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Annunciation House Rules
During Operation Metro Surge, federal agents were indiscriminately snatching up people of color throughout Minnesota, tossing them on airplanes, and shipping them to detention centers around the country. Often, those people were eventually released, but without their identifying documents, or money, or any way home.
Such was the case for a south Minneapolis man Sahan Journal calls Chachi; he was flown to El Paso, Texas, held at Camp East Montana for just over a week, and then dropped on the doorstep of an El Paso shelter called Annunciation House.
“They treated me very well,” he says of Annunciation House, speaking in Spanish. “If those people had not been there, I would have been there longer. I’m very, very [grateful] to those guys."
And Chachi is one of many Minnesotans whom the shelter helped throughout OMS. "During the peak of Metro Surge, the shelter worked with other community groups to help almost every Minnesotan released from ICE custody to make their way home," writes Sahan Journal's Nicolas Scibelli, who traveled to El Paso in April to learn more about Annunciation House and bring us this story about the work they do there.
Slop 'Em Up: Job Posting Edition
AI slop: not just for uncanny valley cheeseburgers! Scammers are using the technology to create "sophisticated and personal" recruiting campaigns intended to help them get personal information from job seekers.
The Star Tribune's Bill Lukitsch reports that while fraudsters have long posed as recruiters and staffing agencies, there's been a sharp increase over the last year. Generative AI tools have made it easy and fast to produce realistic job postings and also entire websites dedicated to the scam, so easy that some members of the staffing industry worry that their field will have its reputation damaged.
“We used to always say, ‘Don’t believe until you see,’” says Manjeet Rege, director of the Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence at the University of St. Thomas. “Well, now I would say, don’t believe even if you see, and it looks very, very authentic.”
It's always a great time to be a skeptic.
Give the People of Two Harbors Their Pulitzer
Kate “Kitty” Mayo has been editing the Lake County Press, a small newspaper serving Two Harbors, since it got its start four years ago. But in May, Mayo was diagnosed with ocular lymphoma, a rare cancer that's taking her eyesight. What's a newspaper editor to do?
Well, as she tells Cathy Wurzer at MPR News, her community stepped up.
"Ball games, court meetings, town halls, all events Mayo would cover herself, are now split among her volunteer staff," MPR's story explains. "Additionally, the writers agreed to be more diligent about Mayo’s editorial standards to keep stories brief and save her more time editing."
(Well then, now we know: All you have to do to get writers to stick to their assigned word counts is to get cancer.)
MPR reports that Mayo's cancer, while rare, is very treatable, and we wish her the best on her treatment at the Mayo Clinic. Yes, Mayo is undergoing treatment at Mayo! No word on whether her care team includes any felines.
Cat Tour!
We'll leave ya with one more MPR News story I really enjoyed: Sam Stroozas spoke with Wedge LIVE!'s John Edwards about his ninth annual cat tour, which takes place Wednesday at 6 p.m. starting at Mueller Park in Minneapolis.
Among Stroozas's Qs: Are once-quirky, hyperlocal events like the cat tour and the Lake of the Isles pencil sharpening getting... a little too big and not so hyperlocal? Edwards says it's something he's always thinking about. This year, for example, someone from California emailed him to say they were flying to Minneapolis for the cat tour and worried about the weather.
“Like this is just a neighborhood event in Minneapolis. I can’t deal with you or your travel plans from California,” Edwards tells MPR. Luckily, no one needs to worry—looks beautiful out there right now.
