Thousands in Minneapolis brave bitter cold to protest ICE crackdown

Protesters march successful icy conditions to protestation against the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies, demanding ICE permission the city.

Thousands of demonstrators person braved bitter acold to march done the streets of Minneapolis successful the United States and request an extremity to President Donald Trump’s migration crackdown successful their city.

Friday’s march started with temperatures arsenic debased arsenic minus 29 Celsius (minus 20 Fahrenheit), with organisers saying that arsenic galore arsenic 50,000 radical took to the streets, a fig that could not beryllium independently verified.

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Many demonstrators aboriginal gathered indoors astatine the Target Center, a sports arena with a capableness of 20,000.

Organisers and participants said dozens of businesses crossed Minnesota closed for the time arsenic portion of the “ICE OUT!” amusement of defiance that organisers billed arsenic a wide strike.

Workers headed to thoroughfare protests and marches, which followed weeks of sometimes convulsive confrontations betwixt US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and protesters opposed to Trump’s surge.

“It is 23 degrees beneath zero but the stores are closed and these demonstrators are retired braving the coldest time connected grounds since 2019 each to nonstop a elemental connection to ICE: Get Out,” Al Jazeera’s John Hendren said, reporting from Minneapolis.

Just a time earlier, US Vice President JD Vance visited Minneapolis successful a objection of support for ICE officers and to inquire section leaders and activists to trim tensions, saying ICE was carrying retired an important ngo to detain migration violators.

In 1 of the much melodramatic protests, section constabulary arrested dozens of clergy members who sang hymns and prayed arsenic they knelt connected a roadworthy astatine Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, calling for Trump to retreat the 3,000 national instrumentality enforcement officers sent to the area.

Organisers said their demands included ineligible accountability for the ICE cause who shot and killed Renee Good, a US citizen, successful her car this period arsenic she monitored ICE activities.

They ignored commands to wide the roadworthy by officers from section constabulary departments, who arrested and zip-tied dozens of the protesters, without resistance, earlier putting them onto buses.

Organisers said astir 100 clergy members were arrested.

‘Largest strike’

Faith successful Minnesota, a nonprofit advocacy radical that helped organise the protest, said the clergy were besides calling attraction to airdrome and hose workers, who they said had been detained by ICE astatine work. The radical asked that hose companies “stand with Minnesotans successful calling for ICE to instantly extremity its surge successful the state”.

Across the state, bars, restaurants and shops were closing for the day, organisers said, successful what was intended to beryllium the largest show yet of absorption to the national government’s surge.

“Make nary mistake, we are facing a afloat national concern by the United States authorities done the limb of ICE connected unceded Dakota land,” said Rachel Dionne-Thunder, vice president of the Indigenous Protector Movement.

She was 1 of a bid of Indigenous, religious, labour and assemblage leaders to speak, calling connected ICE to retreat and for a thorough probe into Good’s shooting.

Trump, a Republican, was elected successful 2024 mostly connected his level of enforcing migration laws, with a committedness to ace down connected convulsive criminals, saying his predecessor, Democratic President Joe Biden, was excessively lax successful borderline security.

But Trump’s assertive deployment of national instrumentality enforcement into Democratic-led cities and states has further spurred governmental polarisation successful the US, particularly since the shooting of Good, the detention of a US national who was taken from his location successful his underwear, and the detention of schoolchildren, including a five-year-old boy.

The galore Fortune 500 companies that telephone Minnesota location person refrained from nationalist statements astir the migration raids.