Minneapolis has become the latest flashpoint in the fight against Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents murdered Renee Good, a 37-year-old American citizen.
Good was murdered while acting as a legal observer during ICE’s Operation Metro Surge, the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out. Fully 2000 ICE and Border Patrol agents were deployed to Minnesota the day before Good’s murder, with the number now increased to 3000.
“It feels like an invasion”, one resident told NBC news. Masked agents cruise local streets in unmarked cars and stop anyone racially profiled as a potential migrant. Videos have shown officers smashing car windows, pulling a woman from her car and shooting chemical spray right into people’s faces.
ICE claims to have arrested at least 2500 migrants since this brutal operation began. Just one week after Renee Good was murdered, agents shot a Venezuelan man in the leg in front of his family.
On the same day, a Nicaraguan man who had been arrested and taken to a detention camp in Texas to await deportation was found dead.
The massive operation follows a month of escalating racist attacks on Minnesota’s Somali community. In early December, Trump unleashed a series of racist tirades against Somalis, calling them “garbage” and saying “I don’t want them in our country”.
Allegations of money defrauded from government programs in Minnesota by some Somali individuals were massively amplified by the mainstream media and establishment figures like Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance.
But ICE’s brutality in Minneapolis is not limited to immigrants, as the shooting of Renee Good made clear.
ICE agents have deployed flashbang grenades and tear gas on the streets to back up their raids. In one case a tear gas canister was deployed under a car containing six children—three of them, including a six-month old, had to be taken to hospital for treatment.
Mass resistance
Trump wants to make an example of Minneapolis and intimidate the city into submission. But, as one protester, Leo, told Solidarity, people in Minneapolis are doing “everything they can to resist the domestic occupation by one of most heavily funded militias in the world.”
Thousands joined a vigil in Minneapolis on the day that Renee Good was shot, with thousands more joining a march on the weekend that followed—one of at least 1000 protests that took place across the country.
There have been daily protests in freezing temperatures outside the Whipple Building which federal agents have used as their headquarters.
Noise protests have taken place outside hotels housing agents, including a protest outside the Graduate Hotel on campus at the University of Minnesota which involved many students. Walkouts have also taken place at a number of high schools across Minneapolis.
Activists are organising to follow and monitor ICE agents as they attempt to carry out arrests.
When Nazi Jake Lang attempted to organise an anti-Muslim and pro-ICE march through a predominantly immigrant neighbourhood he was only able to draw ten supporters, who were heavily outnumbered and driven out by counter-protesters.
The threat is far from over. Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops to crush the protests and the Pentagon has ordered 1500 soldiers to prepare for a potential deployment.
The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into two Democratic Party leaders, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, for refusing to go along with Trump’s crackdown.
But the resistance in Minneapolis so far shows that every attempt at repression can be beaten back. If the protests continue to escalate then they could become a turning point in the fight against Trump.
A general strike in Minnesota has been called for 23 January by a coalition of local union groups, faith leaders, and community members. The Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, which represents 175 local unions and is affiliated to the AFL-CIO, America’s largest union federation, has endorsed the day of action.
At the press conference announcing it, Somali-American rideshare driver Abdikarim Khasim said, “We are facing a tsunami of hate from our own federal government… We’re going to shut it down on the 23rd. We’re going to overcome this.”
By Angus Dermody
