MINNEAPOLIS — Despite the government’s “drawdown” removing 700 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, 2,000 of them remain in Minnesota. They’re conducting raids and arrests of immigrant workers and increasingly of protesters who obstruct their operations.
At the same time, more labor unions are getting involved, helping to assure disciplined, peaceful protests against the “Operation Metro Surge” assault on immigrants and the whole working class here.
“Our union members are being detained while commuting to and from work, tearing apart families,” regional AFL-CIO President Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou told hundreds at a labor-sponsored immigrants’ rights protest in frigid temperatures in Brooklyn Park Feb. 7. “We must deepen our solidarity for our neighbors and co-workers.”
All kinds of signs were carried, including some calling for amnesty for all immigrant workers in the U.S.
Labor and other sponsoring organizations provided marshaling, including SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, Minnesota Somali Community Center, and the Organization of Liberians in Minnesota. Teamsters Local 120 members brought their mobile kitchen truck to provide hot dogs and Liberian donuts to marchers.
Greg Nammacher is the president of Service Employees International Union Local 26, which represents 8,000 workers at the airport, Uber and Lyft drivers, janitors, window cleaners and others in the Twin Cities area. He told a February Jacobin radio podcast that 20 of his union members had been “abducted by federal agents just in the last month. None had any criminal records.”
According to the UNITE HERE union, one-third of U.S. hospitality industry workers are foreign-born. The union’s Local 17 said that in the Minneapolis area, ICE’s assaults have made some hotel workers too fearful to come to work.
“There’s just a different level of fear in the hotels,” said Christa Sarrack, president of UNITE HERE Local 17.
The growing, peaceful protest actions make it easier for workers — with or without papers — to get involved.
At the same time, some ultraleft forces are concentrating on putting up barricades on streets in parts of the city. They stop drivers and demand to see their ID — just like ICE does — supposedly to flush out ICE agents and disrupt their operations. The city police tear down the barricades daily.
Similar forces have set up noisy gatherings at hotels where ICE agents are said to be housed, or at locations where arrests are reported, seeking to confront federal agents and interfere with their operations.
These actions weaken the protest movement and threaten immigrant workers.
The Karmel Mall, in Minneapolis, is the nation’s first Somali shopping center, home to shops, child care centers, an eldercare facility, a mosque and a Quran school.
This Militant correspondent and SWP member Mary Martin visited with workers we had first met at the union-sponsored march for immigrant rights last Dec. 20, which ended with a rally at the mall.
Somali people have been a special target of the ICE raids in Minneapolis, despite the fact that they are in large majority U.S. citizens. President Donald Trump smeared Somalis here, calling them “garbage people.” ICE has targeted and detained scores of Somalis. ICE deploys agents outside the mall entrance, which has resulted in a near collapse of business as shoppers steer clear.
Somalis speak out
In a small electronics shop, one of the few places open on the ground floor, we talked with Abdi who works there. He gestured to the empty corridor and shuttered doors. He said organizing to protest peacefully is important for the defense of immigrant rights.
“I don’t agree with protesters who throw things at ICE or break windows at the hotels where they stay. The ICE agents want to provoke us. We need to have large, peaceful protests,” he said. He signed up for a Militant subscription.
At the restaurant across the way, Abdi introduced us to Khadijo Warsawe, who explained that she organizes a group named Neighbors United to help people impacted by the ICE presence. She and other Somali shop owners regularly bring hot tea to visitors at nearby makeshift street memorials for Renee Good and Alex Pretti. They were both killed when they were involved in street confrontations with armed ICE agents.
Waris Mohamud, another small-shop owner in the mall, has been here several decades. “I voted for Donald Trump because I am a conservative person. For example, I believe there are two sexes, men and women,” she said. “But I don’t agree with what the administration is doing now.
“Still, no one can intimidate the Somali people,” she said. “Several of us tried to help a pregnant woman ICE agents had dragged from her car in front of the mall. There were a lot of us, so they let her go.”
Farhio Khalif, who also has a small business in the mall, said, “The government has two parties, but they are one bird with two wings.” She urged young people to read the speech by Malcolm X: “The Ballot or the Bullet.”
While we were having this meeting some young people came into the mall saying they were from Black Lives Matter. They said the Somalis should come to a meeting they were holding to discuss what to do about ICE. They said it was for Blacks only.
Mohamud pointed to us and said, “You mean they can’t come?” “No, only African Americans and Africans,” was the reply.
“OK, that is your meeting,” Mohamud and the other Somalis there explained. “But we want you to know that in our meetings we don’t exclude anyone.”
Militant Labor Forum
Four members of Neighbors United attended the Militant Labor forum Feb. 7, “U.S. hands off Cuba!” and spoke about their struggles as Somali people in the crosshairs of ICE.
“There is a need for a clear course forward built around a call for amnesty for the 11 million people without papers in the U.S. A movement led by the unions is what is needed,” said forum speaker Mary Martin.
“The ruling class, and their two main parties, the Democrats and Republicans, are not out to deport the 11 million immigrants,” she said. “They just want to keep them in a pariah status, to scapegoat them and divide the working class, to drive down wages and conditions for all workers.
“Immigrant workers led the way in 2006 and 2007 when millions of workers demonstrated in the streets all across the country. We succeeded in defeating the notorious Sensenbrenner bill, which would have made it a felony to be in the U.S. without papers the rulers consider proper.
“Many here call for ‘ICE out,’ but we have to ask what happens when ICE leaves? The rulers’ assaults on immigrant workers, on all workers will continue,” Martin said.
“We live under a capitalist system that thrives on dividing us, the better to carry out their wars over power and profits abroad and threats like they’re doing today against Cuba’s socialist revolution. This is why the SWP says we need to build a movement capable of replacing capitalism through socialist revolution.
“This is why the SWP says we need to build a truly mass movement for working people to take political power into our own hands.”