'No More Stolen Neighbors!' quilt
(Image by Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC)) Details DMCA
What's in a quilt?
Fabric, thread, batting and stories.
On Tuesday, September 22, the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) and the MN Stolen Neighbors Quilt Project held a rally at the Minnesota State Capitol to demand "No More Stolen Neighbors! ICE Out of MN Now!" They unfurled a huge quilt measuring 9 feet wide by 42 feet long made from over 12,000 squares.
Each square, approximately 2 inches across, represents a stolen neighbor. Together, they form a powerful act of witness.
Afterwards, the quilt was carried outside to accompany the "No More Stolen Neighbors" rally. The project was launched in April by MIRAC member Owen Lubozynski (she/her/hers or he/him/his) with assistance from fellow Twin Cities activist Melissa Greene. Lubozynski promises that's just the beginning. "The Quilt is a protest tool, a reminder -- particularly for our state leaders -- of what is still happening to our neighbors, friends, and families here in Minnesota," she says. "We intend to make it available for rallies, marches, community spaces" if you're fighting for immigrant rights anywhere in the state and want a big, colorful symbol to amplify your message, get in touch -- this is your quilt, too.
'No More Stolen Neighbors!' quilt
(Image by Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC)) Details DMCA
More than 150 people participated in making the quilt.
MIRAC is an all-volunteer, grassroots, multiracial, and multinational organization dedicated to defending immigrant rights. For 20 years, MIRAC has fought for legalization for all, an end to immigration raids and deportations, an end to all anti-immigrant laws, and full equality in all areas of life.
According to Lubozynski, the original goal was to make a patchwork quilt containing 11,000 squares of fabric, representing 11,000 Minnesotans kidnapped by ICE. But due to the outpouring of contributions the project received, the finished quilt was actually about and contained 12,500 squares. Organizers chose to include the additional squares in recognition of the ongoing kidnappings, as well as the violence done to the immigrant community of Minnesota by previous federal administrations.
The number was based on ICE records obtained by the Deportation Data Project, covering the period between the beginning of Trump's second term and the spring of 2026. Lubozynski acknowledges that these records may be intentionally misleading, given the agency's penchant for obfuscation, but deems 11,000 an understatement of the number of people harmed by immigration enforcement in the state -- both during the current mass deportation campaign and under previous administrations.
'No More Stolen Neighbors!' quilt
(Image by Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC)) Details DMCA
"We could keep adding squares to this quilt forever and still not account for all the damage that racist immigration enforcement has inflicted here," he says. "But we needed somewhere to stop, so we chose 11,000." The MIRAC and the MN Stolen Neighbors Quilt Project press release states:
Announcing a "drawdown" in Minnesota this February, Trump's border czar Tom Homan cited an "unprecedented" level of cooperation between Minnesota counties and immigration enforcement officials. With help from those local authorities, ICE has kidnapped more than 900 Minnesotans since March. This sort of collaboration, often formalized under 287(g) agreements between local agencies and DHS, has been shown to exacerbate racial profiling and quietly embed ICE deeper into local policing systems, ensuring that immigrants who have even minor encounters with those systems can be funneled into deportation pipelines. This makes the justice system inaccessible to immigrants, discouraging them from reporting workplace exploitation, domestic abuse, and other crimes -- and it also makes the deportation machine nearly invisible to the broader community, hiding kidnappings within the shadows of local squadcars and jails.
Banning collaboration between local agencies and ICE is the first item on MIRAC's list of demands in its "Sanctuary State Now" campaign, focused on pressuring the Governor to sign an executive order that would also protect sensitive locations from ICE, ban secret police, defend protestors against political repression, provide justice for victims of ICE terror, and implement a statewide eviction moratorium.
The campaign promotes policies that provide true safety and justice, rather than a superficial peace that disguises streamlined persecution.
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