Minneapolis Restaurant Owner Opened Her Doors for Protesters Seeking Refuge: ‘Come In, Come In’

When Tracy Wong, owner of Vietnamese restaurant My Huong Kitchen in Minneapolis, opened her doors to fleeing protesters, she never would have expected so many to open their hearts to her, but that’s exactly what happened.

On Jan. 24, in Minneapolis, protests continued over the killing of Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross.

The violence wasn’t over, though: During an altercation between anti-ICE protesters and immigration authorities, a federal agent shot and killed a Minneapolis man named Alex Pretti early Saturday morning.

Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was killed right before 9 a.m. at the intersection of 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue, according to Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says the two agents involved in the killing of Pretti have been placed on administrative leave as the Department of Homeland Security says it investigates the matter.

A Restaurant Owner Watches From Her Window

Tracy Wong, who came to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1979, is the owner of My Huong Kitchen in Minneapolis. KARE 11

As the events that led to Pretti’s killing were unfolding, a block away, Wong was in her restaurant, where she serves banh mi, bubble tea smoothies and warm bowls of pho.

The eatery is open five days a week, including Saturday, but she wasn’t planning on opening its doors that day because of unrest in the area.

“Everybody called me. ‘Go home,’ my family, they say. ‘Go home. Go home.’ I say, ‘No, I cannot go home. I have to stay here,’” Wong tells TODAY.com, adding that all the other businesses on Eat Street were shuttered that day, but she was at hers to answer the phones.

She looked outside and noticed some kind of commotion and clouds of smoke, she recounts, “Oh, my goodness, something happened.”

Press and Protesters Run for Cover

Meanwhile, KARE-11 reporter Samie Solina and photojournalist Mitchell Yehl were interviewing witnesses to Pretti’s killing when they saw “all the ICE and Border Patrol agents converge, going towards a certain area,” Yehl tells TODAY.com. (KARE-11 is the NBC affiliate in Minneapolis.)

Law enforcement clashes with protesters after a federal agent shot and killed a man on Jan. 24 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Anadolu / Getty Images

“I don’t know what they were rushing to,” Solina adds, “but the crowd started moving very, very quickly.

“That’s when all hell broke loose.”

Yehl says a flash-bang went off at his feet.

Solinas says, as she saw people running from tear gas, she heard the anchors in her ear saying, “Samie, get out of there. Samie, get out of there.”

TODAY.com reached out to ICE about its alleged use of tear gas on the crowd, but has not heard back at the time of publication.

“I just can’t get any oxygen in my lungs, like I’ve never experienced that before, where you simply can’t breathe, and so I just start running,” Solina says.

That’s when Solina and Yehl found themselves near Wong’s restaurant.

“I collapsed a little bit on the sidewalk, and I started throwing up next to a man who was also throwing up,” Solina says, adding that a “really kind” protesor gave them water.

Wong says she spotted Solina, Yehl and protesters running toward her shop.

“People start running so close to my restaurant, and I see that ‘boom, boom, boom,’ then I start opening up the door,” she says. “I say, ‘Everybody, come on in. Please, come in. Come in to be safe in here.’”

The Restaurant Owner Opens Her Doors

“I don’t even really remember when Tracy Wong opened her door, I only remember the hug that she gave me when I was finally in because it was just adrenaline,” Solina says. “‘I think someone just opened her door.’ It was Tracy, and she said to everyone like, ‘Come in, come in, come in.’ And we did.”

This exact moment was caught on video by Yehl, and the resulting clip went viral on social media. Wong says between 50 and 100 protesters and passersby caught in the melee came into her shop, where she offered them water, tea and pho.

“I am so sorry,” Wong says in the clip as she embraces Solina. “I am so sorry, guys.”

“Samie was getting tear-gassed right in front of Tracy’s restaurant, and she let us in, and took us in,’” Yehl says. “If there was ever an example of an angel in this world, I’d say it’s Tracy.”

Customers Show up to Support the Restaurant

In the days after Saturday’s events, Wong’s shop has been inundated with calls of support from across the country — and even world.

“The dad of a woman who was there thought that he saw his daughter in the middle of this tear gas on the news, and so he bolted over there,” Solina says. “Eventually he got a call from his daughter saying that she’s OK and that she was at My Huong Kitchen.”

On Tuesday, she reopened to find customers showing up in droves to support her business. Solina and Yehl caught some of this in a follow-up video.

“She had people from like Australia and Canada calling her and saying, ‘We saw your video,’” Solina says. “I think it was probably a little overwhelming for a small business owner to get this surge of attention, but people just wanted to support her so much because her story just touched so many people.”

Even when her shop is closed, Wong has been letting people come in from the cold and have a hot tea on the house. Last Saturday, the low was -6 degrees in Minneapolis.

“I was just so comforted by the fact that I had this motherly woman who just invited us in,” she says. “It just meant the world at that time.”

As for what Wong hopes people take away from her viral moment, she says, “I hope they do the same thing like I do. Please help people, be safe and have peace.”