Twin Cities residents are entering another month of militant protests against ongoing ICE terror in their communities. Protesters continue to fill the streets surrounding the Whipple Federal Building each day. Students at the University of Minnesota chained themselves to a building on campus to demand the University president declare the college a sanctuary campus. School teachers continue to organize safe transit to and from school for their immigrant students. Community-organized rapid response teams continue to follow federal agents on their kidnapping sprees, continuously blowing whistles to warn surrounding immigrants of the presence of ICE. Grassroots networks of Minnesotans buy and deliver groceries to families afraid to leave their homes. These same networks collect donations to help these families cover rent when they are unable to report to work for fear of deportation.
In the midst of this, the state and city governments are intensifying their repressive measures against the movement. One Twin Cities activist, who has been deeply involved in the organization of rapid response groups, told us that the streets have taken on a new character in recent days: “I am still going on patrols to warn neighbors about ICE, but it has gotten much more nerve-wracking recently. After all the shit going down with the cops, everyone is on edge. We’re not stopping, but we don’t fucking trust the whole situation.” She also shared that, while she has gone to the Whipple Federal Building to protest ICE many times on her own, she will no longer go without a buddy for fear of assault or arrest.
In the last week, over fifty protestors have been arrested in Minneapolis — forty-two at the Whipple Federal Building and another dozen outside the Graduate Hotel on the University of Minnesota campus. Throughout these brutal arrests, ICE has continued their kidnapping rampage, detaining community members of all ages and backgrounds, often violently. Minnesota Democrats have done nothing to stop these kidnappings, they have instead focused all of their energy on terrorizing protestors.
Until recently, Minnesota Governor and former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz had been hesitant to unleash the police on protestors. The relationship between the police and the Twin Cities community has remained extremely tenuous since the 2020 murder of George Floyd and subsequent uprisings. Walz can hardly afford to issue another blow to the public image of the MPD, and has subsequently tried to use this moment to restore community faith in the police as an institution. For a period, many protestors mistakenly thought that, for once, the cops would be on their side. That moment has now decidedly passed.
Saturday night, protestors gathered outside the Whipple Federal Building, where ICE agents report for duty each day and where they take the Minnesotans they have kidnapped. The presence of protestors outside of Whipple has been near-constant for over a month, but Saturday marked the first major arrest campaign. After ordering protestors to disperse, the police made forty-two arrests. Just two days earlier, police arrested twelve protestors outside the Graduate Hotel at the University of Minnesota, which houses ICE agents. On January 29th, at another demonstration at the Graduate Hotel, police arrested nearly seventy protestors, most of whom were University of Minnesota students.
This uptick of repression comes after concessions from the Trump administration won by the anti-ICE movement. On January 26th, following enormous and ongoing protests — most notably the economic blackout on January 23, which drew more than 50,000 people to the streets — the Trump administration was forced to remove Gregory Bovino from his role as ICE’s “commander-at-large.” Bovino left Minneapolis that same day. After another enormous economic blackout, where 30,000 took to the streets once more, “border czar” Tom Homan announced that 700 federal troops would be withdrawn from Minnesota. While ICE’s presence remains strong in the state, and the battle against their reign of terror is far from over, these shifts mark notable concessions won by the movement.
Minnesota Democrats are now attempting to walk a delicate tightrope. On one hand, they must appear to be against the Trump administration at every turn, as their claim that they are saving the United States from the Far Right is practically the only platform Democrats run on each election year. On the other hand, they cannot sincerely side with the movement in the streets or validate the calls to abolish ICE. In order to achieve both goals — appearing anti-Trump while letting ICE carry on and containing class struggle — Democrats are trying to co-opt the victories of the movement as their own while also trying to contain it.
When Bovino was removed from Minnesota, Tim Walz declared that “progress was made,” explaining that his phone call to the president had been the key reason for the exit of Bovino. After 700 federal troops were removed from Minnesota, Tim Walz, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, all Democrats, agreed that this was a “step in the right direction” and that they would “continue” urging the Trump administration to remove more troops. This attempt to move the struggle out of the streets and place people’s faith in the courts — despite the fact that the courts have ruled largely in favor of ICE’s rampage — coupled with the marked increase in arrests of protestors, make up the Democratic approach to this period in the anti-ICE movement.
What must be stated clearly at this moment is that the removal of Bovino and the withdrawal of 700 federal agents did not result from Democrats reaching across the aisle. These were victories won from below, in the streets, in our schools, and in our workplaces. Both January 23 and January 30 were historic days of worker action, wherein working-class people in Minneapolis and beyond committed to a day of “no work, no school, and no shopping,” paralyzing the local economy and taking to the streets in enormous numbers. Alongside these actions came the organic development of neighborhood-based ICE watch groups and grocery delivery networks, which serve to warn immigrant neighbors of ICE presence and ensure their needs are met if they are unable to leave their homes. The Democratic Party did not build these networks, and the Democrats of Minnesota did not call these historic actions—the workers of Minnesota did. This movement against ICE was built from below, and every one of its victories is a victory of the working class.
Minnesota Democrats are ramping up arrests in order to get people off the streets. They are attempting to claim the victories of the working class as their own, and will attempt to rewrite this moment as one where they took a stand and sided with the people. We must not let this happen, but must stand firmly against the repression of the anti-ICE movement at the hands of Democrats, while continuing our fight against the anti-immigrant attacks of the Far Right.
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