Featured 2026-09-29 Margarita Hernandez

Caption: Thousands of protesters march during the Ice Out of MN march in Minneapolis, Minnesota on January 23, 2026.

Credit: Lorie Shaull, Flickr

I’ve lived in Minnesota for the last eight years, but I never felt like a Minnesotan until Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) invaded our state. I still proudly claim my New York roots, but now I also proudly claim markers of Minnesota identity like the loon, the “land of 10,000 lakes,” the Juicy Lucy (inside-out cheeseburger), and most importantly, the hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans who beat back 4,000 heavily armed federal agents when they attacked our state. We organized from our homes, our cars, and on street corners in freezing temperatures to ensure that Black and brown immigrants could shelter at home safely, get groceries, pay their rent, and send their kids to school. We demanded that our Democratic-led government join us, many times too little (inadequately resourced online learning for our kids), too late (utility shut-off ban) or not all (the eviction moratorium that never came).1 We rallied almost daily in the streets, took over corporate lobbies, and showed compassion even after Renée Good and Alex Pretti were killed by federal agents.

Living and organizing through those months of heartbreak, pain, and frustration wasn’t easy. I cried almost every day. My kids were scared that because I am a brown-skinned immigrant, I would be stopped while driving by men with big guns who would haul me away. I was scared too. I was scared for myself, scared for my husband and other legal observers doing safety patrol at schools and neighborhoods across the city, scared for the immigrant parents at risk of being kidnapped going to work, scared for the immigrant children who worried their parents might not be there for them when they got home from school, and scared for the union and community leaders who were targeting the Trump administration’s corporate enablers. But together, we Minnesotans forced the administration to retreat and turned the tide of public opinion against Trump’s violent anti-immigrant agenda.

[W]e Minnesotans forced the administration to retreat and turned the tide of public opinion against Trump’s violent anti-immigrant agenda.

Although there are still over 650 agents in Minnesota as of this writing, more than there were at the height of the Chicago surge, we can start drawing some lessons about what we’ve achieved so far.2 The invasion activated a tremendous cross-section of working people across race in Minnesota, presenting a huge opening for our movement. Our experiences highlight key lessons that will be valuable to organizers dealing with similar invasions where they live: the need for early preparation and planning; maintaining a decentralized and distributed model in loose coordination with institutional players; providing ample opportunities for working people to engage in movement activity; and countering the right’s narratives through the voices of regular working people.

Crisis as Opening
At Grassroots Power Project (GPP), we’ve put forward a framework arguing that every crisis, from the Covid pandemic to the George Floyd uprisings to the climate crisis, presents organizers with the opportunity to build something different, bolder, and even more audacious than what was possible before.

In 2020, I got to know many of my neighbors, masked up and meeting in the streets, to discuss how to protect and support each other as white supremacists showed up in our community after George Floyd was murdered. Black organizers, mostly queer women, organized and built hyper-local mutual aid and coordinating structures in the wake of those uprisings. My block captain was connected to other block captains in our neighborhood, and they were connected to other working-class neighborhoods across the city. Organizers fought to pass a local police reform ballot measure in 2021, which eventually failed. At the national level, corporations adopted tepid reforms, mostly around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives; the need for police reform, student loan forgiveness, and other demands were suddenly hot topics. Millions of people participated in protests, marches, and get-out-the-vote work for the 2020 elections, demanding economic and racial justice across the country. It felt like we were on the precipice of something new. Then, “poof.” Those millions of people were quickly demobilized by the lackluster Democratic Party leadership’s response to the crises, and the lack of infrastructure and organization on the left that could absorb millions of new activists and translate that energy into power. Just like that, the opening that came along with crisis closed. Here we are again, in different circumstances, but we carry the lessons from 2020 with an eye toward building working-class power through and beyond the latest crisis.

Organizing the Multiracial Working Class
It’s difficult to overstate the extent to which the federal anti-immigration invasion activated everyday working people. Doran Schrantz, former director of ISAIAH, the largest faith-based organization in the state, argues that the 2026 Minnesota fightback was possible because “60 to 70 percent of the people in the Minneapolis metro area were involved in some way, whether delivering food, giving rides, or patrolling their neighborhoods.”3 So, what made it possible for so many working-class folks to stand in solidarity to force ICE out and protect immigrant communities?

There was no single master table of coordination for the social forces pushing for ICE to get out of Minnesota, but instead numerous centers of gravity spread across the state’s movement ecosystem.

This huge mobilization required groups to be nimble as they responded to the various developments on the ground, help working people make sense of these developments so they could act accordingly, and be bold, creative, and wide-ranging in their tactics. There was no single master table of coordination for the social forces pushing for ICE to get out of Minnesota, but instead numerous centers of gravity spread across the state’s movement ecosystem. It required institutional power players like labor unions and the larger community organizations, smaller non-profit and leftist organizations, and a huge number of hyper-local groups and individuals to move at the scale and scope needed to fight the occupation, protect immigrant communities, go after the corporate enablers, and make demands of our state and municipal governments.On the institutional side, there were three main tables that played an important role in setting strategy and tactics, all of which began planning and organizing months before the first wave of ICE agents descended on the state. One formal table included a set of unions, including Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 26, the Minneapolis and St. Paul Federations of Educators (MFE and SPFE, respectively), the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) and others, as well as large community and faith groups like Unidos and ISAIAH (among others) that started organizing in the summer of 2024 around the threat of authoritarianism. Unidos, a statewide immigrant organizing group, launched Monarca, a rapid-response line and legal observer training, in 2024. This set of institutional leaders led the organizing for the Day of Truth and Freedom on January 23, 2026 (including the economic shutdown), and drove some of the campaign work calling on corporations like Target to publicly come out against ICE.4The labor left’s organizing was essential in the success of the economic shutdown. In October 2025, SEIU Local 26, MFE, SPFE, and other unions and community groups held a day-long training session with their core member leaders. The objective was to help member leaders understand the authoritarian threat to labor, immigrant communities, and democracy while also developing skills to start having conversations about these topics in their workplaces and communities. They used the training to start mapping out demands on employers and other plans, which included the possibility of an economic shutdown and rent strike. They organized the more traditional sectors of the labor movement through the state AFL-CIO and the central labor councils to support the economic shutdown, which included hosting protesters at the Target Center arena, which served as a warming center. Although January 23, 2026 was not a true general strike, thousands of union and non-union workers alike called out sick or forced their employers to shut down for the day.5 They collaborated with local affiliates of the national No Kings coalition (e.g. Indivisible, Women’s March, and 50501), whose members were central to turning community members out to the rally.Meanwhile, a democracy defense coalition originally organized by TakeAction Minnesota (TAMN) around voting protections expanded to include other local community organizations.6 They played a key role in facilitating information exchanges, hosting open trainings, local community organizing, and supporting a robust mutual aid infrastructure. They mobilized their community base at the local level demanding rent relief, school closures, and a utility shut-off ban.7

This decentralized and distributed approach created on-ramps for working people to join the resistance where they lived, worked, or worshipped. There were diverse opportunities to connect through training and community-building exercises that allowed working-class folks to plug in and lead.

A third table was organized by more leftist organizations like the Sunrise Movement and Democratic Socialists of America, and played an important role in organizing direct actions like the noise demonstrations at hotels where federal agents were staying, and targeting companies like Enterprise Rent-A-Car that were providing services and goods to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE.8 These groups also took on new roles like organizing students in high schools and colleges, who did weekly walk-outs and sit-ins at their schools. They also helped organize a “workers assembly” that called for more direct actions and strikes in collaboration with Communication Workers of America Local 7250, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005, and Minneapolis Federation of Educators Local 59.9

Simultaneously, neighborhood block captains and other hyperlocal structures were revitalized and rapidly grew. These structures were generally not led by any formal group. Some were formed along an autonomous model, others were organized by various non-profits, but all plugged voluntarily into various rapid-response dispatch systems. While Monarca and the Immigration Defense Network (IDN) trained almost 50,000 legal observers. The rapid response was rooted in neighborhoods and organized block by block. The key to legal observer training was giving participants the skills they needed to record all interactions with ICE agents, which helped spread the reality on the ground to millions of Americans, including video recordings of the killing of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. These widespread groups also organized resistance to the most intense ICE activity: keeping watch at federal buildings and airports where detainees were flown out of the state, tracking ICE vehicles in neighborhoods, and mobilizing large groups of legal observers when immigrant neighbors were being kidnapped.

Activists made demands of local and state elected officials as well as of the governor, but the main strategic target of all these different tables and the organizations comprising them was the corporations that profited from the ICE surge.

This decentralized and distributed approach created on-ramps for working people to join the resistance where they lived, worked, or worshipped. There were diverse opportunities to connect through training and community-building exercises that allowed working-class folks to plug in and lead. For example, people who were willing to take bigger risks could participate in direct actions at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, a remote location just outside Minneapolis where many ICE detainees were held. Others volunteered with Haven Watch to provide a safe place for detainees released from the Whipple building and get them home to their families.10 Indigenous activists set up a prayer camp outside the Whipple building to support detainees and protest the occupation.11 The “Mamas of Cedar,” a group of Somali American mothers, organized “know your rights” trainings in their building lobbies, delivered groceries, patrolled the area, and ensured families knew what was happening.12 People broke through language barriers using phone apps for translation. Those with specific skills were able to lend their expertise to the cause, like the healthcare workers who created networks to provide care to families sheltering in place.13 Trainings of different kinds seemed to be happening everywhere; a local art studio held zine-making and legal observer training for a handful of neighbors while Monarca held a mass 800-person training in a school auditorium. People met in living rooms, the back of restaurants, union halls, on Zoom and in Signal groups to coordinate and organize.

Activists made demands of local and state elected officials as well as of the governor, but the main strategic target of all these different tables and the organizations comprising them was the corporations that profited from the ICE surge. A preliminary report by the city of Minneapolis estimated over $200 million in losses for the city and its residents. These losses hit workers, small business owners, and tenants hard. The city estimated, for example, that $15.7 million in additional rent assistance was needed due to lost household income since December 2025.14 However, the city only approved $2.8 million in emergency rental assistance, less than 20 percent of the estimated total need, in the wake of the surge.15 The demand to extend the eviction notice period from thirty to sixty days failed after Mayor Jacob Frey vetoed the measure and the city council didn’t have the votes to override the veto. Although the statewide Movement Voter Project had successfully passed an ambitious agenda in the 2023 legislative session, labor and community forces did not have enough power in 2026 to move the legislature to meet the demands. The political terrain shifted after the 2024 election; the Senate remained under Democratic control, but an evenly split House of Representatives is subject to a power-sharing agreement between the two parties. The demand for an eviction moratorium failed in the state legislature. Although the Senate passed $140 million in relief and new enforcement measures limits for ICE operations, the divided House passed a more modest $40 million rent relief in the final hours of the session without any enforcement limits.16

I was part of the efforts where the various streams of institutional labor, community organizing, and hyperlocal organizing intersected. One of the central ways families organized in the Twin Cities was through our public schools, in close collaboration with our educators’ unions. The Minneapolis Families for Public Schools (MFPS), which was founded by working-class parents in 2022 and is now part of TAMN, collaborated closely with the MFE to coordinate mutual aid and organizing efforts. MFPS created sanctuary school teams at fifty-eight of the city’s seventy-two public schools, focusing on the most vulnerable schools. While parents and educators led the effort, they worked closely with school administrators in many schools. MFPS was extremely active by the third week of the occupation. It held weekly training sessions to organize additional sanctuary teams across the metro area and eventually statewide; “purple hat” sessions to prepare families to protect children and educators if ICE showed up at their schools; and created mutual-aid best practices toolkits to share with other parent leaders. MFPS trained a total of 2,200 parents and caregivers, and in the first two months the sanctuary teams reported raising more than $2 million in mutual aid funds.

When ICE deployed tear gas on students and arrested an educator at Roosevelt High School, this collaboration between the educators’ union and parents and caregivers forced the Minneapolis school district to close.17 Shortly after, we pressured the district to provide an online learning option for all families. On the other side of the river, the SPFE organized educator-parent teams at the schools with the highest immigrant populations, engaging impacted families directly in the organizing work. They successfully forced the St. Paul Public Schools to close for the January 23, 2026, day of action.

In April 2026, MFPS transformed itself from a city-based grassroots organization to a statewide political organization with chapters across Minnesota—the first statewide progressive political organization of public-school parents in the state. Three parent leaders are running for the Minneapolis school board, which has the potential to transform the school district and MFE’s collective bargaining power. These developments show the impact of organizing beyond the union base for educator locals across the state. We are organizing to be the antidote to the right-wing funded groups like Moms for Liberty, a “parents’ rights” organization that ultimately aims to privatize public schools.

[E]veryday people were the central protagonists and organizers behind the resistance efforts. Labor unions and community organizations created the conditions for their success by preparing for the crisis, offering vital training resources, and giving guidance that ultimately proved crucial for their success.

There is a lot more of the beautiful Minnesota story to tell. But the main lesson I want to draw out is that the crisis the ICE invasion created put hundreds of thousands of working-class folks into action across race, gender, and other potential lines of division. These everyday people were the central protagonists and organizers behind the resistance efforts. Labor unions and community organizations created the conditions for their success by preparing for the crisis, offering vital training resources, and giving guidance that ultimately proved crucial for their success.

Lessons for the Labor Left
We’ll be grappling with the lessons and implications of the Minnesota uprising for months, even years. But as the winter occupation begins to thaw, I want to offer some preliminary thoughts about what enabled the labor left in Minnesota to engage with the broader set of working-class people this crisis put into motion.

The first lesson is that we must prepare, plan, and organize for crises ahead of time, so that when they take place, we already have a strategy and set of tactics available to deploy. As conditions shift, we can develop assessments, draw lessons, and figure out how to adapt to the challenges we face. This requires unions and organizers to create space to step back, document what is happening, identify key strategic questions, and think about what is needed beyond the moment of immediate crisis. Labor left unions like SEIU Local 26, and the educators, nurses, and community groups started internal education programs about the impending threat of authoritarianism last year. By early fall 2025, they were running a shared political education training course for their base. The block captain structures started to meet that summer, including on my own block. By the time the surge came in late December 2025, many of the structures and plans we deployed had already been developed, including the idea of an economic shutdown. While responding to the invasion required us to adjust and pivot along the way, this preplanning was essential.

If we want to succeed in building working-class solidarity in moments of crisis, we must trust poor and working people to lead, and provide concrete ways for them to engage, develop a collective identity, and identify shared interests that are defined as working class.

Another valuable lesson from Minnesota is that adopting a decentralized and distributed model for responding to the invasion enabled the multiple movement groups, big and small, to play a role, together with thousands of everyday people. In Minnesota, no one group or coalition of groups could hold all the work and move at the pace and scale needed to fight back and protect our state, let alone sustain the necessary level of resistance over months of occupation. This structure empowered everyday Minnesotans to join the effort in ways that worked for them and considered their own level of safety and risk tolerance. The results were remarkable. A poll conducted by the May Day Strong coalition showed that one in four Minnesota voters either participated in the January 23, 2026, economic shutdown or had a family member participate in it.18 This was only possible because some unions were willing to step outside of a narrow focus on their own institutions and share power with other organizations, which opened the door for other unions to join the fight.

Minnesota labor investment in collaboration with other organizations and their leaders over many years paid off. The progressive wing of the labor movement—including SEIU Local 26, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) Local 663, Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA), and the Minneapolis and St. Paul educators’ locals, among others—built shared infrastructure with community and faith groups over the past two decades through the Minnesotans for a Fair Economy coalition and the electoral-oriented Movement Voter Project.19 These institutions have co-led Weeks of Actions and Leadership Schools for the past fifteen years. Together, they have helped thousands of members develop organizing and direct-action skills, most recently in 2024 within the aligned strike-deadline campaign.20

If we want to succeed in building working-class solidarity in moments of crisis, we must trust poor and working people to lead, and provide concrete ways for them to engage, develop a collective identity, and identify shared interests that are defined as working class. After ICE attacked Los Angeles, an organizer there shared that truly trusting people to do what they committed to do without follow-up had become a core way of operating because of the intense demands that mutual aid and mobilization required in that moment—even though this is the antithesis of traditional labor organizing.21 I’m not advocating for abandoning basic organizing rigor, but we need to shift away from rigid member engagement models toward more expansive and exploratory organizing practices. SEIU Local 26’s internal organizing experience demonstrates the power of trusting working-class folks to lead. About 100 immigrant members, mostly women, organized the local’s leadership to call a strike pushing their employer on their key demands. This effort coincided with the organizing for the Day of Truth and Freedom. Even though many SEIU members didn’t participate in the march and rally because of safety concerns, they led the organizing within the union that resulted in members voting in favor of endorsing the economic shutdown and going on strike themselves.

All these lessons point to the need for labor unions to break out of their traditional pathways and explore ways of empowering working people to play leadership roles in crafting mutual aid networks, formulating their own demands, and designing their own local organizing efforts.

Another important lesson for the labor left is about pushing back on right-wing narratives that divide the working class. Trump called the women organizing against ICE “wine moms” to discredit them and used hateful name-calling of Somali immigrant communities to justify ICE’s targeting of immigrant communities. After Renée Good was shot and killed, news coverage about the moms organizing, coordinating mutual aid, and patrolling exploded, and it mostly focused on white women. These stories followed common tropes that cast white “PTA moms” as heroes while painting “immigrant moms” as helpless victims—obscuring the bright spots of multiracial solidarity and collective action taking place on the ground. Labor leaders refused to let working people be pitted against one another. As MFE president Marcia Howard pointed out,

they hate us because we don’t hate one another. They really thought they could make this about the racism issue, about Somalis . . . what they did was empower Black and white folks to be out here with whistles and iPhones in the streets.22

In fact, there was a strategic decision to have volunteers document ICE abuses not just for legal purposes, but to shift the public narrative about the invasion. Pivotally, working people were able to capture the Renée Good and Alex Pretti murders on film—and elevate hundreds of other moments of abuse, too—which proved vital to countering the right’s narrative effectively. Rideshare drivers and airport workers shared their own stories and demanded the Metropolitan Airports Commission keep ICE out of the airport after several workers were kidnapped.23 Parents shared testimonies from impacted immigrant families with the state legislature. Working people also captured hundreds of other moments of multiracial solidarity, bravery, and joyful resistance that circulated widely on social media, telling a different story than the mainstream media about who was acting on the ground, and how.

Another crucial takeaway is the need for a multilevel strategic orientation to block authoritarianism and build working-class power. The strategy to target corporate power players wasn’t enough to move the kind of robust financial package that was needed to address the devastating economic blow from the surge or hold ICE accountable. Ultimately, the coalition forces did not have the political power to push local and state elected officials to meet the moment during those first few months of the surge. The mass mobilization of working people demanding ICE get out was clustered in the Twin Cities, while the organizing and infrastructure in Greater Minnesota was weaker and smaller. The labor movement needs to have a stronger stance toward the Democratic Party to force leaders like Mayor Frey to stand with working people instead of his real estate donors, consider strategies to hold the Republican Party accountable, and scale up organizing of the working-class electorate in Greater Minnesota.

All these lessons point to the need for labor unions to break out of their traditional pathways and explore ways of empowering working people to play leadership roles in crafting mutual aid networks, formulating their own demands, and designing their own local organizing efforts. We can only succeed if immigrants, indigenous, Black people and people of color, poor and working-class folks have real ownership of these efforts, a voice in telling their own stories, and a say over how campaigns are designed. By listening to their members, providing leadership to the broader labor movement, and co-leading with other movement organizations, progressive labor unions showed us how to achieve vital goals during a crisis.

Notes

1. City of Columbia Heights, MN, “Xcel Energy Has Implemented New Temporary Protections,” Facebook, February 13, 2026, available at https://www.facebook.com/columbiaheightsmn/posts/xcel-energy-has-implemented-new-temporary-protections-to-help-customers-impacted/1330372132451545/; Nina Moini and Ellen Finn, “Expert: Gov. Walz ‘Cautious’ with Eviction Moratorium Decision Given Legal, Political Factors,” MPR News, February 26, 2026, available at https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2026/02/26/walz-cautious-eviction-moratorium-decision-legal-political-factors.

2. Louis Krauss, “Close to 650 Federal Agents Remain in Minnesota Weeks after Border Czar Announced End of Operation,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 4, 2026, available at https://www.startribune.com/close-to-650-federal-agents-remain-in-minnesota-weeks-after-border-czar-announced-end-of-operation/601590007; Daniel C. Vock, “Cost of Operation Midway Blitz: $59M and Counting,” Chicago Tribune, January 4, 2026, available at https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/04/operation-midway-blitz-cost/.

3. Doran Schrantz, “People Got to Know their Neighbors,” Hammer & Hope no. 10 (Spring 2026), available at https://hammerandhope.org/forums/minnesota-resistance-effective?article=doran-schrantz.

4. For more information on the Day of Truth and Freedom, see the website of the ICE Out of Minnesota Coalition, https://www.iceoutnowmn.com/.

5. Sarah Lazare, “The Minnesota Target Workers Who Walked Out against ICE,” The American Prospect, February 4, 2026, available at https://prospect.org/2026/02/04/target-ice-minneapolis-minnesota-trump/.

6. For more information about TakeAction Minnesota, see their website: https://takeactionminnesota.org/.

7. Rebecca Santana, Steve Karnowski, and Bianca Vázquez Toness, “Minneapolis Schools Offer Remote Learning as Tensions Rise Over Federal Immigration Enforcement,” AP, January 9, 2026, available at https://apnews.com/article/immigration-enforcement-ice-minnesota-schools-432efd7448a925748ca32ffd1f72b2df.

8. Aru Shiney-Ajay, “We Woke Up ICE and the Hotels that Supported Them,” Hammer & Hope no. 10 (Spring 2026), available at https://hammerandhope.org/forums/minnesota-resistance-effective?article=aru-shiney-ajay.

9. Ramy Khalil, “Working Class Resistance Forced ICE Out of Minneapolis,” Jacobin, March 14, 2026, https://jacobin.com/2026/03/minneapolis-ice-unions-strike-immigrants.

10. Nina Moini and Ellen Finn, “Inside the Group that Helps ICE Detainees Released from Whipple Find Warmth, Phones and Rides,” MPR News, January 26, 2026, available at https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2026/01/26/inside-the-group-that-helps-ice-detainees-released-from-whipple-find-warmth-phones-and-rides.

11. Derek James, “Indigenous Activists Establish Prayer Camp Outside Minneapolis ICE Detention Center,” CBS Minnesota, February 11, 2026, available at https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/indigenous-prayer-camp-minneapolis-fort-snelling-whipple-federal-building-ice-operation-metro-surge/.

12. Binta Kanteh, “In Minneapolis’ Cedar Riverside, a Group of Mothers Protect Neighbors from ICE,” Sahan Journal, February 26, 2026, available at https://sahanjournal.com/immigration/minneapolis-ice-observers-mothers-cedar-riverside-protection-alliance/.

13. Arthur Allen and Kate Wells, “When ICE Came, Minneapolis Created Underground Health Networks. Should Other Cities?” NPR News, March 5, 2026, available at https://www.npr.org/2026/03/05/nx-s1-5726806/ice-border-minneapolis-underground-health-networks.

14. “Community Impacts from Operation Metro Surge,” City of Minneapolis, February 2026, available at https://www.minneapolismn.gov/government/programs-initiatives/city-federal-response/community-impacts/.

15. Conor Wight, “Minneapolis City Council Approve $2.8M in Rental Assistance, Fail to Override Frey’s Veto of Eviction Notice Extension,” CBS Minnesota, March 26, 2026, available at https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/veto-override-fails-minneapolis-eviction-notice-ordinance-frey/.

16. Trevor Mitchell, “With Evictions on the Rise, Minnesota Lawmakers Pass $40 Million in Rental Assistance,” Minnpost, May 14, 2026, available at https://www.minnpost.com/metro/2026/05/with-evictions-on-the-rise-minnesota-lawmakers-pass-40-million-in-rental-assistance/; Corin Hoggard, “Operation Metro Surge Response: Senate Approves $140M in Relief, New Enforcement Limits,” Fox 9 News, May 11, 2026, available at https://www.fox9.com/news/operation-metro-surge-response-senate-approves-140m-relief-new-enforcement-limits.

17. Lydia Morrell and David Griswold, “Witnesses Say Agents Arrest Minneapolis School Staff, Tear Gas Students; DHS Claims No Tear Gas Was Used,” KARE 11, January 10, 2026, available at https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/ice-agents-flood-into-roosevelt-high-school-in-minneapolis/89-e0d004b0-bb3d-41b7-949c-e4867f97f7c9.

18. Sarah Lazare, Thomas Birmingham, and Ari Bloomekatz, “Poll Shows Massive Participation in Minnesota Shutdown against ICE,” In These Times, February 2, 2026, available at https://inthesetimes.com/article/labor-general-strike-minnesotans-ice-protest-trump-cbp.

19. The Engage Network and Movement Strategy Center, “Case Study on Minnesotans for a Fair Economy,” October, 2013, available at https://movementstrategy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Case-Study-on-Minnesotans-for-a-Fair-Economy.pdf; “Minnesota: A Model for Power & Progress,” Movement Voter Project, available at https://movement.vote/minnesota/.

20. Harold Meyerson, “Turning the Tables in Minnesota,” The American Prospect, March 13, 2024, available at https://prospect.org/2024/03/13/2024-03-13-turning-tables-minnesota-labor-unions/.

21. Personal communication, September 8, 2025.

22. Marcia Howard, “They Hate Us Because We Don’t Hate One Another,” Hammer & Hope no. 10 (Spring 2026), available at https://hammerandhope.org/forums/minnesota-resistance-effective?article=marcia-howard.

23. Jason Rantala, “MSP Employees, Union Demand Metropolitan Airports Commission Keep Immigrant Workers Safe,” CBS Minnesota, January 20, 2026, available at https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/msp-airport-employees-immigrant-workers-ice/.

Author Biography

Margarita Hernandez has twenty-five years of experience leading legislative, electoral and organizing campaigns at the national and state level as well as creating leadership development programs for labor and community organizations and grassroots members. She spent about a decade building the political program at the Communications Workers of America, supporting state leads to develop strategic power building plans, advance legislative and electoral campaigns, and transform rank-and-file leaders into political organizers.

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