Showdown in Minnesota

The murderous assault by the United States and Israel on Iran, discussed elsewhere in this issue by Anne Alexander, was prefaced by Donald Trump’s military-style occupation of the state of Minnesota. However, his war within the US borders has been met with an escalation in resistance, including, crucially, the mass involvement of organised workers.

At the time of writing, Trump had removed most of the 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents that flooded into Minnesota in December 2025. It is a sign that even the most despotic leaders can overreach. They can find their plans run up against mass opposition, heightening their own contradictions. Trump now finds himself in a mess. He sought re-election by channelling the anger of millions of mostly white Americans towards the political establishment.1 He promised to end “forever wars”, bringing forth a new era of soaring incomes and millions of new jobs. Yet, even before the war in Iran, his approval rating was plummeting. His tariff plans were blocked by a Supreme Court ruling, and his links to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein were fracturing his base of support. With the Iran war starting to push up petrol prices and seeing its first US casualties, more of Trump’s former supporters are likely to turn against him. Polling in mid-March showed that more Americans oppose the war in Iran than back it—including Republican voters—and that they are overwhelmingly opposed to sending in ground troops.2

However, even in his wounded state, Trump can lash out with more violence, turning to racism to try to shore up his support. Local organisers of the resistance in Minnesota are reluctant to declare a victory. They continue to report ICE activity as hundreds of officers remain in the state.3 The immigration crackdown has also spread to other parts of the US, with the Trump administration acquiring disused warehouses to turn into prisons for migrants.4

“It’s like a warzone here”

The murder of Renee Good on 7 January 2026 and Alex Pretti 17 days later, both of whom were involved in monitoring and responding to ICE activity, were not isolated incidents. Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was shot in the leg by ICE agents. Aliya Rahman, a disabled woman, was forcibly dragged from her car on the way to a doctor’s appointment. Five-year-old Liam Ramos was abducted and taken to Texas where he was held for ten days before being released. ICE targeted mosques, nurseries, construction sites and Home Depot stores, amid widespread reports of racial profiling.5

The spectacular violence involved recalls the 1930s campaign led by Republican Bureau of Immigration chief William N Doak. As author
Adam Goodman explains, back then, agents searched “homes, churches, picket lines, public spaces, bars, dance halls and pool halls, sometimes
without a warrant”.6 Likewise, today’s ICE agents are highly visible. They are equipped with tear gas, flash bang grenades and rubber bullets. The raids and the traumatic conditions in the deportation camps are designed to create a sense of fear, driving people to “self-deport”. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), for which ICE is the major enforcement agency, makes clear: “If you’re illegally present in the US, you can leave at any time. You don’t have to wait for ICE officials to find, arrest, detain and remove you”.7

ICE has sometimes been described as fascist, not just by the radical left but also by some more moderate figures. For example, Democratic representative Dan Goldman describes ICE’s tactics as “unamerican and outright fascist”.8 What does this mean, beyond a legitimate expression of hatred and outrage? Contributors to this journal have followed the Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky in defining fascism as a counter-revolutionary mass movement, centred on the middle classes, seeking the “permanent annihilation of all working-class organisation”.9 It disguises itself as a revolutionary movement directed against big business, while, in reality, acting in the interests of the elites by destroying anyone who might threaten capitalist rule.10 In January 2021, when Trump supporters stormed Washington’s Capitol building, historian Robert Paxton argued that the “fascism” label was indeed necessary. In 2024, he stated again: “It’s bubbling up from below in very worrisome ways, and that’s very much like the original fascisms. It’s the real thing”.11 For Paxton, perhaps the world’s leading authority on the history of fascism, such movements are not defined by a coherent political ideology. He, similarly to Trotsky, defines fascism as a mass movement whose followers are brought together by narratives of national decline and feelings of humiliation and victimhood.12

There were certainly elements of a fascist street movement present at the Capitol, but these have been a marginal force in Minnesota. However, as Alex Callinicos argues, one potential danger is that more fascists join ICE—acquiring free reign to terrorise migrants, black Americans and the left. Callinicos adds that “state apparatuses can partly substitute for the street movement”.13 He follows Michael Macher in pointing out that ICE is not just a passive recipient of anti-migrant policies filtering downwards from the state. Militant actors within ICE have sought to influence policy and shape the DHS in their image, including by gaining influence within the ICE labour unions. For example, in 2010, the leaders of the union representing agents, the National ICE Council, held a vote of no confidence in the director of the agency. They complained that ICE was too soft on migrants as well as giving agents insufficient powers to enforce the law. In turn, Macher argues, Trump has seen these labour unions as a potential power base within ICE—in other words, as a potential incubator for a mass movement.14

With Trump’s 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the president funnelled $170 billion (£127 billion) into immigration enforcement and border security through to 2029 and rapidly expanded recruitment to ICE and DHS. The lower age limit for ICE was reduced from 21 to 18, and the training offered was shortened from 22 weeks to just under 7 weeks.15 The lack of a vetting process was exposed by journalist Laura Jedeed, who was offered a job with ICE after a six-minute interview. According to Jedeed:

Many of ICE’s critics worry that the agency is hoovering up pro-Trump thugs—Jan[uary] 6 insurrectionists, white nationalists, etc—for a domestic security force loyal to the president. The truth…is perhaps even scarier: ICE’s recruitment push is so sloppy that the administration effectively has no idea who’s joining the agency’s ranks.16

The prospect of young, hastily-trained agents being sent into cities to detain migrants according to a quota is alarming enough. However, this is not to argue, as some have suggested, that ICE merely needs to be better trained. Although it is difficult to assess the degree of penetration of the agency by the far right, there are numerous examples of efforts by ICE to attract them to join. In its recruitment adverts, ICE uses references to music, books, imagery and video games that would be familiar to white supremacists. The Proud Boys, a far-right militia, responded to one other such dog whistle post with an image of a literal dog whistle and the words “message received”.17

Perhaps more common than comparisons with European fascism are understandings of the ICE occupation in terms of colonial strategies of counter-insurgency. Somali Americans have suggested similarities with their experiences in Somalia, where US forces have been engaged in a “war on terror” against the Islamist Shabaab (“The Youth”) organisation. Imam Yusuf Abdulle told journalists: “We thought we had left all that behind, but now this moment in America is reminding us again of the Somali civil war”.18 Haitian New York residents have called ICE “the immigration version of Tonton Macoutes”, a reference to the paramilitary that supported dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s rule (1957-1971).19 Some backers of ICE have also treated it as a counter-insurgency. Another fascist and former Trump ally, Steve Bannon, called for ICE to carry out a “second Fallujah” against a “Marxist-jihadist” enemy in Minnesota.20 This references the assault in 2004 by thousands of US marines on the Iraqi city of Fallujah to suppress armed resistance to the US occupation.

“No justice, no peace”

Forcing back ICE in Minnesota required extraordinary levels of mobilisation. Kelly Petersen, one of the founders of the Community Aid Network, told the Guardian: “We’ve always had to do it ourselves. We have whistles, and we have organising. That’s all we have against people with huge trucks and guns”.21 People used “noise protests” outside hotels suspected of providing accommodation for ICE agents. Activists used 3D printers to produce whistles to alert others of raids and distribute them on a mass scale. They organised mutual aid to support people who were unable to leave their homes. Teachers, often organised by their unions, gathered at the school gates to try to protect children and their parents on the way to and from school.22 Neighbourhood roadblocks became a significant feature of the disruption. People set up barricades on street corners, where they monitored vehicles attempting to pass through.23 One account suggests that 65,000 people in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul had received legal observer training via grassroots organisation Unidos MN by late January 2026. Another suggests that 4 percent of the population of Minnesota were involved in patrolling and monitoring ICE in some way using the Signal online messenger service.24

Journalist Robert Worth described events in Minnesota as a “layered civic uprising”, where a “vanguard of protesters” was able to draw in a much wider assemblage of people, many of whom were not previously politically active. Social movements on this scale are sometimes celebrated as “leaderless” or “spontaneous”—language Worth adopts. However, the struggle against ICE was built from a dense network of voluntary organisations that were active for years or even decades. For example, mosques, community centres and cafés became organising hubs for Somali-led rapid response networks. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which has 100,000 members across the US, mobilised members for legal observer training and mutual aid. Native Americans, organised by the Indigenous Protector Movement and others, revived street patrols that had been used to counter police brutality more than 50 years ago.25 This organising effort followed the uprising in the Twin Cities after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 and also drew on networks of mutual aid set up during the Covid-19 pandemic.26

Crucially, trade unions were central to the counter-offensive. On Friday, 16 January 2026, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) announced its backing for a day of action against ICE—with no work, no school and no shopping—on the following Friday. Union members were themselves being stopped and detained by ICE. Greg Nammacher, president of the local branch of the Service Employees International Union union, said that 20 union members had been abducted. One of those was a high-rise window cleaner who had organised in the union for a health and safety programme in this extremely dangerous industry. Despite having lived in the country for 30 years, he was detained without explanation and sent to Mexico before his family could talk to a lawyer.27

In the event, the shutdown on 23 January was a massive show of strength. As labour studies expert Eric Blanc writes, the day gave “a glimpse of the power of everyday people to make the system tremble”.28 Around 100,000 people marched in downtown Minneapolis, despite brutally cold weather.29 On the day, approximately 1,000 businesses and about one million people in Minnesota took part in some form of action.30 The University of Minnesota ran a reduced operation, museums and cultural institutions were shuttered, and workers walked out of six branches of Starbucks. This may have involved calling in sick, working from home or arranging with an employer to take the day off rather than confronting bosses by taking strike action.31 Even so, the numbers were extraordinary. As organisers explained, the existing high level of neighbourhood-based activity meant information about 23 January and encouragement to join could be quickly shared.32 The day showed the potential for a radicalising dynamic to emerge: an anti-racist movement gave confidence to workers to walk out and this in turn strengthened and helped build the street movement.

The AFL-CIO was careful not to use the words “general strike”. However, the term must surely have been in the minds of some in Minnesota. US union leaders such as Shawn Fain of the United Auto Workers or Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson had already talked about preparing for a general strike against Trump to take place on 1 May 2028, to give workers time to align the expiration dates of their contracts.33 However, people being hauled out of their cars and homes by ICE agents or those facing a crisis of relentless poverty will not want to wait another two years for action (indeed, the calls for a 2028 strike emerged as early as 2023). In Minnesota, although union leaders were right to back the movement against ICE, the endorsement of the AFL-CIO for the 23 January shutdown came late in the day. Some large unions, such as the huge Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, have played a limited role.

Minneapolis union organiser Ramy Khalil argues that labour leaders have been resisting taking opportunities to build on the momentum of the movement. Pretti’s murder, the day after the first day of action, “would have been the moment to call another day without work and school and shopping. Tragically, the labour leaders missed that opportunity, including the more progressive labour leaders”.34 Union leaders everywhere, even progressive ones, can act as a conservative layer within unions with aims distinct from those of their rank-and-file membership. In the case of Minnesota, unions used their social weight to offer legitimacy to street protests and provide material support, including as legal observers and in stewarding demonstrations, but they were reluctant to do anything openly to unleash the collective power of organised labour in a manner that would seriously hit capitalists’ profits.

Another response from the left to Trump’s attacks is to focus on backing Democratic politicians, seeking to get more of them into office. After the partial withdrawal of ICE from Minnesota, former Democrat president Barack Obama attempted to put himself at the front of the movement, complaining that ICE agents were not operating in a lawful or accountable way.35 Yet, whatever Obama says now, the US war on migrants continued under his presidency. Moreover, there was a rise in the number of detained people while Joe Biden was president.36 Minneapolis’s Democrat Mayor Jacob Frey memorably told ICE agents to “get the fuck out” of the city after the killing of Renee Good, but Democrats also demonstrated a willingness to collaborate with ICE during the “Metro Surge” campaign. Trump’s “border tsar” Tom Homan praised Frey, “despite their differences”, for using the police to remove protesters’ roadblocks that Homan claimed put ICE in danger.37 Even New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is to the left of Frey, committed to working with the police. The New York Police Department has already been deployed on his watch to arrest dozens of anti-ICE protesters occupying a Hilton Hotel lobby in January. Even socialist politicians such as Mamdani, elected amid celebrations on the left, can end up trying to manage the contradictions of the capitalist system once in office.

Forming a popular front type alliance with the Democratic party would be a disastrous approach for socialists in the US.38 It would force them to tone down their criticisms of the border regime to justify their alliance and tie them to a political strategy that is failing even in electoral terms. On a national level, the Democratic Party has seen its vote decline by millions since 2020. Khalil expresses a sentiment held by many: “I just think that the Democrats are just so tied to the corporations and billionaires that fund their campaigns, that they don’t really do the effort to make our country affordable… That’s how we got stuck with Trump in the first place”.39 However, as the November 2026 mid-term elections approach, there may be more pressure to get behind the Democrats as a least bad alternative to Trump.

Among local organisers in Minnesota, there have been attempts to regain the initiative and mobilise towards some specific goals. In February, a workers’ assembly with around 400 attendees, including union members, tenant organisations and other grassroots organisations, agreed to endorse another shutdown on 1 May.40 There have also been some efforts to generalise the lessons of the movement geographically, for example in the week of action at the end of February in the Twin Cities, aiming to share the lessons of the fight against ICE more widely.

For readers in Britain, we can look at the US with horror at the prospects of what a Reform UK government might look like, while also drawing inspiration from what the people of Minnesota have been able to achieve. Nigel Farage’s party has acknowledged that it would need to create its own ICE, UK Deportation Command, to achieve its goal of deporting up to 288,000 people annually. Reform UK would also scrap the indefinite leave to remain status.41 Like the Democrats in the US, the Labour Party here is tainted by its own racist policies in office, involving much more systematic attempts to return refugees and asylum seekers, including unaccompanied children, to their country of origin. Anti-racist demonstrations are planned in both the US and Britain on 28 March 2026, which are set to be spectacular displays of unity against racism. The challenge will be to use the confidence this gives those who mobilise to build lasting anti-racist and anti-fascist organisations—such as Stand Up to Racism—with reach in workplaces and ready to engage in the kind of mass activity that beat ICE back.

Camilla Royle is a Socialist Worker journalist and author of A Rebel’s Guide to Engels (Bookmarks, 2020).

Notes