The summary execution of Renee Good by masked ICE and DHS agents ignited a social explosion. It transformed the popular community watch groups keeping tabs on ICE operations into a general strike of 100,000 on January 23.
The very next day, ICE murdered Alex Pretti, sparking more mass demonstrations and solidarity actions across the country.
These mass mobilizations against the federal government’s assault on working-class neighborhoods compelled ICE to retreat from Minneapolis, at least for now. In light of the success of direct mass action, all the whining speeches of local and state Democratic politicians were shown to have been empty posturing.
Assault on democratic rights
Trump claims he’s waging a law enforcement operation against rapists and murderers. This has been exposed as an outrageous lie. His brazen falsehood has only one purpose: to prejudice the minds of native-born or naturalized workers against the victims of his assault.
Tracreports says that “50,259 out of 68,289—or 73.6% held in ICE detention have no criminal conviction, according to data current as of February 7, 2026. Many of those convicted committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations.”
The overwhelming majority of those kidnapped by ICE are ordinary working people simply trying to live their lives and support their families through honest labor.
Immigrant workers are woven into the social fabric of the country, playing essential productive roles in a variety of industries, most notably construction, transportation, meatpacking, food and hospitality service, and agriculture.
Since immigrant workers have been integrated into every American city, immigration cops can only accomplish their nefarious aims through indiscriminate attacks on working-class neighborhoods. In violating the rights of immigrant workers, ICE has violated the rights of everyone else.
On paper, everyone residing in the US—not just American citizens—enjoy constitutional protections including due process, equal protection under law, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion.
But in practice, every democratic freedom enshrined in the Bill of Rights, taken for granted by popular opinion as constitutionally guaranteed, has been systematically attacked by the capitalist government—without apology and without remorse.
For example, the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution states:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
And yet, video recordings show gangs of masked federal thugs breaking into houses, dragging unidentified “foreign-looking” people into the freezing cold practically nude, without warrants of any kind. These became everyday scenes in Minneapolis. Feds would chase down any target they thought would fill their arrest quotas, without probable cause of any sort.
The First Amendment to the US Constitution says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
But videos of masked agents pepper-spraying and teargassing peaceable neighborhood watch groups became daily fare on social media. In the wake of their withdrawal, they have added hundreds more arrests of protesters to the more than 3,000 arrests reported by late January. Most spectacularly, bourgeois journalist Don Lemon was arrested for the “crime” of reporting live from the scene of a protest in a church against an ICE agent serving as a church official.
The mass movement in Minneapolis–St. Paul has forced the drawdown of ICE forces. The next task of the movement is to campaign for the dropping of charges against protesters and observers.
The Second Amendment says:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Although not part of an organized militia, Veterans Administration nurse Alex Pretti was murdered by ICE agents for legal possession of a firearm. He was forced to the ground and disarmed for the “crime” of assisting a fellow protester who had been pepper-sprayed. This public execution has even divided MAGA forces, contradicting their strong support for the right to bear arms.
The Sixth Amendment states:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Instead, arrested detainees are whisked away by masked gangs in unmarked cars. They are flown hundreds of miles away from their point of arrest, hidden from observation. The federal government often denies having detained them at all, and then keeps them isolated from family or legal counsel in de facto concentration camps.
This tactic first came to public attention last year in the case of Rümeysa Öztürk. The Tufts University grad student was targeted for kidnapping and sequestration. What was her “crime”? Expressing solidarity with Palestinians in a university newspaper op-ed.
In fact, she wasn’t charged with any crime at all. Nevertheless, she was still ambushed and arrested—in clear violation of the First Amendment—simply for dissenting from US imperialism’s support for Israeli genocide in Gaza. Nine months later, after intervention by activists, a federal judge finally dismissed her deportation.
Changes in mass consciousness
It is dawning on millions that their “constitutionally guaranteed” rights are not as real as they thought. The revolutionary generation of 250 years ago never expected the federal or state governments to defend the Bill of Rights. These rights were reserved to be used by the working masses to defend themselves against governmental power, whenever that power became abusive. This point has now been reached, as growing numbers are realizing.
For over a decade, liberals have been wailing about an imaginary “rise of fascism” in the person of Trump and his repressive regime. But the mass push back in Minneapolis has shown that Trump cannot wield the power of the state with impunity. And, in fact, the Democratic administrations of Obama and Biden carried out their own massive deportation campaigns—only more quietly.
The three branches of the federal government are deeply divided over how to respond to the specter of popular resistance to this repression. Congresspeople stand in impotent rage when denied access to inspect detention centers. Federal prosecutors are overwhelmed with the sudden case load, and the executive branch’s deportation cases are falling apart in court. Judges have been battling each other over points of law in conflicting decisions. Meanwhile, the victims languish in detention, and their families face dire conditions from lost wages.
Through all of these events, a sea change in mass consciousness is underway. Trump’s assault has lifted the mask veiling the repressive nature of the capitalist state, and has roused a sleeping giant from its slumber. The idea is growing that we are many and they are few.
Still, many are asking: Why is all this happening now? If this is not fascism, what’s going on?
Although Trump’s own hubris and narcissism are secondary factors, this campaign of violence mainly reflects the historic impasse of American imperialism. In a world capitalist order where the power of US imperialism is in relative decline, Trump is trying to retrench to the Americas. Squeezed on the world market by Chinese competition, US capitalists are preparing for big class struggles at home.
There are no solutions to the problems the US capitalists face other than attacking the living standards of workers and slashing government spending on social welfare. The Trump administration has fired a warning shot at the working class: get ready for more, and bigger, class battles.
Labor must take sides
Although numerically weakened in recent times, the labor movement still has important reserves of organized power. The AFL-CIO has 15 million workers organized into 60 unions, and could mobilize to stop the production and distribution of goods and services as a decisive factor in the fight for workers’ rights.
How are the labor leaders responding today? Mostly dead silence. While Minneapolis union leaders grudgingly accepted the need for a general strike, they meekly advised their members to take sick days or PTO instead of mobilizing to shut down production altogether. Why? For fear of violating contractual no-strike clauses and the reactionary Taft-Hartley Act.
Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse for the VA, and a member of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). An immediate mobilization of protest by AFGE members against ICE’s murder of one of their own could have boosted the Minneapolis movement for an all-out general strike. Unfortunately, we have seen little from the AFGE leaders.
One notable exception to the reticence of union leaders to speak out has been David Huerta. He is president of Service Employees International Union–United Service Workers West, organizing some 50,000 janitors and other service workers, many of them migrants or children of migrants.
Huerta is standing trial for protesting an ICE raid on workers at a clothing warehouse in Los Angeles. He was assaulted, pepper-sprayed, thrown to the ground, and arrested. He now faces trial for “interfering” with ICE.
In a recent Huffpost interview, Huerta spoke defiantly:
In Minneapolis, it’s like they took it to another level―another level of resistance …
I firmly believe that the people right now who are in the crosshairs of this administration are going to be the heroes of this democracy.
We, as a labor movement, can no longer act as if there’s not a side to pick, as if somehow … our role is to represent workers, not organize workers. Labor has to be able to lean in and pick the side of justice, righteous justice. We can’t somehow play the middle.
Huerta is right. Working-class leaders have a responsibility to reorganize the labor movement on a class-independent basis. They have a duty to prepare workers for a decisive fight against the capitalists and their government. Democratic rights won in struggle against 18th-century tyranny must be defended by the working class against the modern tyrants who rule today. And the only real way to defend those rights is to use them.
Above all, the hour calls urgently for building a working-class political party to concentrate our immense power against the capitalists. So long as the labor leadership ignores this vital need of the workers’ movement, and continues seeking cover behind liberal capitalist politicians, the greater the danger will grow.
The workers of the Twin Cities have shown that big events can transform mass consciousness from one moment to the next, and that elevated consciousness can bring mass mobilization. But for that consciousness to be transformed, in turn, into a power for effective change, it must be organized and led by a party willing to go beyond the narrow and artificial limits of capitalism.