Build All-Out Strike Against ICE On January 23!
“The army Trump is building right now in Minneapolis to deport people is the same army Trump will use to crush the unions. This is why we’re calling for a day without shopping or work [on Jan 23rd].” Greg Nammacher, President of SEIU Local 26
In the midst of what’s been called the largest anti-immigration operation in the US — after the murder of Renee Good by an ICE agent — a coalition of Minneapolis/St. Paul unions and community organizations have issued a call for “No work, no school, no shopping” across Minnesota on Friday, January 23. The nearly 30 organizations that have signed on so far are demanding ICE out of the state, prosecution of the ICE agent who killed Renee Good, and no additional federal funding for ICE.
This call for a work stoppage is enormously positive, and it’s precisely the escalatory step the movement needs to build towards a decisive victory against Trump’s deportation machine. Socialist Alternative is building for the biggest possible participation in actions on January 23, in Minnesota and across the country.
Unions should not shy away from what this really is: a strike. For legal reasons, union leaders are avoiding the term “strike.” But with ICE committing murder in broad daylight and terrorizing our neighbors, we need our unions to stand by the longtime labor movement maxim, “There is no such thing as an illegal strike, only an unsuccessful one.” We should be crystal clear about our aims: to grind business as usual to a halt, and to spark similar struggle across the country.
Renee Good was shot in the head at point-blank range and then called a slur, just for showing up to peacefully observe ICE activity in an attempt to ensure immigrants weren’t harmed. Her horrific murder, which made international news, has underlined the unrelenting brutality ICE has unleashed upon working-class people, especially immigrants, in the Twin Cities metro (the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area). ICE agents are racially profiling and abducting people (including US citizens), throwing observers to the concrete, and drawing guns on clergy. There are currently three times as many ICE agents in Minneapolis as there are cops.
An Urgently Needed Escalation
Thousands of people are heroically working around the clock in rapid response networks, which have played a key role in impeding ICE’s efforts. But ICE is also finding ways to overwhelm them. For example, when people follow ICE vehicles, honking their horns to warn neighbors, ICE has started kettling them in alleyways, threatening and detaining people. When tens of thousands marched in Minneapolis over the weekend, ICE turned their focus elsewhere and raided neighboring St. Paul. This does not change the fact that mass demonstrations are a crucial part of building this fightback, but it does mean we need to step up our tactics.
Many have already drawn the correct conclusion that the movement needs an offensive strategy, but there are limits to what can be achieved without the full power of the working class. There have been widespread discussions about the need to shut things down. Hundreds of students have walked out and clashed with ICE, again facing severe repression. Teachers have called in sick. Many workplaces have already closed to protect workers. However, until now these actions have been dispersed and uncoordinated. Union members have played individual roles throughout the movement, but apart from rallies, the organized labor movement as a whole has not yet fully put its stamp on the fightback.
This is why a strong one-day work stoppage on January 23 would be a huge step forward for the movement. The only way Trump will back down is if we shut down the profits of his billionaire buddies, and that means going on strike. The Twin Cities are home to the headquarters of massive corporations like Target, US Bank, 3M, Honeywell, Cargill and Medtronic. We need to shut them down, along with the metropolis that makes them work, including buses and schools.
Every Worker Has a Role
It is important that union leaders call for this work stoppage, but a call on its own does not mean that it will happen. The truth is the labor movement is still relatively weak, and many of our coworkers won’t even know about the announcement, without deliberate mobilization from union leadership. Some union leaders may downplay their locals’ participation or even be hesitant to sign on, citing “no-strike” clauses that bar them from striking for their contract’s duration. This is exactly why it’s urgent that we build the widest possible bottom-up mobilization and participation. If the entire Twin Cities metro goes out, employer retaliation is far less likely, and if it did occur, would even be scandalous and could spark deeper fightback. In most cases, rank-and-file workers will need to fight for their unions to fully mobilize their memberships and to actively participate.
In addition, the vast majority of workers are not actually unionized, and to truly shut the cities down would require their participation too. These workers should still strike, but should not simply walk out as individuals: the time must be seized now to organize collective participation, as the best safeguard against retaliation.
This is why Socialist Alternative is calling for a thorough, all-out effort to build for a mass strike on January 23, and we will work with anyone who wants to help. While unions mobilize for the strike workplace by workplace, rapid response groups should be used to organize participation block by block. They can expand their reach, organizing foot patrols that also cover the city in posters and fliers in multiple languages and holding conferences of resistance — democratic mass meetings — to prepare for the strike. There should be meetings in every workplace, school, coffee shop, and bar about what the plans are.
A strike doesn’t just mean a day off. After shutting down businesses, we need to be out together in the streets, making sure ICE doesn’t carry out a single deportation. We can picket our blocks and workplaces, and we should march together on centers of corporate power. A mass rally is being organized downtown at 2 pm —l et’s make it the biggest anti-ICE rally the Twin Cities metro have ever seen!
Spread The Strike, Take Down Trump
Workers and students outside the Twin Cities shouldn’t just watch from afar. To shut down ICE nationwide will take escalating the fightback coast to coast: we need a nationwide strike. Workers across the country could start by picketing strategic places like hotel chains that house ICE in the Twin Cities, organize school walkouts, and build for all-out mass rallies on January 23 in solidarity with the Twin Cities. ICE’s brutal occupation of the Twin Cities has made the question of striking a reality here, and we need that momentum to carry across the country. The only force that can defeat Trump is not the Democratic Party or the courts, but the working class, and it will take nationwide strike action to deal him a decisive blow.
Trump is leading a nationalist, racist, authoritarian regime hell-bent on enriching corporations and starting wars. His regime is part of a global phenomenon rooted in the crisis of capitalism, which the ruling classes are trying to blast their way out of through imperialist war and nationalist terror campaigns. Trump, and the others like him around the world, won’t back down unless we make him. The only language he knows is power, and the most powerful weapon working-class people have is our power to shut down the capitalist economy. Through organizing mass political strike action, our movement can gain the experience we need to go further — driving ICE out of Minnesota may require sustained mass strike action that creates a political and economic emergency for the Trump regime. Ultimately, we need to strike at the root of the capitalist system that made ICE possible, and to lay the basis for a socialist world.
All-out strike on January 23! Not one detention!
Socialist Alternative demands — and we think the movement should strike for:
- ICE out of Minnesota and everywhere! Build for the biggest possible one-day strike in Twin Cities metro on January 23, alongside solidarity actions across the country!
- Jail Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who murdered Renee Good!
- End all deportations! Immediate, unconditional legalization and equal rights for all undocumented immigrants, regardless of their job status.
- Abolish ICE and put its $170 BILLION budget toward funding public schools, expanding programs like SNAP, and building high-quality affordable housing.
- Shut down all for-profit detention centers! 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025: Put GEO Group and CoreCivic out of business!
- Eviction moratorium now! Thousands of workers targeted by ICE are in danger going to work and will find it hard to make rent.
- The Democrats can’t and won’t stop Trump and ICE: we need a new party for working people!
