In the resistance we drive the high school car pool, that holy responsibility, the ferrying of innocents among the wolves. We drive kids we’ve never met before from families afraid to leave their houses, and most mornings we’re in our pajamas, a staling doughnut grabbed with yesterday’s cold coffee, teeth unbrushed — and OK, fine, that might just be me. You wouldn’t be the first to cock an eyebrow at my personal hygiene.

And OK, fine, I don’t even drive a minivan, if you’re going to be pedantic — it’s a dark Chevy Traverse that looks just like an ICE truck. So in those subzero mornings, when I pull up in front of a new address, I roll the window down and shine my smiley pink face into the day — I know how this looks, sorry, sorry! — and I wave wave wave my cartoon wave right up to the point where those eyes peering from behind bent mini blinds register the thought: No… no, I do not think that man could be ICE.

[...]

We’ve been doing this since December, eight weeks-going-on-nine-going-on who knows. Kids stopped going to school when thousands of ICE officers arrived in Minnesota. They didn’t want to take the buses anymore, their parents too nervous to release their children onto the block, lest they get swept up by masked agents in flak jackets. This was before the 5-year-old in the blue bunny hat got taken, before a fourth grader in Columbia Heights disappeared, before my middle child’s middle school went into lockdown because ICE trucks were prowling outside her algebra classroom. A network of neighborhood moms and dads bloomed organically, divvying rides, vetting newcomers. There were no open calls, just friends talking with other friends, seeing who might want to help.