At about 6 a.m. most mornings, Nora Patterson’s phone starts buzzing with alerts.

One of them might ask who’s available to drop off a second-grader at school in a few hours. Another might be looking for someone to pick up groceries for an immigrant family. Another might request someone’s presence outside during Friday prayers at a local mosque.

The requests are typical of the small, often informal mutual aid groups that have cropped up in the Twin Cities in recent months as the federal government’s law enforcement focus in the region has intensified. The federal presence has led many residents to fear leaving their homes.

That’s why Patterson, who described herself as a mother and local theater teacher, said she became active with the immigrant aid groups in October. Since then she’s been trained on how to observe enforcement actions legally and alert neighbors to the presence of federal agents.

“Trained to navigate this new life that we’re currently in,” she said.

The groups are often small and centered on a neighborhood or a school. Patterson is a member of several. 

Immigrant mothers have handed their children to her so she can drive them to school – “a really vulnerable thing,” she said.

Some kids are quiet on the ride. Some are wary of her. Almost all of them, she said, understand at some level what’s going on. But Patterson simply wants to be there for them.

“I’m not there to ask questions,” she said. “I’m doing this out of care.”

In November, she started delivering groceries to families. “You can tell a lot from bags of groceries,” she said, listing staples like milk, eggs, cheese and chicken. “Things that sustain a family.” 

A car with room for six

In St. Paul, Blaire Zummak-Fredrick’s group ramped up in early December when teachers at her children’s school on the city’s northeast side told the parent-teacher organization that more and more students – especially those too young to walk to a bus by themselves – weren’t showing up.

Members created a Google form to sort out who’d be available to drive. Zummak-Fredrick’s schedule made her one of the more flexible members, and since then she’s been regularly driving two or three kids.

It’s a little awkward sometimes, she said. She doesn’t speak Spanish especially well, and sometimes that’s the only language her young riders speak.

“But if I can do it, I’m going to do it,” said Zummak-Fredrick, who described herself as a “mama bear.”

Next week, the group is planning to take a closer look at where volunteers live and which kids from immigrant families regularly need rides, in an effort to make the process more efficient. “I want to help as much as I can,” Zummak-Fredrick said. Her car, she added, has room for six.

A surge in sign-ups

Jill Garvey is the co-director of States at the Core, an organization aimed at “responding to authoritarian threats in the U.S.,” she said, and offering “rapid and customized support for front-line groups.”

In mid-December, they opened registrations for a Jan. 7 online “ICE WATCH” training, teaching citizens how to document ICE activity safely and support people being targeted.

Related: The immigrant experience in Greater Minnesota amid ICE enforcement

Once it was reported that 2,000 federal agents were headed to the Twin Cities for what ICE called its “largest immigration operation ever,” Minnesotans signed up in droves, Garvey said, accounting for more than 500 of the training’s 800-plus participants.

When citing reasons for registering, Garvey said people often express concerns that ICE “has or will come close to their home.”

In Minneapolis, Patterson could relate.

“When everything around me is hate and anger and murder,” she said, “I’m bringing hope and I’m bringing love to the forefront.”

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