4 February 2026
Since December, thousands of goons from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have terrorized Minneapolis, Minnesota, as part of “Operation Metro Surge,” the largest immigration enforcement operation in US history. Launched by President Donald Trump ostensibly to target undocumented Somali immigrants, the racist operation has metastasized into a full-blown military-style occupation.
This has included roughly 2,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, reinforced by personnel from United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP), for a total federal force in Minneapolis of nearly 3,000. The militarized occupation has been accompanied by threats from Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow the deployment of active-duty troops without state consent.
At least 2,400 people have been arrested, including children abducted at schools, daycares and from their homes. Armed federal agents in plainclothes and masks have repeatedly used pepper spray, tear gas and physical force against residents, protesters, legal observers and journalists. Those scooped up by federal agents—largely black and brown people—are then whisked away to immigration detention facilities where neglect, abuse, overcrowding and human-rights concerns are routine. DHS agents have flagrantly denied the constitutional rights of citizens and other residents, including protection against unlawful search and seizure, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of speech.
The brutal repression has also claimed the lives of Minnesotans Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse at the Minneapolis Veteran Affairs Medical Center, was killed after coming to the aid of a legal observer accosted by CBP agents. He was immediately pepper sprayed, set upon by a half-dozen federal agents, forced to the ground, disarmed of his legally carried gun and then shot multiple times while pinned down. Pretti’s unprovoked execution was possibly premeditated, as he had been beaten by federal agents a week-and-a-half earlier and refused to be intimidated into staying away. His murder came only weeks after the killing of Good, who was shot dead by ICE agents while trying to move her car from the middle of the road.
In truly Orwellian fashion, Trump administration officials labeled Good a “domestic terrorist” and launched an investigation of her grieving wife, Becca Good, for “assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers.” Renee Good’s murderer Jonathan Ross, who was heard calling her a “fucking bitch” moments after ending her life, has not been charged with any crime. In the immediate aftermath of the murder of Pretti, CBP head honcho and Nazi cosplayer Greg Bovino incredulously claimed: “The victims are the Border Patrol agents.… The suspect put himself in that situation.” After Noem vilely smeared Pretti as having “arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement,” his family issued a statement that read:
“We are heartbroken but also very angry.”
“The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump's murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed.”
—CBS News, 25 January 2026
The demonization of those protesting ICE/CBP as “troublemakers, agitators, and insurrectionists” and labeling the victims of state-sanctioned murder as “domestic terrorists” are clearly intended to soften the general public up for further repression, including the use of deadly force, and deflect from any accountability.
Last year, ICE initiated a recruitment drive as part of a major expansion of immigration enforcement. Cloaking itself in overtly patriotic imagery, it uses language and symbols that closely mirror white-nationalist memes and slogans, such as a DHS post proclaiming “America for Americans,” a xenophobic phrase once embraced by the Ku Klux Klan.
This messaging is backed by a massive expansion of resources; ICE plans to spend $100 million this year alone on targeted recruitment, including geo-fenced ads aimed at attendees of UFC fights and gun shows, as well as television spots directed at disgruntled police officers in sanctuary cities. The agency reports receiving roughly 220,000 applications and has hired 12,000 new officers—more than doubling its size—as it works towards Trump’s stated goal of deporting 1 million people annually. In total, ICE is due to receive approximately $30 billion by 2029, underscoring the scale and permanence of the enforcement buildup.
Meanwhile, US national security and policing agencies, including the DHS and the FBI, are quietly compiling secret and obscure databases to track Americans—especially protesters, activists and critics—using labels such as “domestic terrorist,” a vague and malleable term that is not actually a chargeable offense in the US. The shadowy surveillance apparatus that was developed under the George W. Bush administration, and maintained by every Democratic and Republican president since, supposedly to wage the “war on terror” overseas, has unsurprisingly been turned on US residents and citizens. It includes classified social media repositories such as “Slipstream” that are used to connect people in protests and public settings, even linking friends and families with no alleged wrongdoing. An anonymous senior intelligence official familiar with the watchlists has warned: “… this social media post, that video taken of someone videoing ICE, the mere attendance at a protest. eventually just becomes a list itself of criminality” (KlipNews, 28 January 2026). Anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis have had their faces and licence plates photographed by authorities, and one agent taunted a woman who had merely been filming him: “We have a nice little database, and now you're considered a domestic terrorist” (MSN, 23 January 2026).
As we predicted earlier last year during the suppression of protest against the Gaza genocide:
“American citizens, too, have had their freedom of expression and assembly suppressed, and the repression will only continue as the list of proscribed positions is expanded beyond opposition to genocide of Palestinians. Already Trump has suggested that boycotting products from Musk-owned companies is tantamount to ‘domestic terrorism.’ It is a small logical step from that to the notion that protesting Musk and Trump’s policies should itself be considered terrorism.”
—“The Empire Lashes Out,” 1917 No.49
The crackdown has exposed divisions within the US ruling class over the handling of the operation in Minneapolis. Leading mouthpieces in the corporate media—New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and New York Post—have publicly called for de-escalation, concerned that continued aggressive enforcement could backfire, inflaming social unrest rather than quelling it. The White House has been forced to shift tactics, with Trump conceding: “We're going to de-escalate a little bit” (Politico, 27 January 2026).
Border Patrol “commander at large” Bovino, who had been the public face of the enforcement push, has now been removed from Minneapolis amid widespread criticism. He has been replaced with longtime federal immigration official Tom Homan, a figure the White House believes can help “recalibrate tactics” and improve cooperation with state and local leaders. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey have had “productive” meetings with Homan, and all are apparently committed to “ongoing dialogue” about immigration enforcement. Trump has agreed to “scale back” the number of federal agents in Minnesota and to work with the state and local officials “in a more coordinated fashion on immigration enforcement.” The White House has also pledged support for supposed “impartial investigations” of the shootings of Good and Pretti.
Despite the gestures of compromise and operational changes, no federal agents or senior administration officials have yet been held accountable for these killings or for the countless other crimes they have committed. Nor have any of the issues in the broader debate over federal immigration enforcement been resolved. Instead, the tactical retreat is a bipartisan effort to salvage the regime’s public image after weeks of protests, polling blowback and a serious crisis that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans seemed able to contain.
A genuinely militant working-class response to the ICE occupation of Minnesota has nothing in common with the hollow outrage and carefully staged indignation of Governor Walz, Mayor Frey and their allies in the Democratic Party. Their rhetorical opposition to the White House, now combined with active collaboration, is driven primarily by fears that the federal crackdown threatens social stability, undermines their local authority and risks igniting a broader radical movement. Above all, they are anxious to channel popular anger into safe, legalistic avenues—investigations, lawsuits and electoral maneuvering—while preventing it from taking the form of organized working-class resistance.
Even as they denounce Trump’s tactics, the Democrats continue to support massive budgets for DHS and the national-security apparatus as a whole. Using the prospect of a government shutdown as leverage, Democratic leaders are threatening to withhold votes on a funding bill—including $64 billion for the DHS, $10 billion of which is earmarked for ICE—but only if limited “accountability” measures are not included. Their strategy remains narrowly aimed at managing a political fallout rather than mobilizing mass opposition to block immigration enforcement outright.
Marxists seek to break the working class from the Democratic Party and build a revolutionary socialist party capable of leading a decisive struggle against the state’s authoritarian, anti-democratic measures. We condemn the repression being carried out and demand the immediate release of all detainees, the dropping of all charges and the immediate and unconditional removal of all DHS agents from Minnesota. We demand full citizenship rights for all immigrants, regardless of their current legal status.
Revolutionaries support calls to jail the federal agents responsible for murder and brutalization, while combating illusions that the capitalist state and its armed bodies can be fundamentally reformed or restrained through appeals, oversight or elections.
Class-struggle militants must look for concrete opportunities to initiate effective labor self-defense, demonstrating in practice the social power of workers acting together for their shared class interests. Union-based defense units should be organized to patrol working-class neighborhoods and workplaces targeted by ICE. Ultimately, disbanding the police, the military, DHS and the entire machinery of repression is possible only through the revolutionary overthrow of American capitalism and the establishment of a workers’ state.
The mass protests of 23 January provided a tiny glimpse of what could be possible with a change of working-class leadership. Over 50,000 marched through downtown Minneapolis, demanding that ICE leave Minnesota. Solidarity actions with the city-wide shutdown also took place across the country, from Boston to New York to Chicago.
Workers and unions were instrumental in organizing the day of action. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), UNITE HERE, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and the Minnesota Nurses Association, along with the Minnesota AFL–CIO, a federation of over 1,000 unions representing more than 300,000 Minnesota workers, all endorsed the shutdown. Widespread worker participation and the closure of hundreds of businesses—driven both by political opposition and by the economic damage caused by ICE raids—demonstrated the breadth of hostility to the federal operation.
However, despite reflecting genuine mass anger, this “Day of Truth and Freedom” was not a coordinated general strike led by organized labor. Union involvement was almost exclusively limited to political support for an economic shutdown under the slogan “no work, no school, no shopping”—not union-sanctioned actions with workers formally walking off the job. While publicly endorsing the protests against ICE, union leaders repeatedly emphasized that the action was “not a strike” and insisted on remaining within the bounds of labor law and collective bargaining agreements.
Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou, regional president of the AFL–CIO in Minneapolis, stressed that union leaders were in fact calling for “solidarity” and “participation,” not workplace walkouts. This line was echoed across major unions. SEIU Healthcare Minnesota issued formal guidance on 18 January reminding members that a “no-strike provision” remains in place and that the union could not authorize or encourage members scheduled to work to walk off the job:
“The collective bargaining agreement that applies to you includes a no-strike provision and you are an essential healthcare worker, so you are not legally permitted to strike on January 23. In fact, your participation in a strike may result in being terminated from your job.”
Communication Workers of America (CWA) Local 7250 President Kieran Knutson, one of the key union leaders publicly speaking in support of the “Day of Truth and Freedom,” explicitly told CWA members “we have not voted on a strike” and that 23 January was instead a “mass mobilization.” In an online forum days before (YouTube, 20 January 2026), Knutson spelled out the union bureaucracy’s antipathy towards defying the authorities and its primary concern to protect the financial assets of the apparatus:
“It’s actually illegal to declare a strike. People could get sued. You know, I could do that, and maybe it’d be politically right, but then if they sue our bank, then all of our members will lose, you know, potentially lose the money we have.”
The union bureaucracy consciously sought to hinder the most militant impulses among the union base, seeking to channel mass anger into controlled demonstrations rather than a genuine general strike. The result was a sharp contradiction between the scale of popular opposition to ICE and the limited form of action sanctioned by labor leadership—highlighting, once again, the central political obstacle posed by the union bureaucracy in unchaining the social power of the working class. In practice, this meant that while tens of thousands demonstrated and many businesses shut down voluntarily, the organized labor movement withheld its most powerful weapon: coordinated, collective strike action.
The Minnesota and wider American labor movement now stands at a crossroads. A militant, class-conscious leadership could effectively harness widespread hatred of immigration agents in Minneapolis into a statewide general strike around a set of clear and limited demands: ICE out of Minnesota! Release all detainees! Drop all charges! Jail the killer ICE agents!
A mobilization of this sort would unify workers, immigrants, youth, as well as small business owners, in a powerful defensive united-front effort to beat back Trump’s DHS goons. It would also politically expose Walz, Frey and the Democratic leadership who are presently working with the White House to defuse the situation. Given ICE’s isolation and unpopularity, these goals are entirely achievable, and victory would significantly strengthen the working class to take bolder action in the future.
There is widespread sentiment for labor action against ICE not only within Minnesota, but nationwide. The weekend of 30-31 January saw tens of thousands across the US take to the streets—in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington—as part of a “national shutdown” demanding “ICE Out Everywhere,” with schools, workplaces and businesses halting operations in solidarity with Minneapolis protesters. The Democrat-linked No Kings coalition, which mobilized millions of Americans last year to oppose the growing authoritarianism of the Trump administration, has called for another mass demonstration on 28 March, including a flagship event in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis–St. Paul.
Despite support among rank-and-file workers for a general strike, the union leadership has still not called for walkouts. Instead, they are scrambling to contain social discontent and scuttle successful labor action. In response to the killing of Alex Pretti, who was a member of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), national president of the AFGE Everett Kelley issued a statement urging members “to remain disciplined and measured.”
Preparations for a general strike must begin immediately. Meeting state terror requires more than one-day protests and vague commitments to “accountability”; it demands conscious organization and preparation for strike action capable of actually shutting down production, distribution and transportation. Such a strike will not be declared from above by officials who have already demonstrated their unwillingness to act. It must be built from below through the initiative of rank-and-file workers themselves.
Workers must form rank-and-file strike committees in every workplace, electing recallable delegates to coordinate actions across industries and neighborhoods. These bodies could unify and direct strike action on a city, statewide and national basis, asserting collective working-class power while wresting control from the hands of a labor bureaucracy (and their political representatives in the Democratic Party) that has repeatedly sought to contain, delay and sell out struggles. Only through independent, democratic organization can workers prepare the force necessary to beat back state repression and win lasting gains. The central question is one of working-class leadership. A revolutionary, class-struggle leadership must be built inside and outside of the unions to lead the fight against Trump’s authoritarianism.
For a General Strike to Kick ICE out of Minnesota!
Justice for Renee Good & Alex Pretti!
Jail the killer ICE agents!
Release all detainees! Drop all charges!
Full citizenship rights for all immigrants!
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