Oppressed workers and students lead a powerful movement against the racist US state. REAGAN GRAY reports.
Minneapolis, the city that exploded in a political rage that propelled the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 after the police murdered George Floyd, is once again an epicentre of furious resistance against the racist US state. In December 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched ‘Operation Metro Surge’ – which it claims is the largest ICE operation in US history – in the ‘Twin Cities’ of Minneapolis and St Paul. This operation, the latest in the Trump administration’s massive deportations campaign, came after weeks of Trump’s racist rhetorical attacks on Somali migrants in Minnesota. On 6 January DHS Secretary Kristi Noem deployed a further 2,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents to the Twin Cities. Masked and armed, swarms of agents descended on the city to wage a reign of terror; stopping, questioning, and violently arresting anyone they deem suspect (read: not white), regardless of their immigration status, citizenship or age. Countless incidents surfaced of agents smashing car windows and ripping people from their vehicles, chasing people down streets, targeting restaurants, schools, hospitals, court houses, public service buildings, intercepting delivery drivers, staking out peoples’ homes for hours on end and raiding them without warrants. It is an all-out witch-hunt that is impossible to ignore, and the working class is leading the resistance.
Violent flashpoints
On 7 January, a legal observer Renée Good stopped her car in the street to film the ICE operation targeting her neighbours. Agents approached her vehicle and tried to rip her from her car, and when she attempted to drive away, Jonathan Ross (former US military who saw active duty in Iraq) pulled his gun and shot her in the face at point blank range through her windshield. ICE agents refused to let medical personnel onto the scene as she bled out and died in her car. As video of the incident circulated, the city exploded. Thousands gathered around the scene, hurling ice and snow at the ICE unit and chasing them out of the neighbourhood.
In the weeks following, clashes and resistance intensified. On 20 January, images surfaced of ICE agents detaining a five-year-old Liam Ramos as they tried to lure his parents out of their home. On 22 January, federal agents detained a father and his two-year-old daughter. When community members surrounded the scene in protest, they were met with tear gas and flash-bang grenades.
In outrage students and local organisations called for a general strike on 23 January, the first in Minneapolis in 80 years. Trade unions, political organisations, and local businesses backed the call and over 100 cities across the US called strikes and protests alongside the Twin Cities. On the day, hundreds of thousands took the street in central Minneapolis, braving -27 C temperatures to demand ‘ICE OUT’. For two days, the protestors were met with violent repression, tear gas and rubber bullets.
On 24 January tensions came to a head when another legal observer, Alex Pretti, was murdered by CBP agents. Pretti was filming agents with his phone when they approached and assaulted a passerby unprovoked. Alex tried to shield the woman from further attacks after the agents struck her multiple times. The agents surrounded him, pepper sprayed him, tackled him to the ground, took his registered handgun from his holster and then stood over him and shot him ten times whilst he was pinned to the ground.
The murders of Good and Pretti were just the latest in the string of executions by state forces. In 2025, 32 people died in ICE custody. Within the first month of 2026, nine people had already been killed by ICE or CBP. Kevin Porter, a 43-year-old father was murdered by an ICE agent in Los Angeles on New Years Eve, and days later, ICE tried to cover up the murders of Geraldo Lunas Campos and Víctor Manuel Díaz, who were both detained in Texas ICE facilities, as suicides.
Damage control
In immediate response to the executions, the Trump administration asserted that the victims were ‘domestic terrorists’, violent antagonists, or when that was clearly refuted, that legally carrying a gun or interfering in federal operations is grounds for execution. Predictably, Democrat leaders offered no material pushback, only strongly worded statements, pleas for a return to normalcy (read: tolerable levels of state racism) and threats to deploy the National Guard to ‘restore order.’ The explosion of working-class resistance in the streets has forced the ruling class to recalibrate its approach, with Trump now attempting to ‘de-escalate’ and avoid an all-out revolt.
Working-class resistance
Forced into a state of constant fear and chaos, the working class has taken matters into its own hands. They have developed complex alert networks via social media, group chats, and even whistle signals and car alarms to alert people when ICE is spotted in their neighbourhoods and have organised and distributed essential legal training. Emboldened by this collective power, residents have organised and mobilised rapidly to defend their communities, hiding their neighbours, filming and confronting ICE and CBP agents, and running them off the streets.
Defiant protests and demonstrations have cropped up all over the country. Students have organised school walkouts in solidarity with their classmates, teachers, and parents who have either been detained or were trapped in their homes due to the looming fear of detention. Local faith leaders disrupted church services where clergymen were openly championing ICE presence in the city. Restaurants barred ICE and CBP agents from entering their premises, and hotels cancelled bookings when they were discovered to be accommodation for federal agents.
A rising movement
On 30 January, a general strike and day of action was called by local student groups and migrant communities in Minnesota. Whilst the trade unions and opportunist organisation like the Revolutionary Communists of America ignored the call entirely, the vanguard of the movement took up the fight. Led by migrants and students, black and brown working-class people, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across the US.
In Los Angeles, a consistent hub of militant resistance (see FRFI 307), masses of people surrounded an ICE detention facility, hurling projectiles and beating back police and ICE agents in riot gear with Mexican and Palestinian flags, forcing them to retreat outnumbered and defeated. In Philadelphia, the Black Lions, inspired by the Black Panthers patrol neighbourhoods to counter police and ICE presence. More and more people are going on television interviews furiously calling for communities to arm themselves and fight back.
The tactics being used to fight back against ICE have been developing from the foundations of those employed in the streets to oppose racist state violence during the BLM movement and later the Palestine solidarity movement. It is no coincidence that anti-ICE protestors are donning keffiyehs and drawing the connections between ICE’s siege on migrants, racist police brutality, the IDF’s genocidal siege on Palestinians, and the US’s attacks on Venezuela and Cuba.
There is a growing consciousness and embrace of militancy among the working class who have been thrust, once again, into violent confrontation with the state. An armed, militant, working-class movement is the only thing that will be capable of challenging and ultimately taking state power. The foundations of a wider movement are in motion, and the task of socialists is to sustain, strengthen, and give it political direction. Minneapolis is showing the way, and we must take up the fight.
