As the winter of 2026 settles over the Midwest, two American cities—Milwaukee and Minneapolis—find themselves grappling with a crisis that goes beyond just empty shelves and shuttered storefronts. In neighborhoods where access to fresh food was already tenuous, recent events have deepened the challenge, leaving families and children struggling to secure basic nutrition. From Milwaukee’s north side, where grocery stores are vanishing at an alarming rate, to the classrooms of Richfield, Minnesota, where immigration enforcement has sapped school attendance and cut off vital meal programs, the patchwork of America’s food security is showing fresh tears.
On February 9, 2026, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson stood outside the Sentry Food Store on Lisbon Avenue, joined by local business leaders and city officials, to announce a new strategy aimed at stanching the loss of neighborhood grocery stores. According to FOX6 News, Johnson laid out the stark reality: “Grocery store closures continue to be a problem across the city, and we have been leveraging partnerships in order to stem the current wave of closures.” His administration’s proposal would set aside roughly $1 million to help independent grocers and pharmacies weather operational storms—everything from aging refrigeration systems to start-up inventory for new businesses.
The urgency is unmistakable. Over the past year, at least seven full-service grocery stores have closed across Milwaukee County, with three of those closures hitting the city’s north side especially hard. The Sentry Foods near 64th Street and Silver Spring, which opened its doors in fall 2023 with the hope of serving some 12,000 residents within a mile radius, is now slated to close. This comes on the heels of an abrupt shutdown of an Aldi near Sherman and Custer, and last summer’s announcement that Pick ’n Save would shutter five countywide locations, including one on the north side.
The ripple effects are felt most acutely by families with limited transportation options, many of whom now find themselves living in what public health experts call a “food desert”—an area where affordable, healthy food is hard to come by. For business owners like Navjoot Sandhar, who operates the soon-to-close Sentry Foods, the struggle is both personal and communal. “Just with how old the building is and everything, it is very hard and difficult to maintain our basic expenses,” Sandhar told FOX6 News. “I’ve gotten to the point of having enough equipment issues to where, to fix them, I don’t have the income coming in anymore to be able to fix all these issues I’m having because the store is such an old store.”
Sandhar recently received a $25,000 grant from the city to upgrade his outdated refrigeration system—a lifeline, but not enough to stem the tide. “If it’s not for me specifically, for the other grocery stores, to make sure we don’t continue to fall into a food desert that Milwaukee is falling into,” he said, underscoring the broader stakes. For residents like Donald Brown, the closures are more than an inconvenience; they’re a daily hardship: “I decided to come to this store because there isn’t anywhere to go over there. They closed down all the grocery stores.”
Mayor Johnson’s plan would supplement Milwaukee’s existing Fresh Food Access Fund, which has historically supported farmers markets and SNAP initiatives rather than direct assistance to brick-and-mortar grocers. The mayor also floated the possibility of tapping designated commercial funds or tax-free legal settlement dollars to finance the new grant program. “There are other trends, and we can work with other city agencies in order to address those things, but right now the most important thing, I believe, is working to make sure that we keep the doors open,” Johnson explained.
Meanwhile, 350 miles to the northwest, another food crisis is unfolding—not in storefronts, but in school cafeterias. According to a February 9, 2026, report by The New York Times, the halls of Partnership Academy in Richfield, Minnesota, have grown eerily quiet. The catalyst? A surge in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity, dubbed “Operation Metro Surge,” that began in the Twin Cities just as students returned from Thanksgiving break in late November 2025.
For a school where more than 90 percent of the 533 elementary and middle school students are Hispanic, the presence of ICE agents in local neighborhoods had an immediate and chilling effect. “Once we started to see ICE in our neighborhoods, there was a real blow to our attendance,” said MJ Johnson, Partnership Academy’s executive director, in an interview with The New York Times. The situation reached a breaking point after January 7, 2026, when Renee Good was shot and killed by ICE agents. In the days that followed, more than 60 percent of the school’s students began staying home, prompting administrators to switch to fully remote learning.
The consequences go well beyond lost classroom time. For many students at Partnership Academy, the free hot breakfasts and lunches provided at school are a lifeline—sometimes the most reliable meals they receive all day. When attendance plummeted, these children lost access to that critical nutrition. As MJ Johnson explained, “Much of that success is because of incentives designed to enable learning and keep its 533 elementary and middle school students coming to school every day. Free hot breakfasts and lunches are essential to that approach.” Now, with so many students learning remotely, those incentives are out of reach, and families are left to fill the gap as best they can.
The twin crises in Milwaukee and Minneapolis are, in many ways, two sides of the same coin. In both cities, structural vulnerabilities—be they aging infrastructure, razor-thin profit margins, or the unpredictable impact of federal immigration policy—have left communities exposed. The result is a growing number of families forced to make impossible choices about where to buy food or whether to send their children to school at all.
City officials and school leaders are scrambling for solutions. Milwaukee’s new grant program, if approved, could throw a lifeline to independent grocers and pharmacies, helping them weather operational challenges and keep their doors open. In Minnesota, school administrators are working to maintain connections with families and ensure students have access to meals, even as remote learning becomes the norm for many.
Yet, the underlying issues—systemic disinvestment in low-income neighborhoods, the fragility of small businesses, and the far-reaching consequences of federal enforcement actions—remain daunting. For residents like Donald Brown and the families of Partnership Academy, the path forward is uncertain. What’s clear is that without sustained intervention and creative problem-solving, the food security gap in America’s heartland is poised to widen.
For now, Milwaukee’s leaders are betting on a new infusion of support for local grocers, while educators in Minnesota search for ways to keep their students fed and learning. The stakes could hardly be higher, and the urgency is plain for anyone willing to listen.