“Border Czar” Tom Homan has announced at a press conference in Minneapolis that Operation Metro Surge is coming to a close, saying that “a significant drawdown has already been underway this week, and will continue to the next week.”
This is a significant victory for the nationwide movement to defend immigrants rights and a blow to the overall agenda of the Trump administration. Of course, it is not a total victory — ICE will not totally cease operations in the state — and it will be necessary to keep the pressure on, to keep organizing, and to secure justice for Renee Nicole Good, Alex Pretti and all the victims of this mass deportation drive. While Operation Metro Surge imposed serious casualties, it was a battle the White House lost. The lessons of this latest phase of mass organizing against ICE must be studied and learned by all. The Trump administration and deportation machine have just taken their biggest setback of his second term, and it came not from Democratic Party politicians or the courts, but from the mass movement and the working class.
The defeat of Operation Metro Surge proceeded through three distinct phases: 1) the organic and broad-based resistance of Twin Cities communities, which grew more fierce after the killing of Renee Nicole Good, 2) the building towards and success of the Minnesota general strike on January 23rd, and 3) the killing of Alex Pretti, escalating to a nationwide shutdown movement on January 30th, which in turn created a national political crisis for the US ruling class. It is this escalating resistance from below that compelled the Trump administration to want to “turn down the temperature” in Minnesota, and start making concessions.
Much more will be written about the rise and fall of Operation Metro Surge, each narrative reflecting different classes and political agendas. The Trump administration will have its own narrative and, as usual, will never recognize any setback. The Democratic Party, and the media in its orbit, will diminish the role of the mass movement and exaggerate their own role in an attempt to channel the energy into the budget negotiations and midterm elections. Those that lost the battle and those that played peripheral roles should not be the authoritative authors of this history. Working-class forces and socialists must draw out our own lessons; this is of utmost importance if we are to keep the momentum going.
Phase 1: The start of Operation Metro Surge
In early December, the Trump administration launched Operation Metro Surge which eventually ballooned to become the largest DHS operation in U.S. history. As has been the case in every ICE surge — from L.A to Chicago to Durham to New Orleans — the people resisted. Mass protests were organized and ICE watch defense networks were built quickly, from the ground up, drawing on both existing organizations and resources and the spontaneous energy and creativity of masses of people who became activists overnight.
On January 6th, DHS brought in an additional 2,000 agents into Minnesota. The very next day, Renee Nicole Good was murdered, sparking nationwide outrage. That week became the biggest week of protest in Minnesota since the operation started. Tens of thousands of Minnesotans took to the streets to demand ICE out of Minnesota and justice for Renee. The video of the killing, and Good’s name, became known nationwide. Rather than concede the streets to DHS, or stopping their ICE watch activities, more people signed up to do the work that she was doing when she was murdered. The whistles blew even louder. Despite being known as “Minnesota nice,” in this case ICE could not walk ten feet without meeting an angry crowd.
Phase 2: The January 23rd call for “No School, No Work, No Shopping”
On January 13th, a coalition of unions and faith organizations called for a “Day of Truth and Freedom” to be held on January 23rd. It would be a day with “No school, no shopping, no work” and include a mass march in downtown Minneapolis at 2 pm, in the middle of a workday. In effect, this event created the framework for a one-day general strike — although they did not use this exact phrase.
The press conference announcing the call received only passing mention initially in the mainstream local press, but it went viral on social media, boosted by the mass anti-ICE movement locally and nationally, as well as pro-labor accounts independent of the unions’ official communication channels. As the word started to spread, unions and organizations within the Twin Cities and across the state got to work to build up January 23rd with phone-banking and canvassing.
The PSL was one of many organizations who put our entire organizational weight behind the 23rd. We immediately launched an outreach operation to get the word out, which included mass postering, a media campaign that produced several videos a day, organizing press conferences, daily mass volunteer meetings, and art builds. All of our organizers agreed this was among the easiest outreach we had ever done. The call to shut it down and use our collective power, as those who make the whole society run, made sense to ordinary people of all walks of life.
The idea caught such fire among workers — union and non-union alike — as well as high school and college students, and hundreds of small businesses, that any local politician or institution that stood opposed to it risked being steamrolled. Instead, the school district and University of Minnesota authorities decided to cancel classes. On the 22nd, the Minneapolis City Council passed a resolution endorsing the shutdown, and even Mayor Frey eventually joined the march. That a big section of the local Democratic Party leadership felt they had to support the strike is notable. It is not totally unprecedented in the history of political strikes that a section of the middle class and ruling class would temporarily side with the workers’ movement, making the event a kind of cross-class “people’s strike.” The divisions in the ruling class helped the strike grow even further, especially in the mainstream media, making it feel inevitable. On the other hand, the Democratic leadership entered the movement, as always, with its own agenda. Their goal is to direct the mass energy to back their electoral fortunes and legislative jockeying, and to keep it from becoming too radical, independent and disruptive of capital.
The buzz around January 23rd swept through the state and ultimately over 100,000 people took to the streets in downtown Minneapolis. The crowd marched from The Commons to the Target Center where an indoor program was held. The energy outside was electric, despite the fact that the temperature hit -20F that day with windchills nearing -40F. A poll conducted by Blue Rose Research found that 23% of Minnesotans took part in the day of action in some form.
Images and videos from the action on Jan 23rd spread like wildfire and electrified the nation, dominating the Friday evening news cycle and national headlines. Even the mainstream press acknowledged the day as historic, what many consider to be the first citywide general strike in nearly 80 years. Most general strikes in history are still built on a numerical minority of the workforce, but with a critical mass to cut across sectors and industries. The participation here was roughly equivalent to the percentage that participated in the Chicago general strike of 1886 and the Seattle strike of 1919. Historic general strikes rarely close every aspect of the economy, and this was no different.
Though it lasted only one day, the unity and power of the shutdown revealed a path forward in Minnesota and nationwide. It showed that we do not have to just organize in small groups against ICE, or wait until the midterms, or just be angry spectators to ruling-class debates. Instead, the people have the power to use their collective power to grind things to a halt. We can actually be the decisive factor if we use our most powerful muscle: the general strike.
Phase 3: The Call for a National Shut Down – Two Trends Emerge after The Murder of Alex Pretti
The energy from Friday was quickly overshadowed by the CBP murder the next morning of Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street. Pretti, a union nurse at the VA who volunteered in his free time to watch and record ICE activity, may have been recognized and targeted by federal agents, although this is still unclear. What is clear is that the federal occupation force deliberately tried to crush the energy and spirit of the shutdown on Friday. Their intention was to demoralize the movement with brute force, signaling that ICE would not be going anywhere after the massive show of people power the day before.
Our organizers on the ground found that people were not cowering in the way that the Trump administration had hoped. In fact, people were even more outraged after Pretti’s murder. Even upper-middle class residents were spontaneously coming out of their houses, facing off with police in riot gear, tear gas and freezing temperatures. Thousands were in the streets on Saturday night, followed by another mass protest Sunday afternoon. In discussions with the many small business owners, community leaders, and student organizations that we had met through the previous week of outreach, there was a real appetite to go out again.
The ruling class recognized how dynamic the situation had become. Gov. Walz deployed the Minnesota National Guard in anticipation of further disruption. Trump officials added fuel to the fire by referring to Pretti as an “assassin” and “domestic terrorist,” promoting a narrative that quickly was exposed as a lie as more videos of the shooting were released.
At this point two distinct tactical orientations emerged in the movement. The coalition of organizations and union leaders that had made the initial call for the Jan 23 general strike, and organized its program, did not favor an expansion or extension of the strike, arguing that the infrastructure had not been created to do so. They instead launched a campaign to protest and boycott corporations that collaborated with ICE, primarily Target and Hilton. A larger shutdown or general strike would have to be months away, they said. Some paid organizing staff in this milieu told us that they felt “burnt out” after the previous week of organizing.
PSL members stayed in the streets of Minneapolis throughout that weekend, fueled by a spontaneous outrage and energy that was anything but burned out. We began to advocate that the only reasonable response to the murder of Alex Pretti was the extension of the shutdown in Minnesota and the expansion to other parts of the country. It was the murder of Renee Nicole Good that had sparked the call for January 23rd. Now ICE/CBP had murdered again; what kind of message would it send to not escalate, given the mood? Instead of pulling our foot off the gas, or directing the mass outrage aimed at Trump and ICE to other secondary targets, we believed the best way to build on the success of January 23 was by making the shutdown a national phenomenon.
Black and Somali student organizations at the University of Minnesota ultimately took the bold step on Sunday, January 25th to make the call for a nationwide shutdown to be held on January 30th. They called for a mass mobilization in downtown Minneapolis at 2pm — using the same essential slogans as January 23rd — and called on others across the country this time to stand with Minnesota and organize actions in their own cities. We threw ourselves totally behind this call to action. We believed there was a real basis to organize an even larger and more powerful response that could spread the spirit of the “shutdown” to other cities across the country.
The tactical differences reflected more fundamental political differences. Summarizing the Minnesota experience, a key organization that most closely reflected this trend warned of “left errors” that could break the “objective tactical alliance” with the “Democratic establishment.” Responding to pressure from the movement, the Democratic Party had “maneuvered for a critical two-week period of negotiation” in Congress, they argued, and would need to be supported in the midterms. The tactical disagreements boiled down to how to relate to the new cracks in the ruling class, and whether the masses shutting it down were merely a point of leverage for the Democrats, or an emerging force with independent disruptive power.
As the energy on the streets and among the broader working class was turning hotter after Pretti’s murder, things had started to shift inside the ruling class. On Sunday, while the University of Minnesota students were calling for another general strike, the Chamber of Commerce of Minnesota, a state with the headquarters of 17 Fortune 500 companies, was calling for “immediate deescalation.” They called for Trump and Walz to find “ways for us to come together.” Within hours, Trump and Walz — responding to their corporate backers — held a phone call that both reported as “very good” and “productive.” All of a sudden, the entire corporate-owned media was signaling that a kind of “negotiated victory” could be won in Minnesota, and Trump himself said he would “de-escalate a bit.”
The ruling class is very class-conscious and politically experienced, and has a keen sense of when they need to concede a little so as to prevent wider radicalization and disruption. They remember well the experience of 2020 — when the video of George Floyd’s murder triggered a Minneapolis uprising and then a nationwide rebellion against racism — and did not want it to repeat after the video of Pretti’s murder. Whereas the previous week, leading Democrats eventually gave their blessing to the general strike, the messages of that following Monday and Tuesday were unmistakable and pointed in the opposite direction. Now, they indicated, there is an opening for a negotiated end to the Minnesota turbulence, for Senate Democrats to leverage DHS funding, and for some sections of corporate America to be potentially won over to the anti-ICE movement. Now is not the time to widen the strike, or to respond to Pretti’s murder with mass protests and disruption.
Undoubtedly, some leaders of labor unions and non-profits felt pressure to allow those political negotiations the space to continue. A negotiated victory that left Trump bruised and the corporate Democrats seemingly responding to the demands of the anti-ICE movement appeared preferable to the huge unknown of trying to spread the strike spirit nationwide. But at this moment, there was no indication that any concessions would really materialize. The political environment was merely being manufactured to take the steam out of the movement.
People in Minnesota and across the United States were, however, still seething with anger — and had a great desire to “be like Minneapolis.” Within 48 hours of the Somali and Black students of Minnesota calling for a national shutdown, nearly 3,000 organizations nationwide had endorsed the call to action and it became a viral sensation. Student groups, community organizations, immigrants rights groups, a few dozen union locals, many small businesses, and even dozens of Hollywood stars publicly backed the call. That several of the biggest social media accounts in the world shared the call for a national shutdown is notable because celebrities are a sector generally quite cautious about political statements that could cause controversy or leave them isolated. But in this case, they also sensed the mood and pressure from their followers and fans.
The PSL made it a top organizational priority to support the call in every area where we have an organized presence. In Minneapolis, over 80 organizers split up geographic areas for canvassing. The volunteer network we had built in the lead up to January 23rd doubled in size from 100 to 200, a reflection of the growing energy of the movement. Those of us who could take off work did so to do outreach from 9am to 9pm every day. Across the country, PSL branches organized volunteer meetings, outreach sessions, and produced media in much of the same style as Minneapolis.
High school students played a central role in organizing for January 30th. On Monday, January 26th, over 120 high school student leaders joined a meeting to share lessons from their experiences organizing walkouts over the last year and committed to doubling down their efforts for the 30th.
Recognizing that the conditions and political temperature were different across the country, demonstrations were organized for different times of the day. Some took place in the middle of the day, while others took place at 4pm or 5pm. In Minneapolis specifically, we believed that a shutdown at the scale of the previous Friday was in the cards.
As momentum for the January 30th and national anger at ICE continued to build, the Trump administration demoted Bovino and sent Tom Homan to Minneapolis on January 29th. An eleventh hour negotiation began over the renewal of DHS funding, which a week prior had been expected to sail through. The same Democratic leaders and Senators who spent the last year saying they had lost the 2024 election because of being “too soft” on immigration and because some members had said “Abolish ICE” now decided it was time to defund ICE after all.
With all this hanging in the balance, Homan held a Thursday, January 29 press conference where he went as far as to suggest that he would “draw down” ICE and CBP operations in the state, and that future operations would be “targeted,” not mass sweeps of neighborhoods. Only now, two weeks later, does such a “draw down” seem to be emerging. But what other reason could there be for such a move other than the threat of the strike spirit spreading across the country? The Trump administration undoubtedly felt if they could “turn down the temperature” of the movement, this would give the space to corporate Democrats in the Senate to cast their votes to fund DHS, like they always do.
But the popular energy could not be contained. In the end, 300 actions were organized for the 30th across nearly all 50 states and D.C. In Minneapolis, over 100,000 people marched triumphantly into the streets in the middle of the workday for the second week in a row, an action comparable in size to the one organized on January 23rd. Somali immigrant businesses shut down en masse, as they had before. In Tucson, over 20,000 marched. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, tens of thousands came out – both cities organized for the middle of the work day. In Atlanta, thousands of high school students at over 100 schools walked out of school and joined a mass demonstration. In the immigrant-heavy neighborhood of Boyle Heights (population 85,000), almost all businesses shut down. In Aurora, CO, the public school system shut down because of how many teachers and staff were expected to participate in the shutdown. At all the demonstrations, students and workers chanted, “Strike! Strike! Strike!”
The key lessons and looking ahead
The Jan 30th “national shutdown” should be regarded as a major step towards an even wider general strike and a great advance for mass consciousness.
One month ago, the idea of a general strike was on the mind of a few thousand radicals and historians across the country. Now it is firmly on the agenda for the first time in decades. This is a huge political development and primarily was a result of the shutdown on January 23rd and the subsequent nationalization of the shutdown movement on January 30th.
There have been momentary viral trends on the internet calling for strikes. But in this case, millions of students and workers are energized by the idea of strike action, have participated in one way or another, and hundreds of thousands took to the streets on Jan. 30 based on this call — and, quite meaningfully, did so on a workday. This was real mass political action, at a new scale and with militant energy, and, as we see in the continuing walkouts across the country, it is not going away. This should be celebrated. There never has been a truly national general strike in U.S. history. In order for something like that to actually take root, it has to first become a trend in society and be embraced by a large part of the population. The general strike is now the tactical horizon for millions of people across the country, rather than the normal political cycle of the midterm elections.
As ICE initiates its “drawdown” from Minnesota, Operation Metro Surge has in essence been defeated. It was not defeated by the words of the Democratic Party governor or mayor — ICE gets the same rhetorical criticism wherever they have gone. They weren’t defeated because “they went too far this time” — ICE has killed before. They were defeated because this time the diverse working class of Minnesota organized block by block, and actually went on strike in defense of their immigrant brothers and sisters. That strike inspired mass walkouts, shutdowns and a larger fight-back spirit, which has become so infused into mass consciousness that it has created a national political crisis for the US ruling class. As we go to print, the funding for the Department of Homeland Security (although not ICE) has been momentarily shut down. That too would have been unthinkable a month ago.
The general strike is back on the table. This is our north star to guide the movement in defense of immigrants, and against Trump’s overall billionaire and war-mongering agenda: in the direction of expanded class struggle and working-class organization.
