the stall beside him, Lee, the teacher, said problems with the immigration system have been evident for years, with an onerous process to legally immigrate leading to a spike in illegal immigration. Since Trump’s inauguration, she’s heard of immigrants receiving letters telling them to self-deport, and of legal immigrants unable to renew visas.
“It’s different when you actually sit down and work with these communities,” she said. “You can’t fault somebody trying to find a better life for themselves.”
When Jenny Groen left her hometown of Willmar, she assumed she’d never move back. She wanted a diverse community, and when she graduated from high school in 2001, Willmar was not that. She moved to California and later to Haiti, where she and her husband adopted four Haitian children. Only after Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake did they return to Willmar.
“Our city had just completely changed,” said Groen, area programs manager for Arrive Ministries, a resource center for refugees and immigrants. “We wanted a place our kids belong and fit in.”
Those changes haven’t been universally lauded. What had been a dying downtown now bustles with multicultural businesses — Chaw’s Asian Market a few blocks from Mubarak Food & Grocery, Somali restaurants a stone’s throw from Mexican and Honduran restaurants.