The Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy Twin Cities announced the launch of an AANHPI-specific Twin Cities Rapid Response Fund that will help organizations continue to provide important services including:
- Urgent, basic needs: Organizations providing immediate support such as food, housing stabilization, transportation, health care access, and other essential services.
- Legal support and protection: Organizations offering legal defense, due process support, rights education, and navigation assistance, particularly for individuals and families facing deportation orders.
- Offering wrap-around and adaptive support: Organizations delivering holistic services such as know-your-rights education, mental health and wellness support, community safety planning, and other emerging or unmet needs as conditions evolve.
- Working collaboratively within community ecosystems: Organizations that coordinate with partners and informal networks to ensure services are responsive and culturally appropriate, recognizing that deep collaboration during this moment is needed.
Since December 2025, the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area (also known as the Twin Cities) has been the site of "Operation Metro Surge, " the largest immigration enforcement deployment in U.S. history. Over 3,000 federal agents have made more than 3,400 arrests across the region.
The Twin Cities is home to the largest urban Hmong population in the United States and home to the largest concentration of Karen in the country. We are experiencing the greatest rise in large-scale detention and deportations of Southeast Asian groups (Hmong, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Lao, Karen) in U.S. history. Many other Asian Minnesotans, including people from South Asian communities have also been detained. Asian Minnesotans make up the largest immigrant population of any racial group in the state.
AANHPI-led and AANHPI-serving organizations are responding: providing legal defense, food assistance, know-your-rights education, and emergency support. These organizations speak the languages of these communities, understand the cultural nuances, and most importantly are trusted in their communities. However, they have been consistently under-resourced with only 0.13% of philanthropic dollars in the Twin Cities supporting AANHPI causes and organizations. Most AANHPI community organizations operate with fewer than five staff and budgets under $500,000.
Our AAPIP Twin Cities Chapter Leaders and other AANHPI local community leaders asked AAPIP to create infrastructure that could move money quickly to AANHPI organizations. This fund is our response, a temporary rapid response fund built in partnership with those leaders to fill an urgent funding gap.
How the fund works:
- Grants will go directly to AANHPI-serving nonprofits in the Twin Cities.
- Funds will be distributed with urgency.
- An Advisory Committee of local community leaders guides distribution decisions.
- All grants are unrestricted, allowing organizations to deploy resources where they're needed most.
People can contribute to the AAPIP Twin Cities Rapid Response Fund at https://aapip.app.neoncrm.com/campaigns/aapip-twin-cities-rapid-response-fund or contributions can be made directly to AANHPI-serving organizations listed at https://aapiunited.net.
