Tomorrow, rank-and-file workers, neighbors, teachers, students, activists, immigrants, and communities are mobilizing to continue the struggle to defend their immigrant neighbors and their cities against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Social movements, unions, community organizations, activists, and celebrities are calling for a national “shutdown” against ICE. This follows the historic economic shutdown on January 23, where over 50,000 people took to the streets in Minneapolis, the epicenter of the fight against ICE, in freezing weather to make their voices heard. Thousands more did the same across the country.

Over the past several days, there’s been an ongoing bipartisan effort to de-escalate the situation in Minneapolis. The administration was forced to remove Greg Bovino as head of “Operation Metro Surge,” and has called in White House “border czar” Tom Homan to take over ICE operations in Minneapolis. Despite praise from Democrats and Republicans alike, Homan has a history of advancing some of the greatest escalations in national anti-immigrant policies. But the sheer fact that Trump had to swap out Bovino for Homan is the result of the massive resistance to ICE in Minneapolis and the strength of the community.

But it is still not enough.

Democrats now rush to praise the movement against ICE, and some, like Senator Ed Markey, are going so far as to call for the agency’s abolition. But their words ring hollow when they are complicit in this escalation against immigrants and the American people. These same politicians defend the budgets, laws, and police coordination that make raids and deportations possible in the first place. They protect ICE — we protect our communities!

Union officials issue statements of solidarity while keeping their members at work. Several of the unions that helped make the January 23 shutdown possible have remained silent about the new day of action this Friday, treating this massive mobilization like a one-off protest rather than the beginning of a broader fight. Support on paper is not support in practice; without strikes, without work stoppages, without organized refusal to collaborate with deportations, ICE keeps operating as usual.

Meanwhile, the courts have done their part to legitimize the crackdown. Through injunctions and rulings, they have cleared the legal terrain for ICE’s operations, reaffirming once again that the judicial system exists to stabilize the existing order, not to defend those targeted by it.

We cannot trust the Democrats, and we cannot trust the courts. They will not save us. Enough of people being beaten, arrested, and killed while those in power do nothing but promise investigations after the fact.

Union leaders must now take up the fight against ICE in Minneapolis, the Midwest, and all over the country. Support that does not mobilize workers’ power is not neutrality; it is a way of leaving immigrant communities to face repression alone.

For several years, the multiracial working class in the United States has been organizing strikes and fighting to unionize their workplaces. Hundreds of thousands of workers all over the country have already shown they are willing to fight after the national day of action last week.

And in Minneapolis, workers and immigrant communities have already taken important steps to sustain this fight beyond a single day of protest. In recent days, students have walked out of classes, neighbors have organized to defend their blocks, and workers have begun discussing how to bring the fight into their workplaces. But their fight must become the fight of the entire labor movement. They are showing the way forward, but they cannot fight alone.

Unions and social movements in the Twin Cities must put real resources — money, meeting halls, and political energy to work to join the existing committees against ICE. They must urgently help build new ones in neighborhoods throughout the city: committees rooted in workplaces and communities, capable of mobilizing quickly and acting collectively to block raids and defend families. No raids and repression without an organized response!

These committees can concentrate on what has already emerged in the streets: the determination to expel ICE from Minneapolis and the understanding that defending immigrants means defending the working class as a whole. By organizing anti-ICE committees, coordinating rapid responses to raids, and preparing continued days of action, they can transform protest into sustained struggle.

The post ICE Out of Minneapolis: A Battle the Whole Labor Movement Must Take Up! appeared first on Left Voice.

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