‘I’m Going to Be a Lion Now’: Watch Jason Ortiz-Crespin’s Story Here
Hear Jason’s Story
Read Jason’s Story
Jason Ortiz-Crespin remembers the moment fear left his body and became something else.
He had gone door to door near his school, asking neighbors if they would be willing to train as constitutional observers. Jason is a special education teacher in St. Paul. His school is diverse. Down the street is a Spanish immersion school. He knew they could be targets.
So he asked for help.
The neighbors came.
Some did not even have children at the school. Still, they trained. Still, they stood outside in the winter. Still, they surrounded the school every day to help keep children safe.
Jason saw them there and felt something change.
“That’s when I decided I’m not going to be worried,” he said. “I’m going to be a lion now.”
For Jason, protection has always been instinct.
He is from St. Paul. His parents and grandparents were immigrants from Mexico. He comes from a rich tradition of family, celebration, memory, and honoring where his ancestors came from. He is also an educator, a special education teacher who believes every child deserves the same safety, dignity, opportunity, and care.
He grew up with four younger brothers. If they were bullied, he protected them. That instinct followed him into the classroom.
“My instinct is always to protect,” he said. “I teach special education children. My instinct first is they get everything any other kid gets. That’s the reason I teach.”
When Operation Metro Surge began, Jason felt caught off guard. He had heard the warnings. He had seen the headlines grow. Then workers in hotels started reporting that ICE agents were staying there.
That was when it became real.
“Oh my God,” he remembers thinking. “They’re here. They’re like really here.”
As an educator, Jason compared the moment to the beginning of COVID. There was no playbook. Schools, families, and communities had to figure out how to fly the plane while it was already in the air.
But this was different.
With COVID, people died from a virus communities were still trying to understand. During Operation Metro Surge, people were being harmed because people in power were choosing to harm them.
“I couldn’t believe our own government was here,” Jason said, “hurting people and taking them away just because of their last name and the color of their skin.”
He knew he had to do something. He just did not know what.
Then he found the Immigrant Defense Network.
Through IDN, Jason trained as a constitutional observer. The training gave him structure. It gave him direction. It gave him, in his words, “solid ground to step on.”
He brought that training back to his school. He spoke with his principal, Dr. Franks, and told her they needed to do something. She gave him the freedom to help build the safest possible response for students and families.
Jason went door to door. He recruited neighbors. They trained. They showed up.
Soon, adults were positioned around the school. Teachers volunteered their prep time, lunch time, and after-school hours. Jason helped organize patrols across multiple schools. They created communication systems. Social workers helped coordinate food for families. Transportation teams followed buses. Families were afraid, but they were not abandoned.
The need was heartbreaking.
Jason remembers the school becoming empty. Children stayed home because families were terrified. Parents reported ICE parked outside. Some could not get food. Some were afraid that if agents came for them, their children would witness the violence.
The children who did come to school carried fear with them.
“Our kids were just so terrified,” Jason said.
As a teacher, that was almost unbearable. He says he would rather be hit with a hundred more canisters than sit with a second grader who cannot eat because they do not know where their parents are or whether their parents can eat.
That is what Operation Metro Surge did to schools. It did not only target adults. It reached children’s stomachs, classrooms, bus rides, and sleep. It made safety something teachers had to organize by hand.
Jason also showed up beyond the school.
The day Alex Credi was killed, Jason went out as a constitutional observer. His role was to document, observe, and help ensure rights were respected. As tensions grew, an elderly Native American woman came to him. She had lost track of her grandchildren and asked for help.
Jason tried to help her cross the street.
He motioned to officers and pointed to his vest. They appeared to wave him through. Halfway across, Jason felt a sharp pain. He says an officer shot him point blank in the shin with a canister. He fell, injuring his wrist. The elder fell too. Gas filled the area. She had asthma and could not breathe.
People in the crowd picked them up and pulled them toward safety. Because roads were blocked, an ambulance could not reach them. Community members had to carry the elder blocks away to get medical help.
Jason still carries injuries from that day. His hand and fingers remained swollen. His wrist may require surgery.
But what angers him most is not only that he was hurt. It is that an elder was harmed while trying to find her grandchildren.
That moment deepened his resolve.
Jason says he is not interested in revenge. His purpose is to help the people behind him, the people in the house, the children in the school, the neighbors being targeted.
The future he wants is one where communities know their rights and know how to protect themselves without violence. He wants the knowledge built in Minnesota to reach other states and other communities that may one day ask the same question he asked at the beginning: what do we do?
His answer now is clear.
Train. Organize. Protect. Show up. Do not be afraid.
What gives Jason hope is still the children.
“If you ever feel bleak,” he said, “come volunteer and look me up and volunteer at my school.”
He says the elementary students he works with are phenomenal. They are smart. They understand danger, but they are still full of love and service. They want to help their teachers. They want to help their friends. Every day Jason goes to work, he calls it medicine.
He has taught long enough now to see former elementary students grow up and graduate. Those relationships remind him why he continues.
“That is the hope of any community,” he said. “Your children.”
During Operation Metro Surge, Jason showed up as an educator, a constitutional observer, an organizer, and a protector.
Because for Jason, this work was never abstract.
It was his house.
His school.
His children.
His community.
And when fear came for them, he became a lion.
