5 Escalation Tactics ICE Out Could Borrow From Labor Strike History

A hundred Mennonites walked into a Target store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and started singing hymns. They weren’t protesting—they were using a strategy with deep roots in American labor history. The coordinated sit-ins at more than two dozen Target stores across the country in February 2026 represented the latest version of a strategy that’s been forcing corporate and political change for nearly a century.

The catalyst was stark: Border Patrol agents detained two U.S. citizens who worked at a Target store in Richfield, Minnesota on January 8, 2026. Video of federal agents forcibly restraining the employees and shoving them into an SUV went viral. This happened during Operation Metro Surge, which had deployed thousands of ICE and Border Patrol agents across Minnesota since November 2025, resulting in multiple civilian shootings and widespread community opposition.

Rather than march on federal buildings, organizers chose a different target: Target’s corporate headquarters in Minneapolis. The company is Minnesota’s fourth-largest employer, and its red bullseye logo appears on jerseys and stadiums throughout the state. If activists could make Target’s silence on ICE operations costly enough, they reasoned, pressure from the company might accomplish what direct confrontation with federal authorities couldn’t.

What the Campaign Looked Like

The sit-ins unfolded systematically. On January 31, crowds occupied stores in Washington D.C., Chicago, and New York. The next day, over 100 Mennonites gathered at the Lancaster location, singing Christian hymns and disrupting shopping operations before police arrived. On February 2, demonstrators fanned out to 23 separate locations in the Twin Cities.

The demands were specific. Protesters wanted the retailer to publicly call for ICE to leave Minnesota, declare itself a “Fourth Amendment Workplace” by posting signs denying entrance to immigration agents without judicial warrants, and lobby Congress to defund ICE. CEO Michael Fiddelke, who’d officially started the job on February 2, declined to meet these demands. Instead, he joined 60 other Minnesota CEOs in signing an open letter calling for “immediate de-escalation of tensions”—wording protesters dismissed as corporate speak for doing nothing.

The group of organizations behind the effort was unusually broad. ICE Out Minnesota coordinated much of the work, bringing together immigrant-led groups like Unidos Minnesota, faith communities including Mennonite Action, and union organizations. Reverend Joanna Lawrence Shenk, who coordinated Mennonite Action organizing in western states, estimated that more than 1,000 congregation members participated in demonstrations in multiple cities by the weekend’s end.

Workers themselves played a key role. At the Dinkytown store, about 16 workers—three-quarters of those scheduled—called out sick on January 23 to participate in a statewide “no work, no school, no shopping” action. When workers from that same store walked off the job on January 30, about 60 community members met them outside, chanting “Fuck ICE, shut it down, every store, every town.”

The Sit-Down Strike Playbook

The Flint sit-down strike of 1936-37 established the template. On December 30, 1936, General Motors workers occupied Fisher Body Plant Number One in Flint, Michigan. Rather than picketing outside where police could attack them and the company could hire replacements, they stayed inside. For 44 days.

The strikers established their own government within the plant, electing a mayor and civic officials to maintain order. They expanded systematically—by January 1, 1937, they’d taken control of Chevy Plant Number Four, GM’s largest facility. After those 44 days, GM President Alfred P. Sloan announced a $25 million wage increase and union recognition. Within two weeks, 87 sit-down strikes erupted in Detroit alone.

The Greensboro sit-ins of 1960 adapted the tactic for retail spaces. On February 1, 1960, four Black college students sat at a Woolworth’s lunch counter and politely asked for service. When refused due to segregation policies, they stayed. The next day, more joined. By the fourth, over 300 people filled the entire lunch counter area, including three white female students from a nearby college. By the sixth, over 1,400 students voted to continue the protests. Both Woolworth’s and Kress agreed to desegregate their lunch counters, years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 mandated it.

The United Farm Workers’ grape boycott of 1965-70 added another dimension: consumer pressure. Rather than striking only in fields, the UFW called on Americans to refuse to purchase non-union grapes. The effort lasted five years and involved coalition-building with religious organizations, particularly younger Catholic clergy. Despite severe violence from growers—who pushed and punched strikers, drove cars toward protesters, and sprayed pesticide equipment at picket lines—the UFW maintained nonviolent discipline. In July 1970, grape growers signed contracts affecting more than 10,000 farm workers.

Why Occupations Work (When They Do)

Researchers call these “dilemma actions”—tactics that put your opponent in a no-win situation. Research on campaigns from 1905-2019 found that campaigns using dilemma actions were significantly more likely to succeed.

If authorities remove peaceful protesters, they risk looking oppressive and generating sympathetic media coverage. If they leave protesters alone, business operations get disrupted and the movement’s demands receive ongoing visibility. The retailer faced this dilemma—allowing protesters to occupy stores made the company look like it was helping ICE, while removing peaceful faith-based protesters through police action risked generating sympathetic coverage.

Research by Brayden King at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management examined 188 boycotts between 1990 and 2005. He found that media attention mattered more than the number of people who stopped shopping. Companies were more likely to give in when the controversy generated extensive press coverage, not when boycotts mobilized the most consumers.

Fear of reputational damage drove concessions more than fear of lost sales. The occupations appeared designed to maximize this pressure: religious sing-alongs rather than conventional chants, geographic spread in multiple states, direct connection to recent ICE killings in Minneapolis, and involvement of workers all created compelling media narratives.

When more disruptive groups are present, support for more moderate groups within the same movement can increase. Recent research found that awareness of radical groups through highly publicized nonviolent disruptive protests can increase public identification with moderate groups. In this case, faith-based protesters singing hymns alongside immigrant rights activists may have created this effect, broadening support beyond the typical activist base.

Five Escalation Tactics from History

Rolling Occupations Instead of One Big Push

The 2026 effort organized simultaneous occupations for one week. History suggests a different approach might work better: rolling strikes. Teachers in Washington state held one-day walkouts in 30 school districts in 1999 and 65 districts in 2015, spreading out the burden on workers while keeping constant pressure on the legislature for many days.

Applied to this context, this would mean occupying stores in one region for a week, then moving to another region, then continuing to a third—creating months-long sustained pressure. This stops the company from treating it as a one-time thing they can wait out.

Supply Chain Disruption

The UFW grape boycott succeeded by attacking growers’ access to both workers and markets simultaneously. Activists could expand by focusing on the logistics companies, warehouses, trucking firms, and cleaning contractors that keep stores functioning.

A coordinated effort could organize warehouse workers, truck drivers, and logistics contractors to refuse servicing locations that lack Fourth Amendment protections for workers and immigrant customers. Since the retailer operates through complex arrangements with numerous contractors, this creates multiple ways to apply pressure. Research on supply chain campaigns demonstrates that pressure on “weak links” in production and distribution networks can be more effective than direct pressure on corporations.

Shareholder Mobilization

The American Federation of Teachers sent the CEO a pointed letter noting that AFT pension funds hold 6.79 million shares of common stock, representing part of $4 trillion in assets held by teacher pension funds. They didn’t use this strategy much.

A coordinated effort could mobilize pension funds, university endowments, and other institutional investors holding significant stock to make public statements saying they’ll only keep investing if the company changes its policies. The apartheid divestment movement of the 1980s demonstrated that coordinated institutional investor pressure can compel policy change. This transforms the dynamic from activists versus management into management versus major capital holders—a pressure corporations take more seriously.

Consumer Visibility and How-To Guides

The Greensboro occupations succeeded partly because what they did was easy to understand and copy in hundreds of cities. Organizers could create clearer how-to guides: simple toolkits specifying demands, protest forms, legal support available, and training on Fourth Amendment rights.

The UFW succeeded by organizing consumer boycotts simple enough that people could participate by merely refusing to purchase one product. Similarly, this movement could encourage consumers nationwide to participate through easy ways to participate: purchasing inexpensive items online and failing to pick them up (forcing the company to absorb losses), photographing instances of ICE activity at stores and sharing with coordinated hashtags, or simply refusing to shop at locations that refuse to post Fourth Amendment workplace signage.

Municipal Partnership

The Greensboro occupations eventually secured support from some white business leaders who saw that supporting desegregation would make them look good. Activists could pursue similar partnerships with city governments by working with sympathetic mayors and city councils to pass ordinances designating retail spaces as “Fourth Amendment Workplaces.”

These ordinances could require that any business receiving municipal contracts or permits refuse access to federal immigration agents without judicial warrants. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz both publicly opposed the federal immigration surge, creating potential partnership opportunities. By codifying Fourth Amendment workplace protections in municipal law, activists could create enforceable local policy while also creating templates for replication in other cities.

What Was Achieved

The occupations succeeded in generating substantial media coverage—a main goal of protests. They received coverage in major wire services, regional news outlets, and local coverage in action cities. The involvement of over 100 Mennonites singing hymns inside a Lancaster store created compelling visual media that made the protest look different from typical protests.

The movement also brought in groups of people who hadn’t previously engaged in direct action. Workers participated despite fear of retaliation. One worker, “Angelina,” described the experience as “fulfilling to see all the people around Minneapolis and Minnesota and all over who joined in on this.” The Mennonite participation brought in people from outside the usual activist groups.

But the response revealed the movement’s limits. CEO Fiddelke declined to meet with protesters and maintained silence on specific demands. The company issued a statement claiming it doesn’t have any formal agreement with ICE, which protesters disputed based on reported observations of ICE using parking lots for staging operations. This dodge let the company avoid changing anything, suggesting one week of occupations was insufficient.

The effort did put public pressure on the company. The AFT letter warned that investor pension funds held substantial stock and suggested the company’s ambiguous position threatened its brand value. The framing of the relationship with Flock Safety surveillance technology—which enables ICE to identify and arrest immigrant customers—was a new way to hold the company responsible, linking complicity to concrete surveillance infrastructure.

By mid-month, the Trump administration announced that Operation Metro Surge was concluding, with border czar Tom Homan announcing a “substantial reduction” of the approximately 2,000 federal agents deployed in Minnesota. Whether this resulted from activist pressure or independent federal decision-making remains unclear.

The Persistence Problem

Policy change typically requires persistence and escalation over months to years, not weeks. The Flint sit-down strike lasted 44 days. The UFW grape boycott lasted five years. The Greensboro occupations continued for months and systematically expanded to additional locations.

Research on boycott effectiveness indicates that most boycotts only partly work or don’t work at all. What makes boycotts work includes sustained duration, media attention, clear identification of the company, and breadth of organizations involved. The effort appeared strong on media attention, clarity, and breadth of organizations. But the one-week duration appears brief relative to the multi-month campaigns that typically achieve policy changes.

If the ICE Out movement maintains momentum, it could transition to sustained rolling occupations lasting months. It could expand supply chain disruption, organizing warehouse workers and logistics contractors. It could pursue shareholder mobilization more aggressively. It could pursue municipal ordinance strategies in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and other cities.

But if the movement stalls, policy change is unlikely without major escalation. And with Operation Metro Surge winding down, the immediate urgency motivating the effort diminishes, potentially making it harder to get people to join and stay involved.

Occupations aren’t magic. They’re tools that work when used with careful planning, sustained over time, and escalated systematically. The movement showed they could organize smart protests across multiple states. Whether it achieves its stated demands will depend on decisions about sustained action and strategic escalation in the months ahead.

The Flint workers didn’t win in a week. The Greensboro students didn’t win in a week. The UFW didn’t win in a week. They won because they refused to stop.

This article analyzes protest and activism tactics for educational purposes. We aim to contribute to effective and ethical efforts across the political spectrum, and we present diverse viewpoints and ideas without endorsement.