“Everybody Showed Up”: Stunning Crowds at Minnesota Day of Strike and Shutdown Against ICE

The idea was to ​“suspend the normal order of business” as a way to protest the unprecedented federal deployment of thousands of masked, armed federal agents on Minnesota.

Organizers estimated the crowd was at least 50,000, with some guessing higher, around 100,000. The big turnout is stunning because it was -9 degrees when the march began, temperatures that can quickly cause frostbite to exposed skin.

“Oh my God, today is amazing, overwhelming, and very powerful,” said Feben Ghilagaber, an airport food service worker and steward for UNITE HERE Local 17. ​“It was bigger than I was expecting, much bigger. I was kind of worried about the weather, but everybody showed up.”

According to Ghilagaber, ​“a lot” of airport workers in her union didn’t go to work Friday in order to support the shutdown, with many of them calling in sick.

It is too early to assess how many workers withheld their labor as part of the day of action, which organizers refer to as a ​“Day of Truth and Freedom.” But workers and unions were central to the day’s events. A commercial electrician and member of IBEW Local 292 who was holding a sign reading ​“General Strike is a Path to Justice,” told me during the march that he was ​“out here to support immigrant rights, support every American.”

“I mean, ICE is just deplorable,” he said. ​“And I mean, anyone could get in the path of the ICE agents. It just infringes on our own civil rights.”

Another Minnesotan, who requested anonymity to protect her from retaliation by ICE, told me, ​“I’m here today to stand up for everyone, stand up for myself. I am impacted. I came here when I was two years old. My parents brought me here from Mexico. All I know is America, so seeing everything that’s going on, seeing my family ripped apart, seeing kids being snatched, an innocent woman shot for standing up for what’s right, it’s all surreal.” 

“I’m speaking out for those who couldn’t be here today,” said the 29-year-old, ​“who are hiding, who every time the doorbell rings their heart stops.”

Earlier that morning, about 100 faith leaders blocked a key road outside of Terminal 1 departures at the Minneapolis – Saint Paul International Airport in an act of civil disobedience against ICE.

With thousands of supporters behind them, they sang ​“before this campaign fails, we’ll all go down to jail — everybody has a right to live.” They held signs showing abducted members of UNITE HERE Local 17.

The crowd — including striking workers and union members, some of whom work at the airport — stayed outside in the subzero temperatures to cheer on the civil disobedience. Supporters passed around hand warmers and snacks to help sustain the crowd.

Katrina Zabriskie, 22, watched her mother, a Minnesota-based chaplain, get arrested. ​“It was really emotional,” she told me. ​“When the crowd started chanting, ​‘We love you,’ I started to cry. Mostly I’m just really proud.” Many of the faith leaders prayed in the moments before they were arrested by police.

“We care about the safety of our neighbors,” Zabriskie added. ​“We believe it is deeply unjust taking people from their homes and deporting them, brutalizing them, and keeping them in detention centers. It’s not something that should be happening.”

Those roughly 100 clergy, according to a news release from the ICE Out of MN coalition, were arrested for their part in ​“the statewide shutdown ICE Out of Minnesota: A Day of Truth & Freedom.” The clergy’s demands focused on Delta and Signature Aviation, which they said have been complicit in and have helped facilitate the deportations of Minnesotans.

The faith leaders want Delta and Signature Aviation to publicly call for ​“an immediate end to the ICE ​‘surge’ into MN and for ICE to leave the state.” They also urge the companies to ​“join Minnesotans” in demanding that the ICE agent who killed Renee Good be held ​“legally accountable,” and ​“call for Congress to stop funding ICE.”

Good, a poet and mother of three who lived in Minneapolis, was shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on January 7. Public outrage over the murder energized organizers and residents throughout Minnesota and across the country, and was a rallying cry throughout the day.

The civil disobedience at the airport was significant because the site has become a flashpoint in the federal assault on Minnesota. 

“Delta relies on MSP as a major hub, and Signature Aviation provides logistical support for ICE operations,” the ICE Out of MN coalition said in a statement released after the arrests of clergy.

​“The MSP Airport serves tens of millions of travelers each year and is now used as the key site in DHS’s operations to abduct and rush out Minnesotans to detention centers,” the statement said. The coalition added that ​“an estimated 2,000 people have been deported through MSP, and many people who work at MSP have been abducted by ICE while at work or commuting to and from the airport.”

But while the airport is the site of abductions, it is also the site of struggle. Some of the protesters, workers and faith leaders outside the airport could be heard chanting ​“We are the workers, the mighty mighty workers!” A sign read, ​“We are under reacting,” and another person with a bullhorn loudly emphasized: ​“We are here to tell corporations to stop being complicit with ICE.”

Earlier on Friday morning at the airport, Nick Benson, an organizer with the grassroots and non-partisan group MN50501, told me ​“This airport is the narrow end of the funnel where our neighbors are getting shipped off to God knows where.”

The strike and actions across the state — as well as solidarity actions across the country — also come on the heels of harrowing news that a 5-year-old was taken by ICE agents from the driveway of his home in the Minneapolis area on Tuesday. The preschooler and his father are now reportedly being held in a detention center in Texas.

For weeks, federal agents have been stalking and abducting people at schools, daycares and from their homes — and unleashing violence on people trying to protect their neighbors. That violence has been extreme and deadly.

The broad coalition that came together to help organize Friday’s work stoppage also had specific demands that include ICE immediately leaving Minnesota and that Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Good, be ​“held legally accountable.” They’re also calling for ICE not to receive any ​“additional federal funding … in the upcoming congressional budget, and ICE should be investigated for human and constitutional violations of Americans and our neighbors.”

For the throngs of those participating in the shutdown on Friday, the stakes were not academic. SEIU Local 26, which represents more than 8,000 of the state’s janitors, window cleaners and other property service workers, has ​“lost over 20 members to these abductions by federal agents, often without warning, often without due process,” said union president Greg Nammacher at a January 19 press conference.

The federal agents’ strategy, he added, is ​“to break up families, to disappear loved ones who for hours and days often don’t have any idea where their family members are and often have no access to legal counsel.”

But it’s not just immigrant workers who are harmed. Nammacher emphasized that ​“if the declared purpose is to help U.S.-born workers get higher wages, which is sometimes what we are told, it has had the opposite effect.”

A window cleaner who led a strike four years ago to win improved safety measures on the job was recently detained at a routine immigration check-in, Nammacher said. He had lived in the United States for 30 years, yet agents have already deported him to Mexico, away from his family. 

“His sacrifice made all window cleaners in the Twin Cities safer, no matter where they were born, no matter what their citizenship status,” Nammacher said.

About 16 members of UNITE HERE Local 17 (which represents more than 6,000 hospitality workers in the Twin Cities metro area) have been abducted, and the Minneapolis – Saint Paul International Airport has become a site of repeated kidnappings of both union and non-union workers.

“Uber drivers are continuously harassed and snatched away, leaving abandoned cars behind, their families completely unaware of where they are,” Sheigh Freeberg, Local 17’s secretary-treasurer, said at a January 9 press conference inside Terminal 1. ​“UNITE HERE Local 17 members who work at the airport have been taken away behind TSA, and ICE flights have increased — sometimes twice daily.”

Since the call for a shutdown went out, the list of unions and community and faith-based organizations joining the effort grew substantially. In addition to SEIU Local 26 and UNITE HERE Local 17, the Minnesota Nurses Association, another heavy-hitting union, joined the effort. 

Local and regional labor councils also joined and on January 20, the executive board of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, a federation of more than 1,000 unions representing more than 300,000 Minnesota workers, voted to endorse Friday’s work stoppage. 

The union mobilizations are not limited to urban metro areas. AFSCME Council 65 – Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, for example, represents workers in public services, nonprofits and health care across the state and issued a statement supporting the coalition, even if it fell short of calling for a work stoppage.

Building trades unions tend to skew more conservative, making it significant that IBEW Local 110 sent a statement to members reading, ​“These federal agents have shown up to schools, day cares and churches. They have dragged people from their cars, broken down doors and taken people from their workplaces.”

Solidarity actions took place across the country, from Massachusetts to New York to Chicago. Some labor and community leaders, organizers and supporters also traveled to Minnesota for the shutdown, including members of the group Rabbis for Ceasefire, who joined with clergy, and Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates.

“I’m sick of wiping tears, I’m sick of hugging people, I’m sick of saying I’m sorry. Today, we saw people who are sick of doing the same thing,” Gates said in an interview. ​“I think it was glorious, and I think everyone is going to have to do that — and at the same time.”

“Every time this country has had a debate on the sustainability and expansion of our democracy, workers have settled that debate,” Gates said, ​“and I’m looking for workers to do the same thing this time.”

Gates also pointed to one key reason why Minneapolis was able to undertake such a shutdown: they’ve practiced.

“People here have been practicing going on strike and beating the boss. They’ve been practicing coalition work that helps them beat the boss, they’ve been maintaining their structures that they’ve had since George Floyd. These are things that have been in practice,” she said. 

“People have to be in practice, in community, resisting and reimagining.”

Meanwhile, more than 700 Minnesota businesses pledged to close January 23 in solidarity with the strike, many of them because they were pressured by workers and other members of the community.

Many workers in Minnesota would already not be at work on Friday because they are hiding from federal immigration agents. Those who do come out are ​“a voice for people who are hiding,” Ghilagaber of UNITE Here Local 17 told me.

Speaking earlier this week, Freeberg told me, ​“In my mind, it is already successful. We’ve seen scores of businesses shutting down in a large part due to community pressure. There will be people in the street, but 10 times that will be staying home, not working that day. The people not shopping, the people not showing up for work, that stuff really matters too.”

“This doesn’t have to be perfect for it to be impactful,” Freeberg said. ​“There are likely tens of thousands of people who are doing the first ever workplace action that they’ve ever done, ever thought about doing, and they are going to realize that they can do this.”

He added, ​“We can all do this.”

This article is a joint publication of In These Times and Workday Magazine, a nonprofit newsroom devoted to holding the powerful accountable through the perspective of workers.