A crowd of between 50,000 and 100,000 people assembled in Minneapolis on the afternoon of Friday, January 23 in -9° F conditions, to demand an end to the recent terror campaign and occupation of their city by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol. The city was engaging in a powerful day of protest that many envisioned as a general strike or “economic blackout.” The federal government has sent 3,000 masked agents to kidnap, attack, brutalize, and in some cases murder anyone they see as a target or obstacle in Minneapolis and the surrounding area.
In preparation for Friday’s action, huge parts of the population, including major unions, nonprofits, community groups, and churches, had spread the word to not attend school or work, and instead engage in demonstrations or activity to aid and protect their immigrant neighbors. Largely due to pressure from their workers or customers, more than 600 businesses and institutions closed for the day in solidarity with the action, including museums, theaters, restaurants and bars, gyms, retail stores, tattoo shops and more. A separate protest at the airport combined a sick-out by many workers and a blockade by local faith leaders and clergy to disrupt the main bottleneck of ICE’s deportation machine in Minnesota.
The actions on Friday were a concentration of the energy and activity that has been organized by the people of Minnesota over the past several weeks to defend the city against ICE and Border Patrol. Bullhorns, noisemakers, and chants like “Minnesota’s got the ICE melt” ring out day after day throughout the Twin Cities despite the bitter cold winter weather. Sustained and regular protests are occurring outside federal government buildings, detention centers, ICE’s staging areas, and hotels where the agents are housed. Each day, more and more people who have never been activists or organizers get connected to ICE defense teams, armed with whistles and their phone cameras to warn neighbors when ICE or Border Patrol is spotted and to document the agents’ movements and abuses. Sophisticated networks to distribute food and other essentials have been set up for people who are not safe to leave their homes.
The people of Minnesota are right to stand up to these attacks! Although Somali, Hmong, Latino, and other immigrant communities are targeted, the whole Twin Cities region has been hit hard. Two weeks ago, an ICE agent murdered Renee Good, who was in her car observing ICE activity when she was shot in the face three times. Since then, the federal agents have resumed the practice of kidnapping children as young as five, even without their parents; begun officially disregarding the legal requirement for a warrant to enter a home or business; and continued to use banned, lethal chokeholds. In one case which is certainly not unique, they abducted an elderly Hmong man (a U.S. citizen) at gunpoint from his home, forcing him outside in his underwear in the frigid cold. They have also responded to the protests with a similar level of violence—a recent front page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune displayed a full spread image of a demonstrator tortured with pepper spray after already having been handcuffed and tackled to the ground. And on Saturday, January 24, federal agents murdered another person in retaliation for opposing their attacks, ICU nurse Alex Pretti. Immediately before the agents tackled and shot him, Pretti had been protecting another protestor who the agents were pepper spraying. His last words heard on bystander video were, “Are you okay?”
The mayor of Minneapolis says he opposes the attacks by ICE and Border Patrol, but berates protestors for fighting back. But this is a fight for survival! An organized, powerful resistance to the government’s racist attacks led by workers and ordinary Minnesotans is the only path forward.
