‘We will get ICE out of Minnesota’: Community, unions mobilize for Jan. 23

Imagine federal agents are besieging your neighborhood. Gas canisters and explosives are popping off all around. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have just shot someone nearby. 

You pile your children, including your six-month-old baby, into the family car to get them out of harm’s way.

“Officers threw flash bangs and tear gas in my car. I got six kids in the car,” Shawn Jackson told TV station KMSP. “My 6-month-old can’t even breathe.”

“The explosions were strong enough to trigger the car’s airbags,” Raw Story reported.

“They were innocent bystanders driving through what should have been a peaceful protest when things took a turn,” Destiny Jackson, the children’s mother, explained. ICE agents “began to start throwing tear gas bombs everywhere.”

“One of the bombs rolled under our truck, and within seconds our truck lifted up off the ground, and the airbags deployed, the car doors locked themselves, and the car began to fill with the powerful tear gas. We fought hard to get the doors open and get all of the kids out. Bystanders had to help.”

The baby stopped breathing, requiring emergency CPR on the scene. All six children were hospitalized.

Now imagine you and your wife just dropped off your child at school. You get a notification that ICE agents are threatening neighbors nearby. You drive to the location to observe and document the abuses.

An ICE agent threatens you. You and your wife return to your vehicle and attempt to move away from the scene. The federal cop pulls a gun and shoots your wife in the face four times, killing her.

“We had whistles,” said Becca Good, the widow of Renee Nicole Good. “They had guns.”

Imagine you are a disabled person on your way to a checkup at the Traumatic Brain Injury Center. ICE agents stop your car. You explain your situation and ask to be flagged through. Instead, the masked, gun-toting men pull you violently out of your vehicle. 

“In the video, one masked agent smashes [Aliya] Rahman’s passenger side window while others cut her seatbelt and drag her out of the car through the driver’s side door. Numerous guards then carried her by her arms and legs toward an ICE vehicle,” reported the CBC.

“While in custody, Rahman said she repeatedly asked for a doctor, but was instead taken to the detention center.”

“I thought I was going to die,” said Rahman. She was put in detention, where she lost consciousness. Eventually, she was hospitalized, and credits the emergency staff with saving her life.

It’s January 2026. Welcome to Minneapolis.

Community fights back

The horrors are real. For many workers across the U.S., especially white people, the plentiful videos and testimonies are shocking. To Black and Brown people, the scenes seem all too familiar. 

All of the people mentioned above were U.S. citizens. None were doing anything illegal. 

The scale of the repression unleashed on the Upper Midwestern city by the Trump regime and its ICE, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is genuinely shocking. The city has been flooded with thousands of federal agents, far outnumbering the local police force.

Agents have begun going door-to-door to terrorize residents, under the command of CPB head Gregory Bovino. Schools began offering remote classes after high school students were attacked by Border Patrol agents. 

Members of the Oglala Sioux tribe have been detained in violation of treaties. It’s believed that the U.S. government is holding them hostage to force the Indigenous nation to make an agreement with ICE.

The pretext for the violence? A story promoted by a MAGA YouTube “influencer” about a supposed scandal involving state funding of child daycares in the Somali community.

Last year, “Congress gave ICE $75 billion over four years, approximately $18.7 billion each year. Added to the $10 billion Congress already appropriated ICE for fiscal year 2025 in March, ICE now has $28.7 billion at its disposal this year. That $28.7 billion figure is nearly triple ICE’s entire budget for FY24,” reported Brennan Center for Justice.

That money has been used to recruit thousands of far-right bigots – including members of the Patriot Front and Proud Boys, participants in the January 6, 2021, coup attempt, and former police, Special Forces and prison guards. The government’s recruitment campaign is built on openly fascist imagery and slogans. There is no effort to vet the recruits. 

The results, seen on the streets of Minneapolis, are exactly as intended.

On Jan. 15 – the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in U.S. troops to crush protests in Minneapolis. Readers may remember that Trump made similar threats when the country erupted in protests following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.

But there are other viral videos too. They show dozens, hundreds, and thousands of Minnesotans responding to every ICE attack on Somalian, Hmong, and Mexican migrants and other people of color – often chasing off the armed bigots, sometimes freeing targeted people, being wounded and threatened but refusing to back down. Students have walked out of classes from Minneapolis and neighboring St. Paul to Duluth and Madison, Wisconsin.

Videos show working people and youth adopting creative tactics, like pouring water around ICE headquarters in the freezing Minnesota cold to slow down and trip up the fascist troops.

While the federal government uses its familiar tactic of claiming “outside agitators” are responsible for protests, the real outsiders – ICE and other federal goons – have shown themselves poorly equipped to deal with the Minnesota winter, slipping and sliding on black ice patches as they attempt to terrorize legal observers.

Across the city, people armed with whistles, phone cameras and gas masks are ready to respond to ICE raids at a moment’s notice. Community organizations and churches deliver meals to immigrant families so they don’t have to leave their homes. 

On Jan. 10, three days after the cold-blooded murder of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, 100,000 people answered a call to protest by the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) to demand “ICE Out of Minnesota, Real Sanctuary Now, and Justice for Renee Good.” 

The march united migrant communities, unions, the LGBTQIA+ community, Indigenous nations, students, anti-war organizations, and people of all nationalities against government terrorism.

Jan. 23 ‘Day of Truth and Freedom’

Struggle-La Lucha spoke to Mira Altobell-Resendez of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC). “We’re unable to go about business as usual with these racist attacks taking place everywhere, all day, every day,” they explained. 

“We will keep up the fight for immigrant rights no matter what the Trump regime throws at us because we are powerful when we stand united. We will get ICE out of Minnesota.”

MIRAC, along with local unions, churches and community-based organizations, has called for an ICE Out of Minnesota day of action on Friday, Jan. 23: “Day of Truth and Freedom: No Work, No School, No Shopping.” A mass march is planned in downtown Minneapolis at 2:00 p.m.

The demands for the day of action are:

• ICE must leave Minnesota now. 
• The agent who killed Renee Good must be held legally accountable. 
• No additional federal funding for ICE in the upcoming Congressional budget; ICE must be investigated for human and constitutional violations.
• Minnesotan and national companies must cease economic relations with ICE and refuse ICE entry or using their property for staging grounds. 

“MIRAC sees the Jan 23 call to action as a necessary escalation in resisting the violent federal occupation by ICE,” Altobell-Resendez told SLL.

On Jan. 16, local and state labor federations and councils officially endorsed the call, opening up the possibility for the Day of Truth and Freedom to take on the character of a general strike.

Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation President Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou said: “Working people, our schools and our communities are under attack. Union members are being detained commuting to and from work, tearing apart families. Parents are being forced to stay home, students held out of school, fearing for their lives, all while the employer class remains silent. 

“Our labor federations are encouraging everyone to participate on Jan. 23. It’s time for every single Minnesotan who loves this state and the notion of truth and freedom to raise their voices and deepen their solidarity for our neighbors and coworkers living under this federal occupation.”