In a major escalation of Trump’s plans to establish a presidential dictatorship, multiple outlets reported on Monday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to flood Minneapolis with an additional 1,000 federal agents, intensifying what is already the largest federal immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota history. Since the start of “Operation Metro Surge” in early December, more than 2,000 immigration Gestapo have been deployed to the city as part of this occupation.
The ongoing mass deportations and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) murder of Renee Nicole Good on January 7 have provoked widespread anger in Minnesota and across the United States. Over the weekend, protests were held in every major US city and hundreds of rural towns in opposition to fascism and the murderous immigration Gestapo.
In defiance of immigration agents and threats from the Trump administration, workers, students and residents have continued to resist kidnapping operations. On Monday, hundreds of students at multiple high schools across the Minneapolis metro area engaged in peaceful protests and walkouts in opposition to the immigration police and the murder of Good.
At Roosevelt High School, hundreds of students walked out of class and held an afternoon rally. The school was the site of a violent kidnapping operation last week that ended with several students suffering tear gas exposure and at least one school worker detained. At Monday’s rally, students chanted against ICE and carried signs reading “Beat the heat, melt the ICE,” “No human is illegal,” and “ICE is the domestic terrorist.”
Students at Maple Grove High School also walked out of class but remained on campus in a show of solidarity with immigrants and Good. Ria De Looze, a senior at Maple Grove, told CBS News that her “church has been getting threats because it was associated with Renee Good.” She added, “I know a lot of my friends who might not necessarily be immigrants are feeling fear just on the possibility of being racially profiled.” Looze said the “heart of the message is to express our need for justice.”
Hundreds of Roseville Area High School students marched and held a protest on the Hamline Avenue pedestrian bridge. Photos show students packing the overpass, bearing signs opposing ICE and demanding justice for Good.
In the wake of the killing of Good, Trump administration officials have doubled down on their slanders of the slain mother as a “domestic terrorist” and a “deranged leftist,” while glorifying her killer, Jonathan Ross, as “brave.” As of this writing, Ross faces no charges. In an appearance on Fox News Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt smeared Good as a “deranged lunatic woman” and falsely claimed that she was attempting to use her “vehicle as a weapon,” which she asserted “justifies” the government’s claim that it was “domestic terrorism.”
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein obtained Department of Homeland Security documents on “Operation Metro Surge” indicating that the agency is seeking volunteers for the occupation. Klippenstein reposted a leaked memo from Border Patrol Acting Assistant Chief Joshua Andre Post requesting 300 personnel to be surged to Minneapolis. Klippenstein reported that agents are reluctant to volunteer for the operation. He cited an unnamed “high level career official at Homeland Security headquarters in Washington,” who said there is “genuine fear that ICE’s heavy handedness and the rhetoric from Washington are creating a condition where the officers’ lives are in danger rather than the other way around.”
Every day in Minneapolis–St. Paul, immigration thugs are violating workers’ democratic rights and inflicting violence on those who peacefully protest or record their operations. In scenes reminiscent of Nazi Germany, heavily armed agents of the state are going door to door in residential neighborhoods, demanding documentation to prove citizenship and serving administrative warrants and orders of final removal.
Furious that residents continue to peacefully film and follow ICE kidnapping operations, Border Patrol agents on Monday abruptly stopped their vehicles at a busy intersection and deployed chemical munitions, gassing dozens of bystanders and reporters. After deploying the tear gas, the agents quickly drove away, leaving a cloud of stinging and nauseating gas.
In an interview with Status Coup, Skye, a US Marine veteran, accused ICE agents of ramming their vehicle and assaulting them. “We were following them from a safe distance, following ICE agents. They stopped in the middle of the road and reversed on 62. They tried to ram our car.”
Skye said the agents then broke their window, assaulted them, and choked them. “They said, ‘Have you not learned? This is why we killed that lesbian bitch.’”
“They pushed my face on the ground. They put the cuffs on as tight as possible to the point where it took six agents to try to get them off.”
Skye added that the agents “called me a bunch of derogatory names, calling me ‘it.’ They tried to break my ankle. When he turned my ankle all the way around, I screamed and he said, ‘Yeah, I bet you fucking like that, don’t you?’”
Skye concluded, “I took an oath, and it is the oath that they are spitting on and stomping on. This is not Germany. They are Nazis. They are Gestapo. They think they are above the law. They do not care.”
Multiple news agencies filmed masked and heavily armed immigration agents using a battering ram to break down the door of a residential home before kidnapping a man inside at gunpoint. Video posted by a family member shows the thuggish and illegal character of the operation.
The agents did not provide a warrant before smashing the door and entering the home with semi-automatic rifles and tasers. In a nearly five-minute video of the incident, a woman repeatedly demands to see a warrant but is not shown one until after the target has been handcuffed. Agents eventually produced an administrative warrant issued by DHS itself. The document, signed by an immigration officer rather than a judge, does not authorize forced entry into private homes and permits arrests only in public areas.
The kidnapping operations are targeting workers regardless of immigration status. In video taken Monday, CBP agents are seen approaching drivers in their cars and demanding documentation.
Dozens of videos are circulating on social media showing residents confronting immigration Gestapo, demanding they leave.
Seeking to prevent a social explosion, in response to the federal occupations, Democratic officials in Minnesota and Illinois on Monday filed lawsuits against the Trump administration seeking to halt the kidnapping operations. At a press conference, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said the occupation violates the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which affirms that the federal government possesses only powers enumerated in the Constitution, with all other powers belonging to the states or to the people.
“This is in essence a federal invasion of the Twin Cities and Minnesota,” Ellison said. “It must stop.”
The Minnesota lawsuit states that thousands of “armed and masked DHS agents have stormed the Twin Cities to conduct militarized raids and carry out dangerous, illegal and unconstitutional stops and arrests in sensitive public places, including schools and hospitals, all under the guise of lawful immigration enforcement.” It notes that the actions of DHS officials and agents “appear designed to provoke community outrage, sow fear and inflict emotional distress.”
The “unlawful tactics” used by DHS agents “have left members of plaintiffs’ communities afraid to shop, go to work, attend school, access basic government services or otherwise live their lives. They have also resulted in school closures across the Twin Cities due to safety concerns.” The lawsuit states that the occupation has nothing to do with “fraud” but is motivated by Trump’s desire “to retaliate against perceived political enemies.” It further notes that in a January 9 interview, Trump falsely claimed that he won a majority of votes in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 Minnesota presidential elections.
The lawsuit filed by the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago likewise accuses the federal government of unleashing “an organized bombardment” on the state and its largest city. It states that Border Patrol agents under the command of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Gregory Bovino “have acted as occupiers rather than officers of the law, randomly and brutally stopping and questioning residents, separating parents from their children, detaining without warrant or probable cause citizens and non citizens alike, and using tear gas and other chemical weapons in urban environments against unsuspecting bystanders, injuring dozens, including children, the elderly and local police officers.”
While these lawsuits make their way through the courts, the Trump administration is deliberately creating the conditions to invoke the Insurrection Act and move toward the declaration of martial law. The working class cannot rely on the capitalist courts, which have already granted Trump sweeping immunity for “official acts while in office,” or the Democratic Party to defend democratic rights.
The only social force capable of halting the drive toward dictatorship is the working class, organized independently and imbued with socialist consciousness. The elimination of the immigration Gestapo requires the overthrow of the capitalist system itself.
The fight to hold Good’s killers accountable and to end the occupation of Minneapolis requires the organized, independent intervention of the working class—the social force that produces everything and whose interests are fundamentally opposed to the oligarchy’s assault on democratic rights and social conditions.
Opposition to the escalating assault on democratic rights must be linked to a struggle against the capitalist system itself and the implementation of an international strategy that unites the struggles of workers in the United States with those of the global working class.