"How do you know when God speaks to you?" she explained. "He did on Tuesday night, to me, loud and clear."

The phone call was from an immigrant family she\'s known for more than two years. Immigration authorities had raided the Swift meatpacking plant that day and the family was afraid – afraid of more raids, afraid to leave their home.

"In the background you could hear all kinds of voices and commotion," Kremer said, in an interview Friday in Worthington. "I said, \'I\'m coming to get you right now.\'

"So I got our pickup. It has a topper. And I drove into town and I went up to their door. No one answered. The lights were all off." Her friends were gathered with members of other families.

"Several fathers had been taken away; they didn\'t know where they were. The mothers were in the kitchen, just quietly crying. . . Just candles were lit.

"So I said, \'Come with me, we\'ll go to another house in town. So they gathered all of their things in blankets and garbage bags. And we threw them in the back of the pickup. And I suppose we took, gosh, 15 people out of that house. The men hopped into the back of the pickup. The children were in the cab and I took them to the house and dropped them off."

The streets were eerily quiet as she drove around Worthington. "Then we went out to two or three more houses. People were waiting. We had to turn the lights off and pull up to the door.

"They had little children, little itty bitty children, all wrapped up in blankets . . . and they\'re whispering in the back of my truck, to each other. So anyway, 20, 25 people – I didn\'t even count – they\'re staying at the house. . . It\'s been dark since Tuesday. The drapes have been closed."

Kremer\'s voice breaks when she talks about her friends, who are originally from Guatemala. "There are five children and they\'ve just become a part of our lives. They are like our family and I am one little girl\'s godmother."

Her friend, Luis, taught himself English and was going to work toward getting his GED, high school equivalency certificate.

"And he has so many dreams," she said. "Just last week, before this all happened, he said, \'The kindergarten teacher said Lily is so smart. Someday she will go to university.\' And we sit and dream about, \'What do you think it would cost? How much?" And it was so good to visit with him about his hopes and dreams with his children."

All that changed on Tuesday.

"The look in their eyes," Kremer said. "I have never seen humans like that. I\'m a nurse. I was an ER nurse for many years. I\'ve seen a lot of tragedy and crisis, but nothing like Tuesday night and the fear in their eyes.

"They\'re just so afraid. I can\'t even begin to tell you."

Kremer doesn\'t know what\'s going to happen next, but she knows what she would like to have happen: "These are human beings, these are people. Oh, they\'re illegal immigrants. No, they\'re not! They\'re people, they\'re my friends, my family. These children are my family. And I know there are no laws in place for the illegal immigrants. But these people aren\'t here to make bombs, they\'re not terrorists. They\'re here to work. They\'re working and they work very very hard . . .

"We as a community, we know what we have to do. These are people, these are human beings. They aren\'t to be treated – no one is to be treated – like this. What happened to these people Tuesday night – not in America!

"God is giving us a huge wakeup call and I don\'t know how many people are listening."

View a video clip of Barb Kremer at this link:
https://www.workdayminnesota.org/upload/Video/worth1_121606.wmv