ICE Is Waging War on My Business and Terrifying My Neighbors

You don’t want what’s happening in Minnesota to happen in your state.

By Shontay Evans

People call me Plant Lady Tay. I’m a small business owner in St Paul, MN. I sell houseplants. I bring a little bit of green and life into people’s homes—and I dog sit. I’ve been in business for almost seven years now. I’ve seen the ups and downs. But I need to be real with you all about what is happening right now, because it is something different, and it’s a ticking time bomb for people like me and my neighbors.

Donald Trump’s occupation of Minneapolis threatened the lives and livelihoods of everyone in our community. When you have federal agents rolling through your city, attacking residents and making people feel unsafe to even walk down the street or speak their mind, you create a climate of fear. And when people are scared, they don’t spend money. They hold onto every dime because they don’t know what tomorrow brings. They are terrified to leave their homes.

We are going into my seventh year, and it has been slow. The past several weeks have been the slowest I have ever seen. And it’s because people are scared. I’ve been out there. I’ve seen the videos. I’ve witnessed what’s happening in our streets. When tens of thousands of us went out to protest in negative 50°F weather, we did it to bring attention to the reality we are living in. I was out there standing in solidarity with my community, and what I saw was unprofessional and untasteful. I saw tear gas thrown at crowds. I saw people being pushed. I saw people standing up and fighting back against ICE and agents from Customs and Border Protection. But when I went back to work, I still saw the terror rippling through the community.

Obviously, here in Minnesota, we’ve been putting our most vulnerable community members first. ICE agents are a threat to our immigrant community, or anyone who ICE decides to attack. We’ve been mobilizing to help those who are in danger, and publicize ICE’s abuses with the end goal of kicking them out—for good. The Department of Homeland Security’s semi-withdrawal of forces has been an encouraging step in that direction, but the work is still far from over.

When I was out there protesting, trying to stand up for my neighbors, we were getting taunted by ICE agents. They would drive past us, recording us on their phones, flipping us off. It was beyond unprofessional. It was intimidation, plain and simple. But among the people outside with me braving the cold, there was solidarity, people looking out for each other, supporting each other. All of that is empowering, but it doesn’t take away the fear and menace that hangs like a cloud over everything, when you have masked agents roaming your community.

My business depends on people feeling safe enough to open their doors, safe enough to shop, and safe enough to engage with their community. Right now, that safety is gone. We are definitely feeling it. Last year, a lot of us small business owners barely made anything. We are struggling to keep our lights on because the atmosphere in this city—driven by this aggression and this fear—has frozen everything.

This isn’t the first time we’ve lived through something like this. The COVID pandemic decimated small businesses everywhere, and lots of them never recovered. And here in the Twin Cities, after George Floyd was killed, many small business owners struggled to find the right balance between expressing our full outrage about the murder, with the need to ensure people still felt comfortable enough to go out, shop, and take an active part in the community.

So I am urging everybody: please support the small business owners in your community.

We really, really need your support right now. But more than that, I urge you to get up and do something. You don’t want what is going on in Minnesota to happen in your state. People often don’t feel the urgency until they are directly affected. But I’m telling you, by the time we are all directly affected, it’s going to be too late. Be a neighbor. Protest, and then support your local businesses. If you’re in the Twin Cities, come see us at Tay’s Secret Garden. Be a full participant in this thing we call democracy. Do not just be a spectator. If we can do it in negative 50°F, I know you can too.

Shontay Evans is a small business owner in St Paul, MN and a participant in Home of the Brave, an initiative dedicated to exposing this administration’s corruption, cruelty, and lawlessness.