Sachin Patel ’00 publishes opinion piece in Star Tribune
Patel majored in English at Carleton.
Sachin Patel ’00, a Twin Cities-based writer and a pulmonary and critical care physician, published an opinion piece in the Star Tribune titled, “Everything changed when ICE showed up at our family’s motels.”
I grew up in Shakopee in the 1990s as part of a closely knit community of Indian American operators of “mom-and-pop” motels in and around the Twin Cities.
Like the rest of our hospitality family, my parents, younger sister and I lived and worked in the motels, cleaning rooms and filling vacancies. Our motel customers often came from county social service agencies and were victims of domestic violence, trafficking and homelessness.
Our parents’ goals were to make money and invest in their kids while they longed for their motherland. Our elders warned us that being involved with Others — those outside our community of origin — might topple what we were building.
Participation in the democratic process was not emphasized. Our parents were hesitant to engage in local advocacy or to call themselves “American,” fearing it would tarnish their old-world values.
South Asian Americans own about half of all hospitality properties in the U.S. However, many of them are small and in places many do not want to live — outside of rural towns or in impoverished urban neighborhoods.
I dreamed of one day leaving behind that dusty, roadside life.
My world began to expand after I left the Hillview Motel on Hwy. 169 and was introduced to the liberal arts at Carleton College. I learned that the themes within our immigrant stories were universal across time and among ethnic groups.
After medical school I continued my training as a doctor in Chapel Hill, N.C., and Baltimore, Md. I was even able to practice in New Zealand, caring for Maori patients. As I came of age as a pulmonary and critical care physician, I treated patients who seemed uncannily similar to the downtrodden souls who checked into our motel.
After almost two decades away from Minnesota, I returned home in 2024. In the years I had been gone, our extended hospitality community here had remained largely disengaged from civic participation — despite its economic success.
In our insularity, many of us watched over the years in complicit silence as marginalized people such as other people of color, LGBTQIA+ people and undocumented immigrants — even within our diaspora — were persecuted. The rise and fall of political ideologies or culture wars were apparently not our problem. If small businesses were left alone, we remained willfully ignorant.
That changed a few months ago when swarms of ICE agents descended upon our Minnesota hotels and hospitals. ICE agents started staying in our motels, but at the same time targeted the motels’ staff and residents. South Asians with H-1B work visas were being searched and detained.
In a few short weeks, it became clear that whatever ICE’s marching orders, South Asians were being hunted, too. We found ourselves in the biggest anti-immigrant movement of our lifetimes.
We learned that our insularity did not guarantee impermeability. Now, what was happening was our problem, too.
When ICE wanted motel rooms, some of us tried to turn them away despite the slowest season since the pandemic, only to have our franchise licenses revoked. Federal subpoenas soon arrived in our motels’ mailboxes asking for business documents. Once ICE occupied our beds, we organized to support our terrified Latino housekeepers, keeping watch to inform them when it was safe to come and go and providing rides for them to and from work.
At the same time, as “Operation Metro Surge” escalated in Minnesota, our ICUs filled with illnesses and injuries exacerbated by heightened stress and underutilization of preventive care: neglected cancers, vascular disease, alcoholic cirrhosis and hypertensive head bleeds. At our sister hospitals, federal immigration agents stood outside the rooms of critically ill patients — waiting to claim their bounty.
For a few months, I walked in two worlds of fear — one for my motel family and one for my medical community. One icy night, my cousins and I gathered for dinner, only to peer over our shoulders. Did ICE follow us? The next morning, I scurried to the hospital entrance clutching my passport, knowing it was as meaningless to them as the Bill of Rights.
The socioeconomic privilege of being doctors or successful hoteliers comes with a civic responsibility. The model-minority myth that many of us had bought into was rendered meaningless, as there was nothing we could do to prove we were Americans.
Today, South Asian Americans can unclench the fear of Others and look in the mirror to realize that no matter our accolades, we are the Others we avoided for so many years.
The United States is a country built by Indigenous peoples, immigrants, Black slaves, and non-Black indentured servants. And the reality is that in 2050, the Others will be the majority.
We, the Other Americans, infuse your mother’s chemo, haul away rubbish, suture your lacerations, repair cracked roofs and charbroil your burgers. We are the America that drives your Ubers, mows your lawns, discovers new treatments and scores touchdowns. We are Minnesotans.
The federal government’s disorganized campaign to rid Minnesota of violent, undocumented immigrants has indiscriminately targeted anyone who looks Other, without due process or adherence to our Constitution. America is a young republic but is made of old souls drawn here from all over the world to actualize its promise. The vilification of Others as un-American is the undoing of our nation’s enlightened principles.
We cannot evolve as a society until all of us, including the Supreme Court, cease to view our increasingly pigmented population as a threat to democracy, rather than a natural evolution of seeds embedded within its founding doctrines. The federal government’s “Minnesota Experiment” proves that systemic efforts to erase Others backfire when ordinary people with extraordinary courage and empathy rise to protect their neighbors.
In my University of Minnesota medical school class, “Physician and Society,” we were taught the importance of doctors as advocates for their communities. Throughout history, the calling to care for underserved patients — in times of war, autocratic regimes, genocide, or peace — galvanized physicians to fight for our shared human experience.
In wearing my immigrant motel heritage badge, I honor my community of origin and remind myself to fight for my patients beyond the walls of the hospital. Perhaps, too, for some South Asian Americans, it is time we see ourselves less as foreigners and more as Americans with the rights and responsibilities to fight for all.
And in doing so we, the Other Americans, just may preserve our old-world values and actualize democracy at the same time.