By Jessica Lussenhop for BBC News in Fargo, North Dakota

[....] There have been violent attacks against immigrants throughout the region [....]

And so, on a warm spring morning in early April, a group of 16 men and women gathered on the campus of Concordia College [.....]

The attendees belong to one of two groups. In the first group, eight natives of the greater Fargo-Moorhead region. This group reflects the prevailing racial make-up of the surrounding community, which is 95% Caucasian. Several have lived here all their lives. The second group is comprised of immigrants and refugees who resettled in the area from Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Ghana, Rwanda, Pakistan. Many are Muslim. Some have lived in the area for decades - others just a couple of years.

In 2016, North Dakota took in the second-most refugees in the US per capita. The majority came from Bhutan, Iraq and Somalia. About 76% of the 506 refugees who came to North Dakota in 2015 were settled in Fargo, a town in the midst of an economic revival with an unemployment rate of 2.5%. [.....]

The group has gathered as part of a two-day "story exchange" arranged by a group called Narrative 4. Each immigrant or refugee is partnered with a native Midwesterner, and on the first day the partners will tell each other a story from their lives. The next day, each participant tells their partner's story in the first person, as if it was their own [....]