MINNEAPOLIS — Neighbors United, a group of Somali small-business owners at the Somali-run Karmel Mall, held a press conference there Feb. 20 to oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s operations in Minnesota and bring attention to the ruin many of them face after months of ICE’s repressive and brutal operations in the city.
ICE agents aggressively patrolled the area around the mall, seizing Somali and other shoppers right outside the doors as part of Operation Metro Surge. Customers increasingly stayed away. Somali people in Minnesota were a special target of ICE operations, regardless of the fact that the overwhelming majority here are long-time legal residents. Trump used a fraud scandal involving some area Somalis to smear all Somalis as “garbage people.”
Farhio Khalif, one of the founders of Neighbors United, told supporters and the press that the state of Minnesota has offered recovery loans to businesses that earn at least $200,000 a year. But that still leaves Somali small-business people with kiosks in the mall without government help to survive. They are asking at least for loans so they can pay the rent on their shops.
Cesia Baires, who owns Abi’s Café, a Salvadoran restaurant in the area, also spoke, explaining that small businesses in the Latino community, including in the nearby Mercado Central, also face devastation as their employees and customers stay home.
Neighbors United organizers invited the Socialist Workers Party to stand with them at the press conference. In a statement for the press, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate Kevin Dwire said, “My party stands in solidarity with Neighbors United and all immigrants against the arrests, deportations and disruption of their livelihoods from the government’s assault here.
“As Neighbors United shows, many immigrants refuse to be intimidated. To give another example, 3,800 union packinghouse workers in Greeley, Colorado, just took a strike vote against JBS. This is a majority immigrant workforce fed up with the line speed, low pay and dangerous working conditions in the plant,” Dwire said. “The SWP calls for amnesty for all undocumented workers in the U.S. The unions need to lead a fight for amnesty to unify the working class This can strengthen our ability to fight in our class interests.”