Minnesota

We Can Fight This: Minnesota’s General Strike Shows How

Published

6 months ago

January 24, 2026

We Can Fight This: Minnesota’s General Strike Shows How

Demonstrators participate in a rally and march during an “ICE Out” general strike and day of protest on Jan. 23, 2026, in Minneapolis. Photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

There is a possible future in which the events that unfolded in Minnesota on January 23, 2026, are forgotten. The fact of the largest general strike in the state in nearly a century may be only remembered, if at all, as a big day of protests and walkouts, and no more than that.

In that future, the possibility of mass, coordinated, and powerful action is wiped from the public imaginary — because, within 24 hours, federal agents had killed another civilian in cold blood.

Donald Trump’s paramilitary forces shot and killed 37-year-old nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday morning. Like in the killing of Renee Good, video footage taken by witnesses appears to show a brutal, close-range killing. Eyewitnesses told The Intercept that Pretti was on the scene acting as a civilian observer. Videos show a group of more than four masked agents wrestle him to the ground and beat him, before one shoots him multiple times.

The shooting — the third in Minneapolis by federal immigration agents since Trump’s deportation machine descended on Minnesota with extreme brutality in December — is an unbearable follow-up to the most extraordinary day of mass resistance to Trumpian fascism to date.

It is also a searing reminder as to why Friday’s mass strike in Minneapolis must not be swept from our minds. Rather, it must be treated as a powerful new phase of resistance against Trump’s regime — a task that can only be achieved by building on and repeating it.

On Friday, tens of thousands of Minnesotans braved extreme cold to march en masse and shuttered a reported 700-plus businesses in a daylong general strike with the support of all major unions. They protested, transported, fed, and watched over each other, an outgrowth of weeks, months, and years of community care and abolitionist resistance. Their collective actions mark a breakthrough in the fight against the American authoritarianism of our time.

It is only a future with mass social strikes, or general strikes, involving large-scale disruption on the immediate horizon that has the chance of stopping Trump’s forces.

On January 23, the Twin Cities offered a small glimpse of the sorts of work stoppages, blockades, and shutdowns that aggregated practices of collective resistance make possible.

The task ahead of us, in the face of the government’s unending violence and cruelty, is to take up, share, and spread the practices modeled by networks in Minnesota.

Saturday’s slaughter does not disprove the power of Friday’s strike; no one was under the impression that tides had somehow turned in a day. The point is that, thanks to Minnesota’s resistance, we can see how to go on.

People in the Streets

On Friday afternoon, when people filled the downtown Minneapolis streets, it was the coldest day of the year so far: a reported minus 20 degrees, with a wind chill reaching minus 35.

“I’m seeing icicles form on people’s eyelashes out here, on mustaches, on eyebrows, from just the condensation from their own breath freezing against their own face,” a video journalist reported from the ground.

The day began early with dozens of protesters barricading the road outside the Whipple Detention Center, the home base of Trump’s deportation machine in Minneapolis, for over two hours.

Later that morning, over 1,000 people, including religious leaders in prayer, formed a picket outside the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport. Since December, over 2,000 people in Minnesota have been taken by federal immigration authorities; many have been deported through the airport. Around 100 people were arrested at the airport protest.

Meanwhile, businesses refused to open their doors in numbers not seen in decades.

No, the government was not brought to its knees under the economic weight of a one-day strike called on short notice. Friday, however, was a crucial step, to be built upon and built upon, creating the specific sort of political strike that takes aim at the very nature of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in our cities and towns.

It is precisely this combined model of strike, targeted blockade, and mass demonstration, all undergirded by networks of mutual aid, that we need to repeat and expand.

“Hope Is a Discipline”

Community defense against ICE did not, of course, begin with Minneapolis — although the city has been the site of Trump’s most lawless and thoroughgoing fascist, nakedly racist operation to date. Residents in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and beyond have blockaded ICE facilities, hid their immigrant neighbors, filled immigration courts, filed lawsuits, and confronted federal agents in the street. And these acts of resistance were not only learned to fight Trump’s regime. They have been rehearsed many times over, in centuries of struggle.

There are times in a broad and disarticulated political movement, however, when things come together. Momentum builds. And there are events that shift the ground, after which it makes sense to speak of a before and an after.

The day following the strike brought more horror where there had been an opening for hope. Hope, though, is not what is really needed now — not hope as a sentiment, at least. We prove our orientation toward a better world, whether we feel hope or not — and I do not — by continuing to act against this murderous state force, and for each other. This is what the abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba meant in calling hope a “discipline.”

After January 23 in Minneapolis and St. Paul, we have grounds to talk and organize seriously around general strikes in other cities, states, even nationally — general strikes with the specific aim of making our cities and towns as difficult as possible for ICE and other federal forces to move through. Not by dint of social media calls, or columns like this, but by going on in the way of Minnesotans.

Minnesota organizers did not conjure the state’s largest day of labor action in nearly a century by simply announcing “general strike” online. Labor unions, religious and community institutions, and front-line activists were all key; so, too, was the fury of everyday people, in a city where community support is normalized, and militant anti-racist protest boasts a proud history.

Minneapolis’s extraordinary rapid-response networks, activated to keep watch on ICE and provide transport and care for immigrants, developed swiftly. Minneapolis-based organizers Jonathan Stegall and Anne Kosseff-Jones, however, have said, “Many of these systems sprung to life along the paths laid down by the 2020 uprising after the police-perpetrated killing of George Floyd.”

As Sarah Jaffe noted in the New Republic, “The Twin Cities have had plenty of opportunities to build up these networks of resistance, networks that have only grown larger in the wake of Good’s killing.”

This constellation of factors meant in a matter of days, a strike action could be called involving hundreds of thousands of workers across sectors. This can and must be repeated elsewhere. This is not the first time Minneapolis has led the way. And it is for this reason, too, that Minneapolis will not be defeated by the deadly escalations of federal agents the following day.

21st-Century General Strike

General strikes in 2026 will not look the same as they did in the early 20th century. In an age of technocapital and decimated labor power, conditions look different. Even with a slowly rebuilding labor movement, effectively marshaling collective refusal is extraordinarily hard.

It remains the case, however, as Kieran Knutson, president of the Communications Workers of America Local 7250 in Minneapolis, told Democracy Now!, that “nothing runs without the working class in this country.”

A general strike against Trump’s authoritarianism requires a specific navigation of territory and time — addressing the ways ICE moves rapidly through our cities and neighborhoods — and how to fight against it. That means combining neighborhood patrols with confrontational shutdowns, and creating barriers for federal agents wherever they try to go — including the damn bathroom.

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Minnesota

Minnesota was center of immigration enforcement. Here’s how its playing out legally.

Published

10 hours ago

July 12, 2026

Press Room

Minnesota was center of immigration enforcement. Here’s how its playing out legally.

A Liberian immigrant who came to the United States in 2018 quickly found work as a Twin Cities caregiver for seniors and the disabled. In 2025, she applied for her U.S. citizenship while seeking a full or partial waiver of the $760 application fee. A citizenship test was scheduled for her, and then abruptly canceled.

Instead, on a Saturday morning last fall, two federal agents with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — a man and a woman — knocked on her door.

“They said they had a few questions for me before my citizenship appointment could be set up,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be shared given her circumstances. “I was a little bit shaken because it was so confusing. They wanted to know how good I was in my neighborhood and in my job.”

She then saw the agents go door-to-door on her street asking if she had ever “caused trouble,” as a neighbor who vouched for her later informed her. Her boss later called her from work and said USCIS agents, a man and a woman, had stopped by with similar questions.

The woman, who had shortened her work hours to care for her 6-year-old daughter, spent the next few weeks defending her decision to ask for financial assistance with the citizenship application.

“They kept on asking why I had applied for a fee waiver,” she recalled. “I explained and they still weren’t satisfied. They kept calling me and asking for more documentation to show that it was actually true that I can’t afford the fees. They were looking for pay stubs, proof of health insurance, year-end tax income.”

She went on to pass her citizenship test last March, months later than expected, and is preparing to be sworn in as a U.S. citizen, but the federal curb on fee waivers has since intensified.

On June 22, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security published a new proposal that would raise naturalization fees by 75% or more and eliminate fee waivers entirely.

For immigration advocates in the Twin Cities, the fee waiver issue is just the latest hurdle in the multi-faceted crackdown on immigration that has unfolded under the second Trump administration — a crackdown that has at times placed Minnesota at its epicenter.

While publicly purporting to go after “the worst of the worst” criminal offenders, Washington has found myriad ways to deter refugees and other immigrants from arriving in the U.S. or to force them to leave, including blocking or delaying efforts by law-abiding refugees to obtain their permanent residency green cards or American citizenship.

Among refugees, “green cards for most people have stopped,” said Jane Graupman, executive director of the International Institute of Minnesota, which is based in St. Paul, in early June. “So have citizenship applications. They want everyone to be in legal status, but then they’re preventing that from happening. It’s not happening, that we’ve seen.”

13 new U.S. citizens, down from 400

A federal judge’s recent ruling in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS appears to have reopened the door, at least a crack, and more applications are flowing. Still, in the first six months of the year, the International Institute saw only 13 of its clients receive U.S. citizenship. In the same time period last year, the number was closer to 400.

As for green cards, which confer proof of permanent residency status, 800 of the institute’s refugee and asylee applicants are still awaiting a decision on their applications, with an average wait time of more than a year.

“Verifying identities and personal histories of all aliens seeking immigration benefits requires a rigorous process — one that prioritizes the safety of the American people by more thoroughly screening and vetting all aliens,” said a spokesperson for USCIS in an email response to a reporter’s inquiry. “The goal is not to approve more or deny more applications, but to reach the correct decision in each case to the maximum degree possible.”

This past winter, Operation Metro Surge and Operation PARRIS (Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening) brought thousands of armed federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security to the Twin Cities for door-to-door sweeps and warrantless arrests that detained an estimated 3,700 refugees.

In several high-profile cases, U.S. citizens with no criminal history were removed from their homes by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and some green card holders who had committed crimes decades ago, as teens or young adults, have been deported.

“The polls show most Americans are against the government arresting people who have not committed a crime — and are doing a job, and showing up — and arresting them for no reason,” Graupman said.

Jane Graupman, right, executive director of the International Institute of Minnesota, thanks Abebe Dashew, employer coordinator for the organization, while at the Institute in St. Paul on Thursday, July 9, 2026. Immigration advocates in the Twin Cities face many hurdles in the multi-faceted crackdown on immigration that has unfolded under the second Trump administration — a crackdown that has at times placed Minnesota at its epicenter. In the first six months of the year, the International Institute saw only 13 of its clients receive U.S. citizenship. In the same time period last year, the number was closer to 400. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Operation PARRIS, in particular, targeted lawful refugees who were still in the pipeline to receive their green cards, which provide evidence of permanent residency. Many refugees were taken out of state to detention centers as far away as Texas, under the premise of needing to be re-interviewed by federal authorities, until federal judges based in Minnesota and Massachusetts issued preliminary injunctions putting the detentions of refugees who had not yet received their green cards on pause.

“Our federal judges really stepped up,” said E. Michelle Drake, an attorney with the Minneapolis firm of Berger Montague, who served as the lead attorney representing refugees in a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and ICE over Operation PARRIS. “The courts were overwhelmed. … We had human beings being snatched off the street in broad daylight.”

E. Michelle Drake, an attorney with the Minneapolis firm of Berger Montague, who served as the lead attorney in the 2026 class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE over Operation PARRIS. (Courtesy of Berger Montague)

Among Drake’s clients was a 17-year-old girl who had been detained overnight in a hotel room by federal agents on the way to school. Drake had never before met her in person, but on the day she was released, the teen requested Chick-fil-A and asked if it would be safe to join her classmates for a mock trial debate she had been practicing for that weekend.

‘Removing murderers’

Federal officials continue to maintain that the majority of the immigrants they’ve detained have documented criminal histories. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks federal data, reports just the opposite — that 42,722 out of 60,311 detainees, or 71% held in ICE detention, have no criminal conviction according to data current as of April 4. Many of those convicted committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations.

“What makes someone a target of ICE is if they are in the U.S. illegally,” said a U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson in an email. “America’s brave men and women are removing murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, rapists — truly the worst of the worst from America’s communities.”

“Nearly 70% of ICE arrests are of criminal illegal aliens who have been convicted or have pending charges,” the DHS spokesperson wrote. “This statistic doesn’t account for those wanted for violent crimes in their home country or another country, INTERPOL notices, human rights abusers, gang members, terrorists, etc. The list goes on.”

Despite the Minnesota and Massachusetts rulings, issued in February and March respectively, federal efforts to remove immigrants through legal means — such as by attempting to invalidate birthright citizenship, as well as removing temporary protected status for Venezuelans, Haitians and Syrians — have continued unabated.

“The new head of immigration services, Tom Homan, is saying they are following rules now, but also (White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy) Stephen Miller is finding other ways,” Graupman said. “He’s looking for any way he can to discourage people from coming here and to deport people who are here, and that takes a lot of government resources to do that.”

Immigration advocates say there’s good reason for law-abiding immigrants to be nervous, though they’re still encouraging permanent residents to seek U.S. citizenship, which offers a number of benefits, from U.S.-issued passports and protection from deportation to automatic citizenship for their offspring under the age of 18.

“The reason it was important to me is because I feel it was the right thing to do,” said the Liberian woman who passed her citizenship test in March. “If I want to go to Africa, and visit a friend — ever since I’ve been here, I’ve never gone to Africa, just to be on the safe side. Everybody is not feeling safe.”

During Operation Metro Surge, the Twin Cities became ground zero in a national debate around not just illegal immigration, but immigration in general, including the rights of refugees, asylum seekers, guest workers and permanent residents, or green card holders. At least three legal efforts based in Minnesota and Massachusetts have played pivotal roles in slowing, though not necessarily stopping, widespread detentions and warrantless arrests.

Habeas corpus petitions

During Operation Metro Surge, a wide network of attorneys contributed their time — often, but not always, pro bono, or free of charge — to get immigrants who had been detained without criminal charges out of detention centers. Immigration judges were generally skeptical of federal arguments that refugees could be held indefinitely until their green cards were issued, though some judges allowed detentions through the conclusion of eligibility interviews.

Berger Montague filed over 40 habeas corpus petitions and won most of them. Attorneys with the Minnesota Habeas Project, a collective of nonprofit legal service providers, law school clinics and pro bono law firms, filed additional cases. DHS continues to maintain that “pending applications do not confer legal status” and the detainment of refugees who are in the pipeline for green cards is lawful.

U.H.A. et al v. Bondi

A Jan. 24 class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of Minnesota-based refugees by the Advocates for Human Rights, the International Refugee Assistance Project and Berger Montague sought to halt the door-to-door detention of refugees under Operation PARRIS.

On Jan. 28, Senior U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, based in Minneapolis, issued a temporary restraining order pausing the house-to-house arrests in Minnesota, and ordered the return of refugees who had been taken out of state. His order only applied to Minnesota refugees.

Tunheim extended his time-limited temporary restraining order on Feb. 9 and expanded it into a preliminary injunction on Feb. 27, where he noted the irony of arresting recent immigrants for failing to obtain a green card they were prohibited by law from applying for until one year after their arrival.

“The Court will not allow federal authorities to use a new and erroneous statutory interpretation to terrorize refugees who immigrated to this country under the promise that they would be welcomed and allowed to live in peace, far from the persecution they fled,” he wrote.

Rather than abandon the operation, the Department of Homeland Security soon changed tactics and began issuing letters alerting refugees in Minnesota that they had anywhere from a day to a week to obtain legal counsel before their re-vetting interviews.

“This is yet another lawless and activist order from the federal judiciary who continues to undermine our immigration laws,” said a USCIS spokesperson by email. “We look forward to being vindicated in court. American citizens and the rule of law come first, always.”

Jean A. v. Noem

On Feb. 27, the International Refugee Assistance Project and the nonprofit Democracy Forward filed another lawsuit against warrantless arrests of refugees in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, this one challenging the practice nationally. The court order does not prevent DHS from issuing call-in letters forcing refugees to go through heightened scrutiny and re-interviews around their refugee claim, according to the National Immigration Forum. As a result of the Massachusetts case, which remains open, the Minnesota plaintiffs agreed to dismiss the Minnesota case.

Other cases

Other recent cases have also informed the national debate around immigration. Among them:

DOJ subpoenas quashed: A federal judge ruled last month against a Trump administration effort to access Minnesota officials’ records as part of an investigation into whether they obstructed federal law enforcement during Operation Metro Surge. Chief U.S. District Judge for Minnesota Patrick Schiltz quashed six grand jury subpoenas seeking records from Minnesota officials, including Gov. Tim Walz, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. He said there was little evidence that any of the information was connected to a criminal investigation, and said the subpoenas instead were meant to “harass, coerce, and retaliate.”

Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, et al. v. USCIS: On June 5, a federal judge in Rhode Island vacated USCIS orders that paused the processing of asylum applications, work permits and green cards for applicants from 39 countries, most of them in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, as well as the Palestinian Authority. The judge’s decision in the Dorcas case was finalized June 11. USCIS filed an appeal with the First Circuit Court of Appeals the next day, and the case remains open.

Trump v. Barbara, protecting birthright citizenship: On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to uphold birthright citizenship in the United States, a blow to the Trump administration’s executive order to overturn it. The court majority in Trump v. Barbara held that the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, grants the automatic right of citizenship to any child born in the U.S. Three justices dissented, while Justice Brett Kavanaugh acknowledged only that federal legislation enacted in the 1950s grants automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S.

Mullin v. Doe, ending TPS status for Haitians, Syrians: On June 25, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration in a case clearing the way for the end of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians living and working in the United States. Established in 1990, TPS offers protections from removal for roughly 330,000 Haitians and 3,800 Syrians who face dangerous conditions in their home countries. The court, in a 6-3 opinion, said the status, which currently applies to immigrants from 17 countries, was never intended to be permanent. While focused on immigrants from the two countries, immigration advocates say the decision in Mullin v. Doe could have far-reaching consequences for all 1.3 million TPS holders in the U.S.

Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, upholding metering: On June 25, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration in a case concerning “metering,” or turning back asylum seekers before they can reach the U.S.-Mexico border. While federal law protects the rights of immigrants to apply for asylum upon arrival, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers routinely stand along the border and turn back noncitizens without travel documents before they can officially “arrive,” or set foot within an airport, land crossing or another port of entry. The court upheld the legality of the policy, which was formalized by executive memorandum in 2018, by a vote of 6-3, after debating the definition of the word “arrival.”

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Minnesota

250 runners take to the Minnewashta Mud Run

Published

20 hours ago

July 11, 2026

Press Room

250 runners take to the Minnewashta Mud Run

On a hot summer day, about 250 people decided that a sprint through the mud was the best way to spend time.

That’s how many registered for the annual Minnewashta Mud Run on Saturday. Racers of all ages jumped in tubs of mud, made their way through various obstacles, and fired down a massive slip and slide powered by the Chanhassen Fire Department.

Micah Ostergard, the Recreational Specialist with Carver County Parks, said it’s an event he looks forward to each year.

“I think one of the great parts of being in this line of work for me is to see the joy that people have when they come out to an event like this,” Ostergard said.

The Mud Run, for now, helps to raise money for both Carver County Parks and the Minnetonka school system. Ostergard said that there are conversations in the works to transform it into a formal fundraiser to help underprivileged children access programs that may otherwise be too costly.

Either way, the focus was on fun and getting muddy on Saturday morning. That was 14-year-old Ingrid Boldischar’s goal when she convinced her family, including two younger brothers, to ender the Mud Run.

“Everyone really likes getting dirty so, it’s just a fun thing!” Boldischar said.

While she partook in the full course, which amounts to a 5-k for runners that go around twice, younger children enjoyed a smaller version of the run. That included Margot Bennett and Gus Youngstedt, two four-year-old best friends who arrived at the Mud Run on Saturday morning after throwing their first slumber-party together.

Their parents, Annie Fagerlee and Dani Youngstedt, said they had a wonderful time on Saturday morning.

“It’s a designated spot for our kids to get as muddy and wet as possible that’s not in our house,” Fagerlee said.

David Brandt, a Chanhassen firefighter, was happy to play his part manning the firehouse. He estimated they used up to three thousand gallons to keep the slip and slide going, providing relief from the heat.

“We come out every summer, cool off the kids, give them some water,” Brandt said.

While temperatures going above 90 on Saturday afternoon, parents and organizers alike were grateful that the outdoor Mud Run kicked off by about 8:30 in the morning.

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