St. Luke's Response to Operation Metro Surge

Last Tuesday, I joined fifteen other speakers on stage at a community hearing for the Minnesota Truth Council to share the story of how St. Luke’s responded when Operation Metro Surge hurt our neighbors. Stories alternated between people who were harmed and those who stepped up to help. I’m incredibly proud of the work St. Luke’s did and I want to share the details with you.

In the beginning, we were organizing grocery deliveries for people who were unable to leave their homes for fear of arrest and deportation—regardless of immigration status. They were unable to go to work or buy what they needed just to stay alive: food, diapers, pet food—everything.

Early on, we connected with a group of churches running an underground food shelf. Folks picked up donated food and brought it back to St. Luke’s. Volunteers could shop at church and then supplement at grocery stores before heading off to make deliveries. After reports that ICE agents were following people, folks started taking circuitous routes so they wouldn’t lead agents to people’s homes. Some of our volunteers were followed, although, thankfully, nothing came of it.

I don’t have records of how much we gave away or who it went to because the government suggested that just helping people not starve might be seditious. So we destroyed the records. We communicated on Signal and set messages to auto-delete. We didn’t know if ICE would charge in and start asking questions or making arrests and we didn’t want our help to lead back to the people who were hurting. We shared only enough personal information to do the job.

As people gradually returned to work, the problem changed. Losing income for two or three months left people badly behind on bills, facing utility shutoff notices and threats of eviction. We’ve been able to pay a month of rent or bring utility accounts to a zero balance to help get them back on an even keel. The few people I had direct contact with were incredibly grateful, sometimes tearfully so. It was clear that we were a backstop against total disaster for folks.

Through the end of June we’ve spent over $50,000 helping our neighbors. That doesn’t count any of the thousands of dollars in groceries and supplies that people bought without reimbursement. We raised the money from members and friends, from ECMN, and from people scattered across the country who wanted to help.

I can’t say for certain how many people we helped. I do know that through June, I made 63 payments related to Operation Metro Surge, including 34 rent payments. My sense is that almost all of those payments went to help different families.

It wasn’t until I went to pull this together that I realized how many different families we helped. Our little congregation kept something like sixty families from losing their homes, to say nothing of the people we helped with food and supplies.

When our government targeted our neighbors, St. Luke’s stepped up in a big, big way.

I’ve never been more proud of St. Luke’s.

And knowing how people responded all across our state, I’ve never been more proud of Minnesota.

Yours in Christ,

Rev. Justin Chapman