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<\/p>\nFor some, the road out of Florida was paved with a specific kind of exhaustion. It was the heat that never ended, the political climate that felt increasingly like a storm surge \u2014 not to mention the actual storm surge.<\/p>\n
Those who chose Minneapolis for their new start, though, have found themselves in the middle of a different kind of chaos. The city is the center of a massive immigration crackdown after the federal government sent thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into the metro area, leading to protests, civil unrest and two deadly shootings.<\/p>\n
The administration called the surge a \u201crule of law\u201d mission to root out alleged fraud among Minneapolis\u2019 large Somali community while deporting undocumented immigrants. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has called the operation \u201cpolitical theater.\u201d<\/p>\n
The progressive escape sought by some former St. Petersburg residents has transformed into a landscape of locked doors, whistle alerts and armored vehicles.<\/p>\n
Maureen McDole\u2019s roots in Pinellas County go back generations. Her family founded Hubbard\u2019s Marina at John\u2019s Pass. As the founder of the literary nonprofit Keep St. Pete Lit, she was a pillar of the local artistic community. But by late 2024, the romance of the area was fading.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just didn\u2019t feel sustainable to stay in Florida anymore,\u201d said McDole, 50. Hurricane Helene flooded her home and her partner\u2019s arts studio. The state stripped funding to the arts, and too many nonprofits were competing for the same charitable gifts.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything that mattered… was getting cut or slashed or priced out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still displaced by the 2024 hurricanes, McDole researched climate resiliency across the U.S. While listening to a podcast about Minnesota\u2019s investment in climate infrastructure, something clicked. She went home and told her partner, Oliver Jackson Jr., a visual artist and retired Army Sergeant First Class, that they should move to Minneapolis. There would be more support for the arts, she said. \u201cAnd my child, who\u2019d just graduated high school and is part of the LGBTQ community, could access the specific healthcare he needed.\u201d<\/p>\n
They left in May of 2025.<\/p>\n
Now, she said, their new city reminds her of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic with shuttered businesses everywhere.<\/p>\n
McDole\u2019s partner, a Black U.S. citizen, has been carrying his passport with him, worried about racial profiling by ICE agents.<\/p>\n
For Lorraine Monteagut, an author and academic from the Miami area who lived in Tampa Bay for 15 years, the move from St. Petersburg to Minnesota was a \u201clong time coming.\u201d While she loved her home, she said the political reality of the state began to feel like a threat.<\/p>\n
If there is a contrast to be drawn with St. Petersburg, Monteagut said, it is in the closeness of the neighbors. For starters, she knows the people she lives near for the first time in years.<\/p>\n
In Minneapolis, Monteagut has become a community block captain. She distributes whistles to neighbors as part of the signal networks that track ICE movements and warn people when agents are around. She and likeminded neighbors run errands and deliver food to locals who don\u2019t want to leave their homes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a whistle pattern,\u201d she explained. \u201cThree times if you see them and a continuous blast if you see them detaining someone.\u201d People are doing the same with horn honks. She recently witnessed a crowd of 50 swarm a corner to drive off agents she said appeared to be heading toward a daycare center.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This level of civic mobilization is something she couldn\u2019t imagine back home.<\/p>\n
Monteagut, who has a doctorate in communication from the University of South Florida, said she watched as her former colleagues in the Florida university system were censored. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives were scrubbed from websites and history curricula were altered. The state takeover of New College was a decisive \u201cbad sign\u201d for her.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a revolution were to happen, where would I want to live?\u201d Monteagut, 40, asked herself. As a queer woman and a child of Latino immigrants, she viewed the looming policies of Project 2025 as a direct target on her community.<\/p>\n
The final push came in November 2024.<\/p>\n
Fresh off a string of chaotic hurricanes and the results of the election, she sold her belongings and moved north. She wasn\u2019t under the illusion that a crackdown wouldn\u2019t happen in Minneapolis, but she wanted to be somewhere where the community would \u201cstand up to it more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the minus 20 wind chills and the armored trucks on the street, neither woman wants to return to the Florida they left behind.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no part of me that\u2019s like, \u2018I don\u2019t want to be here anymore,\u2019\u201d McDole said. For her, the sight of neighbors willing to stand on frozen street corners to protect strangers is the part of the change she was looking for all along.<\/p>\n
As Monteagut puts it, the political issues of 2026 are inescapable no matter the zip code.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel justified in some way that I was worried this administration would do this. It wasn\u2019t an overreaction,\u201d Monteagut said. \u201cBut the more they terrorize, the more we organize. That\u2019s the response we have happening here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For some, the road out of Florida was paved with a specific kind of exhaustion. It was the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[28,11611,45810,66079,35833,66080,202,204,203,199,201,200,18594,64556],"class_list":{"0":"post-134852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","10":"tag-immigration-crackdown","11":"tag-lorraine-monteagut","12":"tag-minneapolis","13":"tag-political-climate","14":"tag-st-pete","15":"tag-st-pete-headlines","16":"tag-st-pete-news","17":"tag-st-petersburg","18":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","19":"tag-st-petersburg-news","20":"tag-storm-surge","21":"tag-tim-walz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}