Thousands of Minnesotans Are Taking Part in General Strike Against ICE

On Friday, January 23, thousands of demonstrators, dozens of nonprofits and unions, and hundreds of businesses will take part in a general strike in Minnesota, demanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents leave the state after the agency has wreaked havoc on the Twin Cities.

Organizers of the “ICE Out of Minnesota” strike are encouraging residents to stay home from work and/or school. They are also encouraging participants to refrain from engaging in economic activities, such as shopping.

“It is time to suspend the normal order of business to demand immediate cessation of ICE actions in MN, accountability for federal agents who have caused loss of life and abuse to Minnesota residents and call for Congress to immediately intervene,” the website ICEOutNowMN.com states.

The strikers have four demands:

• For ICE and other immigration agencies to leave Minnesota immediately;
• For legal accountability for the officer who shot and killed Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good;
• For no more federal funding for ICE, and for an investigation into the agency’s “human and Constitutional violations of Americans and our neighbors;”
• And for Minnesota and nationally based companies in the state to “become 4th Amendment businesses,” meaning they will “cease economic relations with ICE and refuse ICE entry or using their property for staging grounds.”

Organizers are also planning a massive march in downtown Minneapolis at 2 pm local time. A rally at the Target Center is planned for 3 pm.

Those events will take place as wind chill temperatures in the Twin Cities will reach close to -20 degrees Fahrenheit. Organizers are urging protesters to be mindful of the weather.

“We are a northern state, and we are built for the cold, and we are going to show up, but folks are going to need to pay attention to not just the march, but what people are doing, the individual stories of solidarity that people are going to be doing,” said Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou, president of the Minnesota Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, speaking to The Guardian about the temperatures.

“We will walk in below-zero degrees in one of the coldest days in Minnesota. … We’re asking people to march,” said Emilia González Avalos with UNIDOS Minnesota. “We’re asking people to boycott today. We’re asking people to get trained as legal observers.”

Despite harsh weather conditions, organizers say the general strike is necessary in the face of ICE agents terrorizing immigrant communities and brutalizing residents of the state.

“We’re not powerful people. We’re not rich. We don’t have access to people in power, but what we do have is our labor power,” Kieran Knutson, president of Communication Workers of America Local 7250, told Zeteo. “This is an attempt to try and utilize the power that we do have to let Trump and the feds know that there’s widespread antagonism to his racist campaign of terror, and to let the CEOs and corporations in Minnesota know that if they continue to be silent or to support this…they’re going to have to pay a cost.”

There are several examples of ICE agents violating people’s rights in Minnesota, including, but not limited to:

• ICE officers breaking into the home of a Hmong American man, who is a U.S. citizen, without presenting a warrant, and forcing him at gunpoint to go out into the cold weather in nothing but his underwear, after which he was detained for several hours;
• Immigration agents detaining a 5-year-old boy and his father, using the boy as “bait” to apprehend his family members, after the boy came home from pre-school;
• ICE teargassing and flashbombing a family of eight in their car as they drove home from a basketball practice, resulting in their 6-month-old baby temporarily losing consciousness and requiring CPR to start breathing again;
• And an ICE agent shooting and killing Renee Nicole Good in a Minneapolis neighborhood as she attempted to move her car out of the way.

Close to 700 businesses in the state have agreed to close their doors for the day in solidarity with the strike. Many businesses that are remaining open have pledged to donate the day’s profits to immigrant rights groups, or to serve as a place where organizers can convene for other actions.

Meanwhile, similar events are taking place across the country in a show of unity against the Trump administration’s draconian immigration policies. (A searchable list of those events is available here.)

Gemima Cadet, a community mental health professional and immigrant rights activist based in Florida, applauded Minnesotans for taking part in the strike.

“I am incredibly proud of the work our fellow humans are doing in Minnesota, especially those keeping their neighbors safe, keeping the peace at their protests, and making their voices heard right through their pockets,” Cadet told Truthout.

“It’s horrifying to see how children, families, and veterans are being treated the way they are being treated by ICE,” Cadet, herself an immigrant from Haiti, went on. The strike serves as a reminder that “even when the system tries to scare us into silence, there are good people willing to say our lives, our labor, and our dignity are worth defending,” she said.

The public displays of violence by federal immigration agents in Minnesota and elsewhere are also generating international attention. On Friday, United Nations Human Rights Chief Volker Türk condemned the Trump administration’s human rights abuses across the U.S.

“Individuals are being surveilled and detained, sometimes violently, including at hospitals, churches, mosques, courthouses, markets, schools, and even within their own homes, often solely on mere suspicion of being undocumented migrants,” Türk said in a statement. “Children are missing school and pediatric appointments for fear of never seeing their parents again. Those who dare to speak up or protest peacefully against heavy-handed immigration raids are vilified and threatened by officials, and on occasion subjected to arbitrary violence themselves.”

“I call on leaders at all levels in the U.S. to halt the use of scapegoating tactics that seek to distract and divide, and which increase the exposure of migrants and refugees to xenophobic hostility and abuse. … I call on the Administration to end practices that are tearing apart families,” Türk continued, adding, “the U.S. has the obligation to comply with international human rights law and international refugee law.”