This past month, we spoke with Pajouablai Monica Lee, Director of Chapter Strategy and Engagement, from Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP), and Claudia Leung, New Breath Foundation Director of Programs. Both have deep ties to Minnesota and longstanding roots in organizing. Read on for their reflections and calls to action on how philanthropy can meaningfully support Southeast Asian communities in this moment.
Fifty years ago, the first Hmong refugees arrived in Minnesota. Fleeing persecution in Laos after the U.S. withdrew from a war that had dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on their homeland, they built lives and wove themselves into the fabric of a state and country that had promised them safety.
Pajouablai Monica Lee (AAPIP) grew up watching her parents honor that promise from the moment they arrived in the U.S. in the late 70s and early 80s. Upon learning English, Monica’s parents held roles as a home-school liaison, a park ranger, and a Senior Congressional staffer. They translated, interpreted, and helped Hmong families navigate systems when few others could. Monica shares, “Through their experiences, my parents learned that the most important factor of living in America would be to become public servants. This would maximize their privilege to give back to the community that gave them a second chance. Their example taught me how to use whatever privilege we have to give back.” Today, as Director of Chapter Strategy and Engagement at AAPIP, she is doing exactly that in an area that hits close to home.
A Community Under Siege
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. ICE agents have been going door to door in the Twin Cities, demanding the names of Hmong and Lao residents. Elders have been pulled from their homes in sub-zero temperatures. Asian community members with disabilities have been removed from their cars on the way to doctors’ appointments. Southeast Asian markets have gone quiet. For the children and grandchildren of people who fled persecution to build lives here, Monica reflects, “it’s devastating to see how our communities are being treated today, when they feel like they are being hunted by a government that once welcomed them.”
The scale of this crisis cannot be overstated: seven in ten refugees in Minnesota are Southeast Asian. Four in ten are Hmong. Since 2025, Hmong and Lao communities have faced an acute crisis due to what appears to be a handshake agreement between Laos and the current administration, triggering a sudden wave of deportations for the first time in decades.
DIY Survival
But Minnesota’s response has been remarkable – not only for its speed, but also for its roots. Monica notes, “Hmong communities are experts of ‘DIY-ing’ when it comes to survival and supporting one another.” This practice has shown up through free meals for protesters, organized grocery runs, food drives, and deliveries to families sheltering in place. Organizers are sharing resources such as legal support networks, and Southeast Asian communities are building cross-racial solidarity with Black and Latine immigrant and refugee neighbors facing the same injustices inflicted by federal agents.
Through community organizing, food pantries were filled to three times their capacity overnight. Volunteers flooded public schools. Neighbors organized rent moratorium campaigns for families sheltering in place. “I am moved, but not surprised,” Claudia Leung, Director of Programs at New Breath Foundation, says. “I experienced this same spirit of solidarity when I lived and organized in Minneapolis and St. Paul.”
Claudia began organizing in these same communities nearly twenty years ago as a student at Macalester College. She now brings the lessons of those early days to her work at New Breath Foundation. “The things I learned from Minnesota organizers – how to engage communities, deep social justice values, the high standards I hold myself to – continue to inform me today as a practitioner in philanthropy.”
The Role of Philanthropy
Philanthropy has a concrete role in what we’re seeing. In response to the current surge, AAPIP created the Twin Cities Rapid Response Fund, which raised $23,000 in its first week from donors nationwide. New Breath Foundation launched a matching campaign to philanthropic partners and donor networks to support organizations working to fight detention, deportation, and protect communities from ICE’s reign of terror in Minnesota. Sustained funding, however, remains scarce. Only 0.13% of philanthropic dollars in the Twin Cities currently reach AANHPI organizations. That’s only 13 cents out of every $100. National attention has not translated into adequate resources for Southeast Asian communities, which have been historically underfunded in the region and elsewhere.
The Work Continues
The work does not end in Minnesota. What organizers build there – the rapid response infrastructure, the cross-racial coalitions, the mutual aid networks – will serve as a model for cities across the country that are already preparing for similar enforcement. Supporters can continue giving, both directly to local AANHPI organizations and to AAPIP’s Rapid Response Fund, to meet urgent needs such as food, housing stabilization, transportation, health care access, and other essential services, to protect the most vulnerable AANHPI community members in the Twin Cities.
“We have so much to grieve, and we have so much to hope for,” Claudia remarks. “Let’s grow to hold both for ourselves and each other.”
To support: Visit https://aapip.org/ or donate to the AAPIP Twin Cities Rapid Response Fund. Organizations may apply for rapid response grants here while funds remain available.
–
Born and raised in St. Paul, MN, Pajouablai Monica Lee is the proud Hmong daughter of her parents who came to this country as refugees from Laos. Guided by the values instilled in her by her parents, Monica’s personal and professional mission has always centered on the advancement of young people, refugees, women, and the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AA and NHPI) communities.
Monica holds a Master of Public Affairs from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor of Science in Human Resource Development from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is the current Director of Chapter Strategy and Engagement at AAPIP. She currently resides in Berkeley with her husband and two doggos, Layla and Rori.
–
Claudia Leung (she/they) is a queer, disabled, mixed-race second-generation Chinese American born, raised, and currently living in the Bay Area. At New Breath Foundation, she serves as the Director of Programs, leading in strategic grantmaking, capacity building, evaluation, and learning. Throughout her career, Claudia has consistently focused on centering marginalized communities to effect intersectional cultural and social change. Her career spans more than a decade in roles from grantmaking to communications to fundraising at organizations working on racial justice, gender justice, arts, and education. Her organizing work and background as a liberatory coach inform her approach to philanthropy.