WASHINGTON—An ICE agent’s killing of a 37-year-old mother of three, Renee Nicole Good, in Minneapolis, and the ICE shooting of two other people in Portland, Ore., have sparked massive anti-ICE and anti-Trump protests in more than 1,000 cities nationwide. In some states, lawmakers are pushing anti-ICE bills in response to the violence.
The number of “ICE Out” protests had been slowly growing in the run-up to the weekend of Jan. 10-11 but skyrocketed after agents fired into the Honda SUV driven by Good. She was hit in the head and killed. In her honor, the demonstrations were rebranded “ICE Out for Good.”
One group sponsoring the protests, United We Dream, put the death toll from ICE agents and their raids at 32 nationally since the Trump administration unleashed ICE agents nationwide.
ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is conducting mass roundups, many of them violent, of people they profile as Latino, Somali in the case of Minnesota, along with whomever else they wish, according to groups opposing their actions. U.S. citizens have reportedly been among those detained in some cases and are now, with the shooting of Good, on the list of those killed.
In the course of their operations, ICE agents have also targeted bystanders, observers, business owners, and journalists, going beyond those they racially profile. Good, for instance, was white, as was her spouse, who was on the scene but uninjured. The family dog was in the back seat, and the glove compartment was full of stuffed animals they intended for local children.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey also complained that when ICE grabs people out of cars, it has left them sometimes still running but in park, in the middle of the street, endangering everyone around. He reported that at least one pet dog left in a car necessitated a call to Animal Control by police to take care of the animal.
ICE’s “Operation Metro Surge” flooded the Twin Cities with 2,000 agents, and Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, said in the wake of protests that she’d send many more. The government has added as many as 1,000 agents since last week and has stepped up the raids since the killing of Good. Besides Minneapolis, big roundups and, concurrently, demonstrations, have taken place in Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, New York City, Memphis, and even in small towns and on rural farms.
Speakers at many of the protests labelled Good’s killing “murder,” while Trump administration officials hit back accusing Good of being “a domestic terrorist.”
Two prominent workers’ groups, the National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON) and Workers Circle, were part of the sponsoring coalition for the protests held this weekend. Other sponsors included Democracy Forward, Indivisible, MoveOn, the ACLU, Public Citizen, United We Dream, Voto Latino, and 50501. The number of demonstrations may even be well above the reported 1,000 because even in a small state like Connecticut, there are reported to have been at least 24 demonstrations.
In Minneapolis, Somalia residents have begun attending the demonstrations in force and taking action to defend one another from ICE agents, including one group who surrounded two agents trying to detain someone and chased them away, shouting “Out!” Fear of ICE agents has been particularly high in those communities with the barrage of Trump attacks on them recently. Some told MS-NOW reporters that they felt a particular responsibility to show solidarity with everyone else in their city.
“We honor the memory of Renee Nicole Good,” said NDLON co-Executive Director Pablo Alvaradi. “We stand in solidarity with her family and the people of Minneapolis who are mourning her senseless and tragic death. She was shot by ICE agents who should never have been there – killed by masked gunmen who continually are disturbing the peace in that beautiful, peaceful city with acts of aggression, hostility, and violence.
“As we honor Renee Nicole Good, we call upon others to do the same by recommitting ourselves to peace, nonviolence, and justice. And as we grieve for Renee, we grieve for the countless others this administration has attacked and injured, chased and tormented in custody. And we say to ICE: Get out. Leave our cities. Put away your weapons. Leave us in peace.
“The White House is working to inflame outrage and provoke more violence with lies and false accusations. We must not take their bait.”
The ICE agent killed Good, “a U.S. citizen exercising her fundamental rights,” said Workers Circle CEO Ann Toback. “It is a stark warning to all of us about where unchecked power leads. This administration’s expanding use of force against our neighbors erodes the very rights and safety that define who we are as a nation.”
“As a Jewish organization, we know what unchecked power has done in the past,” said Toback, whose group was founded to help refugees who fled Czarist-sponsored Russian pogroms (massacres) more than a century ago, before the Russian Revolution in 1917. “We must not let that take root here, today.
“Now, more than ever, we must demand transparency, accountability, and policies that protect human life, human dignity, and civil liberties for everyone. Allowing federal forces to act without independent oversight undermines justice and threatens the safety of us all.”
Cameron Kritikos, a Minneapolis grocery worker, told National Public Radio he’s worried ICE will increase its violence. “If more ICE officers are deployed to the streets, especially a place here where there’s very clear public opposition to the terrorizing of our neighborhoods, I’m nervous that there’s going to be more violence,” he said. “I’m nervous there are going to be more clashes with law enforcement officials, and at the end of the day, I think that’s not what anyone wants.”
ICE complained that “noisy people” were demonstrating, chanting, and banging pots and pans outside Twin Cities hotels that housed its agents. It also claimed one agent was hit by a thrown snowball. That prompted Mayor Frey, who had denounced Trump’s characterizations of the murder of Good as “b—s—,” to respond on social media that the city would arrest anyone who causes property damage or endangers others. “Except,” he said, “they aren’t. We are standing up to Donald Trump’s chaos not with our own brand of chaos, but with care and unity,” Frey wrote on social media.
The street protests weren’t the only reaction against ICE. State legislators are drafting measures to ban or evict ICE. Illinois State Sen. Laura Fine, D-Glenview, who is running for an open congressional seat in Illinois, filed legislation that would bar anyone hired by ICE under Trump from obtaining employment in state or local law enforcement.
Chicago, a city Fine hopes to represent, was the site of ICE’s enormous “Operation Midway Blitz,” which has been shut down, though possibly only for the winter. The suffering in Chicago continues, nevertheless. There are reports that people, rather than face harassment and danger, have self-deported, leaving behind friends, neighbors, and family in deep shock about their fate and saddened about the holes left in their own lives now.
“Praying for them is good but not enough,” a pastor of a church attended by one such family said. “We must do everything we can to stop this attack on the people of God,” he said. “The demonstrations must continue to grow across this country.” In one case, a husband and wife with two young children, one of whom was born in the U.S. and therefore a U.S. citizen, left the country and returned to the home country of their parents.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signaled she’ll support legislation to allow residents to bring civil lawsuits against federal immigration officials for constitutional violations. And sources told People’s World that Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, is considering legislation to ban local law enforcement officials from cooperating.
New Jersey State Sen. Britney Timberlake, D-East Orange, wants to write state restrictions on cooperation with ICE into law. Gubernatorial orders “now limit state and local police from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, bar the government and hospitals from collecting immigration information and set up guidelines on how health care facilities, schools and other institutions should respond to federal immigration authorities,” Politico reports.
“Anyone who is a descendant of a Holocaust survivor will tell you this is how it starts,” Timberlake said in a committee hearing the day after ICE killed Good. “If you don’t believe me, just ask the children of Good.” A Trump regime Homeland Security spokeswoman objected. Timberlake shot back, “If you want to stop comparisons to the Gestapo and Nazi Germany, stop behaving that way.”
It’s not only in blue states that legislators are taking action. Tennessee State Rep. Gabby Salinas, D-Memphis, filed legislation to ban ICE enforcement on school and church property. Memphis is the scene of another big ICE operation, which the red state’s governor and legislature welcome—and it impacts a city with a majority of people of color. Salinas, however, admits it may not get far in the heavily Republican and heavily gerrymandered state legislature.
The Department of Homeland Security is claiming that its attacks on the streets of Minneapolis are its “biggest ever immigration enforcement operation” and brushes off the murder of Good as an “act of self-defense” by a driver who “weaponized her vehicle to attack officers.” With multiple videos possibly disputing that narrative, the Trump administration has declared that only the FBI control is allowed to investigate, with all local authorities frozen out of the probe.
People on the streets in Minneapolis see things as being vastly different from what the Trump administration is claiming. Protester Connor Maloney told AP that he was demonstrating to support his community because he is angry about what ICE is doing. “Almost daily I see them harassing people,” he said. “It’s just sickening that this is happening all around us.”
The protesters in Minneapolis are contending with subfreezing temperatures, accumulated snow and ice, and some were seen some carrying signs saying “De-ICE Minnesota” and “ICE melts in Minnesota.”
The huge protests in Minnesota did not stop ICE from continuing its harassment of people in the city, however. An AP photographer witnessed, a few miles from where protests were going on, a group of heavily armed ICE agents approach a person they said was following them. Two agents pulled out long guns and pointed them at him and ordered him to stop following them. They said, “This is your first and final warning.” They drove off after that.
At another location in the area, the AP reported that agents pointed their fingers at journalists and warned them to stay away, as they detained someone coming out of a home improvement store.
Elected officials are also not left off the list of people mistreated by ICE. Three House members from the state of Minnesota made an attempt to tour the ICE headquarters in the state’s federal building. Ten minutes after entering, they were forced to leave, they told viewers on MS-NOW Sunday.
Reps. Ilhan Omar, Kell Morrison, and Angie Craig were the three denied their right to inspect the facility. They were told there is a “new policy” requiring lawmakers to give seven-day notice if they wish to inspect an immigration facility. That “policy” is a violation of the law that allows members of Congress to conduct their oversight responsibility at any time.
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