The Fears of Refugees in Minnesota: A Story of Trauma and Resilience
As a young man, George Thawmoo repeatedly fled his rural village in Burma, taking refuge in the jungle with his family until the Burmese government had retrenched. As soldiers left, they would set fires and burn the bamboo huts that his people — the ethnic Karen — called home.
In 1997, Thawmoo and his 4-month-old son landed at a refugee camp in Thailand, not far from the Burmese border, from where he would later take college courses through an international institute. Life was hard, and Thai police frequently extorted Karen refugees for forced bribes, but he eventually found work as an interpreter for the U.S. State Department, where he met and married his wife, an American.
George Thawmoo, an ethnic Karen, at the Ramsey County Service Center in Roseville on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
A New Life in Minnesota
In Minnesota, he found new opportunities, and life got better. Thawmoo, now 50 and living in St. Paul, where he’s raised five children, had figured the days of government crackdowns based on his ethnicity were well behind him.
However, he’s been proven wrong, he said, and so have the more than 20,000 Karen refugees living in Minnesota as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security rolls out detentions and door-to-door immigration enforcement throughout the state. For many refugees of all backgrounds, confronting the same types of militarized operations and detainments that made them flee their homelands has been retraumatizing.
Rising Fears and Trauma
In three weeks, federal agents have been involved in as many shootings in Minneapolis. Alex Pretti was fatally shot Saturday by ICE agents in south Minneapolis, while Renee Good was killed on Jan. 7. There also was a man shot by federal agents in the leg in North Minneapolis. In those cases, federal authorities say they were defending their lives, though local officials dispute this.
“The community is overwhelmed and scared,” said Thawmoo, noting some of his children’s classmates and their parents no longer leave the house. “I think some people are going to lose their housing because they can’t go to work. If kids aren’t going to school, that’s going to impact their education.”
Alison Beckman, a clinical social worker with the Center for Victims of Torture in St. Paul, said similar thoughts are racing through the minds of asylum-seekers of all backgrounds who had assumed the worst was behind them when they landed in the U.S., which loomed for many as a beacon of democratic freedom.
Seeking Safety and Asylum
Beckman noted the majority of the clients she sees at the Center for Victims of Torture have applied for asylum, a legal immigration process. Many arrive in the U.S. with psychological scars from the repression they’ve faced and guilt over the loved ones they’ve left behind, she said.
Now they’ve been retraumatized by the “unprecedented and unjustified militarized enforcement that has happened all over the country and moved here. It’s created this climate of terror. It’s totally unnecessary. My kids’ friends are carrying their passports around and they were born here as citizens.”
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