Gregory Bovino — the high-ranking Border Patrol commander who oversaw Trump’s anti-immigrant offensive in Minnesota — is reportedly packing his bags and leaving the state today. This pullback, which includes the removal of some federal agents, is clearly a part of Trump’s attempts to de-escalate the situation in Minnesota. It comes on the heels of a phone call between Donald Trump and Governor Tim Walz on Monday, where Trump claimed they were on a “similar wavelength.” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey confirmed the shift, stating Trump told him “the present situation cannot continue” ahead of Frey’s scheduled meeting today with Trump’s former border czar, Tom Homan.

We have to be clear: this retreat is not a result of negotiations between Trump and Tim Walz, but an important victory for the people of Minnesota who transformed the state into a theater of militant resistance in the face of ICE terror. If the situation has become “untenable,” as Trump told Frey, it is because tens of thousands of Minnesotans have refused to let Trump’s deportation machine function as normal.

The operations in Minnesota, dubbed Operation Metro Surge, has been brutal. Since late last year, over 3,000 agents have flooded the state, specifically targeting the Somali community — the largest in the nation — and Latino neighborhoods. Trump has openly demeaned Somali neighbors as “garbage,” while his agents have engaged in what Governor Walz himself once called a “campaign of organized brutality.”

In the last months, agents have carried out warrantless stops of anyone they perceive to be an immigrant, even grabbing children on their way to and from school. This offensive took a particularly lethal turn earlier in this month when ICE agents murdered Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother and legal observer, as she sat in her car during an ICE operation. It escalated again this past Saturday with the cold-blooded killing of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse during a similar stop.

In the Face of Repression, An Overwhelming Show of Resistance

What the Trump administration did not count on, however, was the immense depth of solidarity that would surface in the face this offensive. Indeed, every time the administration doubled down on terror, working people in Minnesota came together to protect their community with more energy.

Communities organized safety networks, people have refused to collaborate with ICE, while workers and businesses refused to serve or cooperate with federal agents. Teachers have organized alongside parents and education workers to try to ensure no child is taken from a school bus or a classroom. Neighborhood watch groups turned the city into a fortress of solidarity, tracking ICE vehicles in real-time, using whistles to alert the community, filming ICE arrests, gathering information on those detained, and even intervening when possible.

Alex Pretti embodied this spirit. Like other Minnesotans who’ve been organizing to defend their immigrant neighbors and coworkers, Alex wasn’t just a passive observer. In his last moments, he acted as a human shield, putting his body between a federal agent and a woman being assaulted by them. His death, and the murder of Renee Good, did not cow the movement; it has radicalized it.

Where Nicole Good’s murder transformed the mobilizations into a tsunami of rage and solidarity against ICE’s continued presence, reaching a crescendo last Friday with a historic city-wide shut down in the Twin Cities where tens of thousands braved sub-zero temperatures to rally in downtown Minneapolis, Pretti’s murder further ratcheted up people’s desire to fight back. A city already reeling in its collective power after the Friday shutdown — which saw hundreds of businesses shuttered, unions joining the call, and workers engaging in massive “no work, no school” sick-outs — Minneapolis responded to Alex’s death with instant, overwhelming force.

The fire lit in Minneapolis has quickly spread into a national conflagration. Thousands marched with their unions in New York City this past Friday, and the streets filled once again following the news of Alex’s murder. In Chicago, thousands mobilized on Sunday in a massive show of defiance, while in NYC, striking nurses are drawing explicit parallels between their struggle for a fair contract and the fight against ICE, recognizing that an injury to one is an injury to all.

Bovino’s departure marks an important retreat of a Trump administration that is increasingly feeling the pressure of a working class that refuses to take his attacks anymore and is beginning to fight back. But the fight is not yet over. Trump’s retreat shows that when we organize to stop business as usual, we have the power to force the hand of even the most reactionary administration. Bovino has to be the first: we have to continue the fight until every federal immigration agent is expelled from the state.

There can be no business as usual while killer agents continue to roam our streets, or ICE continues to terrorize our immigrant neighbors and coworkers. Let’s demonstrate, picket, strike — let’s shut it all down until ICE is off our streets, the deportations end, and we secure a future where the dignity of every neighbor and coworker is protected and we are all truly free.

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