Author’s note: The views expressed in this article are solely those of this author and do not reflect the views of Allina Health or the Metropolitan Airports Commission, or their affiliates.
It’s after 10 p.m., and I am fielding messages from an employee in distress because a patient was just brought into one of our hospitals who was “badly beaten” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. The employee is shocked, anxious and sick to his stomach … and I am meant to provide a bit of shelter in the storm.
I serve as an EMS chaplain, supporting the frontline workers in our 700-plus-person EMS department as well as the local airport police department. My role is to help the helpers — primarily EMTs, paramedics, police officers and telecommunicators — so that they, in turn, can care for the community.
| MORE: How to recognize, help a struggling team member
Under normal circumstances, this means walking alongside clinicians in the aftermath of particularly difficult calls: a fatal car crash, a gruesome suicide, a pediatric death. This “normal” is often heavy, demanding and deeply taxing in and of itself.
Right now, my role involves accompanying our workforce through the usual stressors of their work while also supporting them amid Operation Metro Surge — an ongoing immigration enforcement initiative led by ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), with the stated purpose of apprehending undocumented immigrants and deporting them. Launched in late December 2025, the Operation initially targeted the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul) and has since expanded throughout Minnesota. The Department of Homeland Security has called it “the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out.”[1]
While our service area does not directly include Minneapolis, we do cover 2,700 square miles in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area, greater Minnesota and western Wisconsin, including the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport and the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, where ICE detainees are currently being held.
So what does it mean to support an entire workforce in a moment as unprecedented as this? What does it mean to care for others when you yourself are hurting? And what does it mean to do all of this within a non-profit agency that must remain politically neutral, serving employees and patients who represent the full spectrum of political and ideological beliefs?
In response to the employee in distress referenced above, I do my best to offer compassionate validation and supportive presence sporadically throughout the evening and the days that follow. His is not the only concern in need of attending to.
Multiple employees describe the shock, disappointment, sadness and frustration that comes from learning so many of their coworkers don’t share the same ideals, perspectives or worldviews as them. The disorientation of being connected towards a shared mission of public healthcare and yet holding such vastly different private opinions of what is going on around them has perhaps never been so profound.
At times, there has been an acknowledgement that people are reading into silence, into not just what is being said but what is left unsaid. It’s possible that such silences are creating greater distances as people on all sides grapple with who and what feels safe. One corresponding impulse then is to pull back, work less, maybe even take a leave of absence. All at a time when the need for first responders is unbelievably grand.
An employee of color asked me if they get detained while at work simply for being brown-skinned, whether they will lose their job. The latter, I want to assure them, is not something they have to worry about. Just to verify, I anonymously asked the question through proper leadership channels and was met with a reference to our general employee arrest policy while we wait for more specific direction from the legal team.
When I checked in with some members of the police department who coordinated a multi-agency, respectful and planned arrest of 100 local ministers — demonstrating that it is possible to uphold the law while honoring human dignity — I learned that even though the officers had warm buses waiting for the protestors so that they could be safely moved to a low traffic area in order to receive their minor infractions before being released, a member of command staff still received a phone call calling them a fascist in the aftermath; thus, reinforcing perhaps that no good or kind deed goes unpunished.
To all of these events and more, I am asked simply to witness. To offer a compassionate, non-anxious presence. To be a safe container to hold along with them just a smidge of what they are holding.
Amid all of this, classes resumed for my Doctorate of Ministry program at Vanderbilt University. I was in Nashville for a week between the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. While there, I attended a lecture on “Integrative chaplaincy: Moral injury, moral complexity and practices of care” by Melissa Smigelsky, PhD. In this presentation, Dr. Smigelsky laid out the differences between moral distress, moral shock, moral injury and moral paradox.
The definition of moral shock that I learned that day includes: “unexpected events or pieces of information that so deeply challenge one’s core values and vision of the world that they can upend a person’s understanding of life and even self.”
It’s a surreal feeling to have someone describe to you what you and your community are so acutely experiencing as you are experiencing it.
“Ahh, this is moral shock,” I thought. “This is what moral shock feels like.”
When the presentation closed, I saw that I had missed messages from one of my paramedics back home. He had shared a video of ICE apprehending someone at the gas station nearby with messages that started, “I am mad. I am scared. I am sick. I am frustrated. I’m depressed.”
This is moral shock. I was so very far away, and yet, not so very far. We made plans to get coffee upon my return.
Just over a week later, I participated in Minnesota’s Day of Truth and Freedom by marching with upwards of 50,000 people in downtown Minneapolis. It was peaceful. It was vibrant. It was inspiring. Once having moved inside upon finishing the march, I opened my phone to find a text from yet another paramedic, one I haven’t connected with since the start of Operation Metro Surge. They simply wrote, “Hi friend, you seem like the sort of person to be out today. Stay safe and warm, and thanks for the work you do!”
I remembered that perhaps it’s not safe for some of my employees to demonstrate their values so freely, so openly. Even if it is, I know that they are essential workers, needed to keep our ambulance service going 24/7 without the same ease of conscience to schedule a day off from work. It made me wonder if perhaps I was marching for them too.
The next day, Alex Pretti was killed.
Navigating how to show up for others and for myself during those few weeks is a blur. Sometime in the days that followed, at a loss for how to be of service, I read the full article referenced by Dr. Smigelsky in her lecture back at Vanderbilt, written by the director of our program, Dr. Melissa Snarr [2].
In it, Dr. Snarr pulls together multiple descriptions of moral shock, all of which feel just as — if not more — fitting than the last:
“These experiences certainly ‘lead to a stepping back, a reassessment of the world, and a questioning.’” [3]
“The dread that accompanies a moral shock often leads to paralysis, isolation and privatization of grief.” [4]
“One’s sense of agency is disturbed, disrupted and often defused.” [3]
This is what I am experiencing. This is what our community is experiencing. This is what many of my employees are experiencing.
Many, but not all. Some of them do not appear stuck in paralysis, isolation or grief. Some seem untouched, unshaken. Some seem hardly impacted at all.
Or maybe they are impacted and I am simply not seeing it to the same degree. Maybe they are and I am not the person they feel compelled to share their burdens with.
What I do know across the board is that the human experience of separation and isolation is painful; that the sense of feeling misunderstood, misjudged or misrepresented is hurtful. That being human is hard, complicated and often lonely.
It is this shared humanity that I am trying to keep as an anchor right now.
Because, regardless of opinion, perspective, value or worldview, we are all human. And to be human is to be embodied — therefore fragile. That fragility stirs up all kinds of emotional and psychological responses. Surely it is difficult to manage inner distress, no matter where one stands on an ideological divide.
In the end, I am a chaplain for our entire workforce, in all its variance. And at times, that leaves me wondering: how do I remain a neutral, safe space for all when my calling pulls me especially toward advocacy for the helpless, the voiceless, the vulnerable — the human?
After our coffee meeting, the provider who reached out while I was away at school, followed up by sharing some of his personal reflections, “I want it to leave, I want it to stop, I can’t make it, it won’t stop. I’m left in this cacophony as my senses tingle yearning for a pause.” He continued, “Maybe it’s never been about stopping the noise for good, and that which threatens peace, but remembering that even for a moment, one little moment, you put me at ease.”
Maybe I cannot stop which threatens peace. But maybe, for one little moment, I can put others at ease. Perhaps, that’s my role? I come back to the image of being a shelter amidst the storm.
For each of us, the storm looks different. For one provider, the cardiac arrest of a young mother that ends in her death is a hurricane. For another, it may only be a drizzle. Likewise, for some, the local federal operation has upended their emotional, psychological, social and spiritual worlds ... while others feel safely on dry land. And perhaps those on dry land are not in particular need of shelter at this moment.
If that is the case, then maybe my calling is less about neutrality and more about availability. About being present to those who most need a safe harbor. Right now, most of the first responders reaching out to me are the ones deeply affected by what’s unfolding in our community. Some are experiencing profound moral shock.
In her article on metabolizing moral shock, Dr. Snarr argues that “inviting, abiding with and metabolizing emotions” is an essential step in moving through moral shock towards intentional action in the world. Reflecting on the aftermath of a school shooting in Tennessee, she noted that through vigils and communal gatherings “grief — along with so many complex emotions — was not just acknowledged but invited. Unimaginable loss, shattered expectations, bewildering realties, were given breath and breathing space.” [2]
Perhaps first responders in general don’t feel comfortable publicly sharing their grief or shock. More than one has made it clear to me that they fear losing their jobs if they are too vocal one way or another. That being the case, perhaps the chaplain’s role within such times is to cultivate private spaces wherein moral shock can be safely metabolized. To acknowledge and invite grief. To give breath and breathing space to all the unimaginable losses and shattered expectations.
Because first responders — EMS, fire, police, dispatch — all of them are, at their core, human too. They need to be held and cared for as people first, so that they can go back into the world with strength, courage and compassion to care for our communities.
Let me then do the holding and the caring, where possible.
Let me be a witness to all that they carry.
| MORE: 5 reasons why your wellness program is failing
REFERENCES
- Santana R, Balsamo M. (2026). “Homeland Security plans 2,000 officers in Minnesota for its ‘largest immigration operation ever’”. The Associated Press.
- Snarr CM. (2025) “Metabolizing moral shocks for social change: School shooting, religion, and activism.” Religions 16: 615. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16050615
- Jasper (1999) as quoted in: Snarr CM. (2025) “Metabolizing moral shocks for social change: School shooting, religion, and activism.” Religions 16: 615. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16050615
- Larzillière (2024) as quoted in Snarr CM. (2025) “Metabolizing moral shocks for social change: School shooting, religion, and activism.” Religions 16: 615. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16050615
