Minneapolis' Community-Driven Anti-ICE Organizing Is Showing The Way

What Minneapolis activists have to teach us about organizing communities to resist ICE

People watch as ICE agents detain people from a residence on January 13, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images.

All eyes are on Minnesota.

The terror that ICE has wrought on the streets of Minneapolis is violent and tragic, and it has rightfully caught the attention of the entire country.

But it’s not just out of anger. Or the horror of it all. The American people also see a ray of hope in Minneapolis.

As Chris Hayes put it in his conversation Thursday night with Elliott Payne, President of Minneapolis’ City Council,

“There’s something that you are doing here that feels like the antidote to everything that they are doing.”

In a very real way, through organizing and by centering community, everyday Minneapolis residents have discovered the antidote to ICE’s poison.

Payne explained that, back in 2020 after George Floyd’s murder, a movement took root in Minneapolis to reform policing. While opponents cynically characterized it as “defunding” or “abolishing” the police, in fact the reform movement was about “expand[ing] the level of safety services we had to offer in conjunction with police.”

One of the tenets of that movement was “We Keep Us Safe.” While drawing backlash at the time, is has now come to fruition in the form of a powerful community-driven resistance movement in response to the ICE occupation of the city. Said Payne,

“The only thing that has been giving me a little bit of life through this is just how much of our community is showing up, how many people jump out and blow whistles, how many are following blowing horns. And then just the level of infrastructure that we have built in our city for community, whether it’s food drives or school transportation.”

Payne added,

“It’s Moms, Dads, everybody is throwing in to look out for each other, keep watch on the neighborhood, keep each other fed, and keep each other housed. And this is actually an embodiment of that vision of ‘We Keep Us Safe’ and it’s something that actually extremely empowering.”

While Trump may have made some gestures toward retreat in the aftermath of Alex Pretti’s murder, we should not be under any illusion that Trump is substantively rethinking his mass deportation strategy. So what lessons can the rest of us learn from the resistance movement built by Minneapolis?

ICE Watch

What started as a community-based network of Minneapolis-St. Paul volunteers to warn residents about ICE raids in their neighborhoods has become a crucial tool in the anti-ICE resistance movement.

Mother Jones calls ICE Watch a “new activist twist on neighborhood watch.” Its goal is “to make sure witnesses are present for any immigration arrest, to catch incidents on video, and to protest—or at least get the detainee’s name.”

And it is massive. It comprises thousands of volunteers throughout the Twin Cities, representing numerous groups organized using Signal chat groups.

Andrew Fahlstrom, who helps lead one of those groups, Defend the 612, told Chris Hayes on All In Tuesday that he estimates as many as 100,000 people have been trained up on various rapid response actions throughout the Twin Cities.

As Fahlstrom told Mother Jones,

“What we’ve noticed in Minneapolis is that having people outside, having people ready to respond, having people connected and communicating about ICE activity has kept so many people safe—more than we’ll ever know, more than we’ll ever be able to track.”

While Fahlstrom traces the origin of this infrastructure back to the George Floyd protests of 2020, it became clear in early December, as ICE surged in Minneapolis, that something larger would be needed to scale it up. It had to match the level of federal presence Trump was deploying there. And ICE Watch observers have been crucial to that effort.

Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic wrote about the importance of these observers on the ground in Minneapolis.

We know about this violence—we can see it ourselves from numerous angles—largely because of video and photographic evidence taken by everyday citizens, many of whom have purposefully set out to make sure that they are recording what is happening for the world to see.

This is all the more important in the face of the propagandistic lies from the administration. As Warzel puts it,

If the truth is ever to win out over propaganda, it can only do so in the face of overwhelming evidence.

And that is precisely what ICE Watch is devoted to collecting.

[Video of Pretti’s death] is able to be seen and dissected online precisely because of the observers who were there to document it, who watched as federal agents piled atop Pretti and who did not drop their phones when the gunshots rang out.

The work of observers and photographers in Minneapolis right now is as dangerous as it is crucial, because ICE’s presence in Minneapolis is provoking not only physical conflict but an informational conflict.

And it is thanks to the bystander videos of Pretti’s killing that people are trying to hold the administration accountable.

This documentation of ICE’s abuses is not limited to volunteers. The Signal chats activists use to organize throughout the city are also crucial to professional journalists. Richard Tsong-Taatarii’s now iconic photo of a pinned down activist getting pepper sprayed at point blank range circulated widely.

Per Warzel, we can thank ICE Watch’s infrastructure for this photo as well.

Tsong-Taatarii credits these volunteers, many of whom are trying to protect their neighbors, for his now-famous shot. On Wednesday, Tsong-Taatarii had been following Bovino but realized that was “a wild goose chase,” and was alerted by a group to an escalating situation in South Minneapolis. He drove over and got the photo. When I spoke with him on Friday, he told me that protest observers have set up Signal group chats, which help track agents’ movements across the city. He uses the chats to make sure he can be in the right place at the right time to document what is happening.

And while we are already seeing the Minneapolis community-based resistance put some wins on the board, including the exit of Greg Bovino from the city and ICE’s retreat from Maine, Fahlstrom warns people not to get complacent and urges other cities to get organized.

“The core message from Minneapolis is that people everywhere need to prepare for this. This isn’t the last time this is going to happen. Unless communities are talking to each other about how to protect each other from this kind of invasion, they’re going to be on their back foot and caught unaware.

“I encourage people across the country to organize on their blocks, know their neighbors. Because that has been, far and away, the thing that has kept people safe. What it’s meant is family after family hasn’t been torn apart.”

Activists are already organizing in cities around the country, from Portland to Chicago to New York City.

According to NextCity.org,

As these ICE raids cause significant displacement by forcibly separating families and inciting fear, communities are self-mobilizing to protect themselves from unexpected ICE visits to people’s homes, schools and workplaces.

And some cities — 10 of them are included here — have felt ICE’s presence more than others. In many of those places, people are fighting back by teaching about immigrant rights, training people on how to watch ICE, and strategizing in other ways.

For those who want to get involved in their own city, activists are encouraged to track ICE using ICEinmyarea.org and to submit reports of ICE sightings using the “SALUTE” format: SIZE, ACTIVITY, LOCATION, UNIFORM, TIME, EQUIPMENT.

Neighbors Helping Neighbors

The “We Keep Us Safe” mantra of the ICE Watch movement is not limited to simply whistleblowing and recording ICE’s worst abuses.

A large part of the volunteer training in the Twin Cities has been devoted to helping neighbors, particularly immigrant communities and people of color who are understandably frightened to leave their homes during the occupation of their city.

As Minnesota Public Radio described it,

Across Minnesota, people are supporting immigrant neighbors who are too afraid to leave their homes.

Volunteers are delivering groceries and giving rides. They’re helping with rent and pitching in with everything from dog walking to legal services.

The support is grassroots, organized through local neighborhood groups, congregations and school communities.

Fahlstrom spoke about this aspect of the anti-ICE infrastructure with Chris Hayes this week.

“The way that we can come together to organize the PTA at a school, the same people are coming out…The same people are running dispatches, are dispatching people to emergencies, they’re running frankly the equivalent of an underground railroad across the city of Minneapolis and beyond to protect our neighbors and make sure that they have food, they have rides, they can get to medical appointments, going home to home.”

“In Minneapolis, we had the experience of the George Floyd uprising in 2020 and so those systems of care that came together in that time persisted and were able to be amplified by 50 times more this time.”

Extraordinary examples of this sort of neighbor-driven community care bubbled up in the aftermath of Nick Shirley’s video purporting to expose Somali childcare center fraud in Minneapolis. After the video went viral, many immigrant staff at these centers were either arrested or too scared to show up to work. So neighbors stepped up.

According to The 19th News,

Over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend this month, a group of about 20 grandparents and parents showed up to a two-hour training at one of Uribe’s day cares to learn how they could step in as volunteers should the school lose additional staff and be unable to meet teacher-to-student ratios. (By law, day cares must adhere to strict ratios for child safety; in Minnesota there can be no more than four infants to every teacher, for example.) The parents and grandparents who showed up learned about shaken baby syndrome, how to do accident reporting and how to ensure kids are accounted for at all times should they ever need to be called on to step in.

The parents, Uribe said, are also delivering food to staff, taking parking lot shifts to watch for ICE and ensure teachers get safely to and from school, and standing watch in the lobby.

Other examples of this abound. Also from The 19th:

Sarah Quinn, a mom of two in Minneapolis, said parents at her older daughter’s elementary school had been working together to take food to immigrant students and their families since ICE first showed up in the city in early December. When reports that ICE was patrolling near the schools started to circulate, parents stepped in to give kids rides to school using spare booster seats and car seats. They got an estimated 50 kids back to school in December through those efforts.

And:

Parents started to set up school patrols, stationing volunteers in the parking lot and in their neighborhoods to make sure kids, families and staff could come and go to school safely. The number of parents doing food deliveries to other families’ homes shot up.

“People said ‘jump’ and we all kind of said, ‘How high?’” Quinn said. “As parents who care about our neighbors and who love this part of Minneapolis life that is diverse and involves immigrant families who have really just been responding as neighbors.”

MPR’s piece highlights local resources available to vulnerable communities, including Neighbors Helping Neighbors, which, per MPR, “coordinates volunteers to provide rides, groceries and other support to their neighbors in the metro area.”

From Neighbors Helping Neighbors’ website:

What began as a small network of friends in South Minneapolis quickly grew. In our first week, we averaged 7 requests per day. Now we’re receiving 10x that—over 70 requests daily—spanning the metro area to St. Cloud.

We’ve grown to 1,800+ volunteer applications, 550+ vetted carers, and are now processing rent assistance for 180+ families. We continue to evolve our processes to be safer, more efficient, and more impactful.

They also highlight the leadership of and excellent work done by COPAL, a Minneapolis nonprofit serving Minnesota’s Latino communities, and one of its projects, the Immigrant Defense Network. Resources for people interested in supporting immigrant neighbors in the Twin Cities can be found here. Navigators also answer a hotline at 612-255-3112.

General Strike

On Friday, January 23, Minneapolis-St. Paul largely shut down, with an estimated 700 local businesses closing for the day as an act of solidarity with a general strike organized by residents, faith leaders and labor unions.

As signs on closed businesses read, “General strike. No work, no school, no shopping, ICE out.”

The goal of the strike, as The New York Times put it, was to “demonstrate the resolve of residents” and “demand an end to the sweeping immigration crackdown that has roiled the Twin Cities for weeks.” And it was a remarkable feat of organizing.

The action on Friday, which unfolded in subzero temperatures, was the most widespread and organized demonstration since federal agents arrived in Minneapolis more than six weeks ago. It was aimed at pressuring the federal government to pull thousands of its agents from the streets.

Businesses, many of them locally owned, closed their doors to halt economic activity, saying that losing a day’s revenue was worth the cost to be part of the effort to end the immigration enforcement.

At 2pm that day, more than 10,000 protesters peacefully marched to the Target Center in temperatures that reached -20 F including wind chill. There, according to local KSTP News, “people were greeted in the arena by a live DJ, local musician Jeremy Messersmith, and a more than hour-long program, featuring faith leaders, speakers from national labor unions, and messages from immigrants who have had experiences with ICE.”

As for what drove so many people out on such a frigid day, once again, the theme of community was central. As KSTP News reported,

One woman told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that she’s been battling cancer, and most of her nurses are Somali.

“I wouldn’t have survived without them, and Trump just says, ‘We don’t want these people here,’ and how dare he? How dare he?” said Natalie Berg through tears.

And per The Times,

“I got emotional,” said Butchy Austin, a founder of Brass Solidarity, a racial justice activist street band, as he looked at the crowd of thousands. “There’s resistance and a level of fight, but it’s a fight stemming from love for our neighbors.”

And as Randy Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said during the program at The Target Center,

“We are meeting ICE violence with nonviolence. We are meeting their chaos and cruelty with passion and community.”

Now organizers are pushing to expand that general strike nationwide this week.

Per NationalShutdown.org:

The people of the Twin Cities have shown the way for the whole country – to stop ICE’s reign of terror, we need to SHUT IT DOWN. On Friday, January 30, join a nationwide day of no school, no work and no shopping.

The entire country is shocked and outraged at the brutal killings of Alex Pretti, Renee Good, Silverio Villegas González, and Keith Porter Jr. by federal agents. While Trump and other right wing politicians are slandering them as “terrorists”, the video evidence makes it clear beyond all doubt: they were gunned down in broad daylight simply for exercising their First Amendment right to protest mass deportation. Every day, ICE, Border Patrol and other enforcers of Trump’s racist agenda are going into our communities to kidnap our neighbors and sow fear. It is time for us to all stand up together in a nationwide shutdown and say enough is enough!

During a recent film press tour, Edward Norton echoed the need for such a nationwide action.

“We can not act like this insn’t happening. I think what they are doing in Minnesota with the strike needs to expand. I think we should be talking about a national general economic strike until this is over.”

Then on Saturday, there will be an “ICE Out Of Everywhere” national day of action, led by 50501.

50501 is mobilizing for the “ICE Out of Everywhere” national day of action on Saturday, January 31st, 2025, where communities in all 50 states will come together to protest outside of ICE detention centers, ICE field offices, airlines flying out ICE victims, and Congressional Offices to demand the blocking of DHS funding until ICE and CBP are permanently removed from our streets, the abolition of ICE and dismantling of DHS, and justice for the murders of Renee Nicole Good, Alex Pretti, and Geraldo Campos.

Understandably, not everyone who stands in solidarity with the mission of these actions will be able to participate. For many small businesses, shutting down for a day is simply not an option, particularly in this economic climate. And marching in subzero temperatures is not an option for many either. For those who would like to participate, you can find events near you here and here.

You Know It’s Working When…

The right-wing X influencer crowd is not handling the reality of all this progressive movement building and community infrastructure on display in Minneapolis all that well.

MAGA shitposter and self-proclaimed “undercover infiltrator” Cam Higby proudly announced recently that he had “infiltrated” some of the Minneapolis Signal groups organizing anti-ICE actions.

The response on the right has been extremely telling. As Ben Lorber of Religion Dispatches documented, on one hand many X users are expressing skepticism that this level of organizing on the left is truly grassroots-driven:

Heads swirled and grasped for conspiracy theories to make sense of it. “Deep state operation here. This isn’t a bunch of randoms,” and: “Follow the money and it’ll eventually lead back to the CCP.”

But others were quite disturbed and a bit in awe.

Over and over, they issued breathless versions of the same refrain:

“The Left is infinitely times [sic] more organized than the Right.”

“This is highly organized and efficient.”

“The right wing has nothing like this. Anywhere in the country. for any purpose.”

And it’s clear why. As Lorber notes,

Clearly, the Right is unable to comprehend (or unwilling to admit to) the organic strength of grassroots movement-building—the reality that neighbors are committed to showing up for each other with dedication and fortitude, out of solidarity and love.

They can’t dream of the level of grassroots mobilization on display from just a single unvetted ICE Watch Signal-chat in one city. The solidarity on display terrifies them—as it should. So they cling as tightly as they can to the levers of state and institutional power (along with their massive funding streams) yet they’re haunted by the realization that in the long run, this may not be enough.

And it appears it’s not.

We all know Donald Trump only retreats when he receives forceful pushback. Surely, neither he nor MAGA ever imagined such an impactful force of resistance would be able to bubble up from the left in Minneapolis (and increasingly around the country.)

As videos and images of ICE’s campaign of terror, including the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, have spread online and horrified the nation and the world, the resolve of the regime is cracking. Key Republicans are speaking up, ICE appears in retreat, and Trump himself finally seems to be acknowledging limits to his authoritarian power. And it’s all thanks to a force that’s even greater than him: the power of community looking out for their neighbors.