Can a One-Day Strike Change Policy? What Research Says About ICE Out

A coordinated labor stoppage mobilized hundreds of thousands in all fifty states in January 2026, beginning with two fatal shootings in Minneapolis and a simple question: can millions of people staying home from work for a single day force the federal government to change course?

What became known as the “ICE Out” shutdown—also called the “National Shutdown” and locally the “Day of Truth and Freedom”—mobilized hundreds of thousands in all fifty states. The trigger was immediate and visceral: Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renée Good, a 37-year-old American citizen and mother of three, as she sat in her car on a Minneapolis street on January 7. Seventeen days later, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital, during a confrontation between federal agents and activists documenting enforcement operations.

The strategic question isn’t whether the strike was large—it was. It’s whether a one-day economic shutdown, regardless of participation numbers, can generate enough economic pain to make the government change its policies. The answer requires examining what happened, how similar actions have performed historically, and what contemporary research reveals about the conditions necessary for such tactics to work.

What Happened on the Ground

On the 23rd, Minnesota experienced what organizers characterized as the state’s first major general strike since the legendary 1934 Teamsters action that transformed American organizing. Despite temperatures reaching minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit, between 50,000 and 100,000 people gathered in downtown Minneapolis.

The three-part plan—”no work, no school, no shopping”—gave people different ways to join in. Workers could strike against employers, students could walk out of classrooms, consumers could refrain from shopping. According to polling data commissioned by organizers and conducted by Blue Rose Research, roughly one in four Minnesota voters either personally participated or had a loved one who participated. When applied to all voters of approximately 3.25 million voters, that means roughly 300,000 Minnesotans didn’t work that day.

Of those participants, 38 percent stayed off the job either because they didn’t go to work or because their employer voluntarily closed for the day of action. Organizers claimed that over 700 businesses in Minnesota closed their doors in solidarity, ranging from independent coffee shops to coordinated actions by workers themselves demanding employer closure.

Major unions provided public backing and help organizing. The executive board of the Minnesota AFL-CIO—a federation of more than 1,000 unions representing over 300,000 Minnesota workers—backed the action. The Service Employees Union, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Communications Workers of America held prominent positions at the main rally, which filled nearly all 20,000 seats at Target Center. One hundred clergy members engaged in civil disobedience at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, a site of frequent deportation flights.

One week later, on the 30th, this action expanded into a nationally coordinated “National Shutdown.” According to tracking by Payday Report, demonstrations took place in at least 300 cities in all 50 states. The website for the National Shutdown listed over 1,000 organizations as endorsers, spanning unions, faith communities, immigrant rights organizations, and grassroots community groups.

In Los Angeles, an estimated 700 businesses announced closures for the strike, and at least ten separate protest locations were organized. In New York City, an estimated 7,000 people gathered at Foley Square in Manhattan. Students nationwide participated in walkouts: over 1,000 students at UCLA walked out on the preceding Wednesday, and students in Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Atlanta staged coordinated school departures.

The Context That Made It Possible

The immediate context was more intense than anything in recent memory. The shooting of Renée Good sparked immediate protests and initiated a series of escalating events. Vice President J.D. Vance traveled to Minneapolis on the 22nd and held a press briefing defending the presence and actions of federal agents. The following day, the Minnesota general strike occurred. Two days later, federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti during a second encounter between federal agents and activists who had assembled to record and protest ICE activity.

The rapid succession of fatal shootings combined with Operation Metro Surge—a deployment of approximately 3,000 federal officers to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area, a number roughly triple that of local police forces in Minneapolis and St. Paul combined—created unusual conditions that made it easier to get people to act.

Federal authorities called both Good and Pretti threats. However, the Department of Justice announced it would open a federal civil rights investigation into Pretti’s killing but declined to initiate a similar investigation into Good’s death. A federal judge in Minneapolis subsequently noted that ICE had violated at least 96 federal court orders in 74 cases during the month of January 2026 alone, with one judge stating that “this list should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law.”

Who Organized It and What They Demanded

The organizers of the Minnesota strike on the 23rd deliberately described their action as both based on and departing from historical precedent. The call came from a broad coalition including the University of Minnesota Graduate Labor Union, AFSCME Local 3800 (representing university maintenance and service workers), the Black Student Union, and Multifaith Antiracism, Change & Healing, an organization of faith leaders and communities.

These initial organizers rapidly mobilized broader support, securing endorsement from the Minnesota AFL-CIO, major unions including SEIU, AFT, and CWA, and hundreds of community organizations. The National Shutdown on the 30th involved an even broader coalition. The organizing website listed participants including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Black Lives Matter Grassroots chapters, the Palestinian Youth Movement, numerous Indivisible chapters, immigrant rights organizations, tenant unions, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

This coalition structure reveals both the breadth of opposition to Trump administration enforcement and the potential tensions within such a wide-ranging mobilization. Faith leaders brought moral authority and money, buildings, and staff. Unions brought organizing skills and the ability to get members to show up. Immigrant rights groups brought knowledge about policy and people directly affected. Racial justice organizations connected enforcement to patterns of systemic racism. Left political organizations brought clear political vision and plans for what to do.

The stated demands underwent evolution but maintained core consistency. Initially, Minnesota organizers called for the immediate withdrawal of federal ICE and CBP agents from the state, criminal prosecution and legal accountability for officers involved in the deaths of Good and Pretti, and an end to what organizers described as staying on the sidelines, with expanded protections for international and immigrant students within the university system.

The National Shutdown retained these demands while explicitly adding demands to “abolish ICE” and to vote against ICE funding in Congress. One organizer, JaNaé Bates Imari of Camphor Memorial UMC, articulated the participant perspective: “People were willing to take a real hit to their paycheck to demonstrate their resolve and the necessity of getting ICE out of their state.”

Did It Work? Measuring Impact Against Goals

Compared to what they wanted, what happened proves disappointing in the short term. The Trump administration showed no indication of withdrawing federal agents from Minnesota following the strike. Instead, border czar Tom Homan traveled to Minneapolis to assume direct control of Operation Metro Surge and held meetings with state and local officials to discuss continuing operations in a “more targeted” manner.

While Homan announced that ICE would focus on individuals with criminal records rather than broad sweeps, the basic reason for federal agents being there remained unchanged. The federal investigation into Alex Pretti’s death proceeded, but the Trump administration explicitly declined to open a parallel investigation into Renée Good’s death. No federal legislation moved toward abolishing ICE or substantially restricting its funding.

But figuring out if the strike worked means looking at several things beyond immediate policy concessions.

The Public Opinion Shift

Public opinion research suggests meaningful shifts in attitudes toward enforcement. In the latest Fox News polling, 59 percent of voters said ICE had been “too aggressive,” a 10-point increase since July 2025. This sentiment shifted significantly among groups typically supportive of Republican enforcement: the perception of ICE as too aggressive increased 14 points among whites without a college degree, 19 points among moderates, and 22 points among independents.

Support for abolishing ICE doubled from 18 percent in 2018 to 36 percent in 2026, with the increase concentrated among white voters (up 20 points), women (up 21 points), independents (up 22 points), and Democrats (up 34 points).

The strike generated media attention and made enforcement a top political issue. The arrests of journalist Don Lemon and independent reporter Georgia Fort on federal charges connected to reporting on a church protest in St. Paul—arrests personally directed by Attorney General Pam Bondi—created a First Amendment controversy that extended coverage beyond policy to press freedom. The announcement that President Trump’s Justice Department was prosecuting journalists for covering opposition to enforcement became itself a major story.

What Research Says About Nonviolent Resistance

Academic research on nonviolent resistance provides a way to understand whether strikes work beyond immediate policy victories. Harvard Professor Erica Chenoweth’s analysis of 323 mass actions from 1900 to 2006 found that nonviolent civil resistance was far more effective in producing change than violent campaigns, with 51 percent of nonviolent campaigns succeeding outright compared to 26 percent of violent ones.

However, Chenoweth’s research also identifies key conditions for success: large and diverse participation that’s sustained over time, using different tactics beyond protests alone, and serious disruption to how things normally work. Her data suggests that campaigns need to include at least 3.5 percent of the population in participation to have a high likelihood of success, though lower participation can succeed if the action creates sufficient economic disruption or disruption to how organizations work.

The Minnesota strike’s 300,000 nonworkers represent approximately 7 percent of the state’s adult population—exceeding Chenoweth’s threshold. The action’s claimed millions, if verified, would substantially exceed it nationally.

But here’s the critical weakness: duration. Chenoweth and other researchers found that one-day actions show people are serious and bring people together but don’t force businesses and employers to negotiate because they can simply wait for normal business to resume.

The Measurement Challenges

The one-day format also created measurement challenges. The polling data showing 300,000 Minnesotans not working on the 23rd couldn’t distinguish between those who voluntarily chose not to work and those whose employers closed the business. Large retailers were barely affected. Retail analyst Bruce Winder explained to Axios that “big chains can handle problems better” and can better handle ups and downs in sales. While small businesses experienced disruption, major retailers showed no documented sales decline.

The consumer boycott component—the “no shopping” element—proved difficult to measure, and research on consumer boycotts suggests that most don’t result in sustained sales declines, especially among large retailers, due to the challenges of maintaining participation.

What the strike does appear to have accomplished is the creation of organizing networks and proof they could pull it off for future action. The movement explicitly framed the 23rd as an opening rather than a climactic moment, with organizers stating “Last week’s march brought out tens of thousands of people, lets make this Friday even bigger,” suggesting escalation was planned.

The coalition-building experience, the public demonstration of coordination between states and sectors, and the fact that the strike made enforcement a bigger political issue all created conditions for keeping the organizing going. Democracy scholars note that even failed or partially effective movements often lead to longer-term reforms. Countries with nonviolent campaigns were about 10 times likelier to transition to democracies within five years compared to countries with violent campaigns, whether the campaigns succeeded or failed.

What History Teaches About General Strikes

The deliberate reference to the 1934 Minneapolis general strike indicates that organizers sought to draw lessons from and connect themselves to famous labor fights. The 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike, led by Trotskyist organizers and organized under General Drivers Local 574, emerged from a coal yard dispute that rapidly escalated into a city-wide struggle involving thousands of workers in multiple industries.

Unlike the 2026 action’s single day, the 1934 strike involved multiple mobilizations: an initial strike at the coal yard in February, then broader strikes in May and July. The strike employed tactics that shocked contemporaries, including the seizure of a truck as a mobile picket platform—a new tactic that influenced strikes throughout the country. A federal judge presiding after the strike noted that “the winning of this strike marks the greatest victory in the annals of the local trade union movement.”

Yet the 1934 strike’s success depended on conditions absent in 2026. First, it emerged from a specific workplace dispute with clear demands that employers could agree to: union recognition, wage increases, and the right to organize warehouse workers. These were demands that specific employers could grant. The strike ended when employers capitulated.

Second, the strike sustained itself over months, creating building economic pressure. Third, the strike maintained strict unity through democratic decisions and coordination among regular members, preventing attempts by authorities to split them apart. Fourth, the 1934 context included supportive political leaders. Minnesota Governor Floyd B. Olson, though he deployed the National Guard, ultimately sided with workers rather than employers.

The 2026 action faced a fundamentally different political situation. The Trump administration explicitly rejected demands for operational changes. Border czar Homan announced that “the mission is going to improve because of the changes we’re making internally” while maintaining that federal enforcement would continue. Federal law enforcement lacks employers who can each make their own deals. The federal government can’t “concede” to end operations through local negotiation.

The 2006 Parallel

The closest historical parallel to the 2026 action may be the 2006 “Day Without Immigrants,” when an estimated 1 to 2 million immigrants and their supporters participated in a one-day work and school boycott and mass marches to oppose proposed HR 4437 legislation. That action, like ICE Out, was triggered by a specific legislative threat and got lots of people to participate through coordinated action.

The 2006 protests were followed by a significant shift in public opinion. Support for immediate legalization increased 10 percent, and 75 percent of Latino citizens surveyed believed the protests would prompt more Latino civic participation. However, the legislation ultimately failed not because of the 2006 protests per se but through the normal way Congress works.

Subsequent ICE enforcement increased, with 300,000 undocumented immigrants deported in the years following the 2006 protests, compared to a baseline of 200,000 in 2005—50 percent higher than pre-protest levels. The intimidation created by increased enforcement and the fear of retaliation led to what researchers describe as a quick collapse of the immigrant rights movement.

The 2018-2019 teacher strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, Colorado, and North Carolina provide a different model: sustained campaigns with specific, achievable demands that led to clear victories. Teachers in West Virginia walked out and maintained the strike for nine days before winning a 5 percent raise. Subsequent strikes in other states followed and won varying victories.

However, each of these strikes involved strikes against specific employers—school districts and state education systems—with the authority to grant wage increases. The demands were directly negotiable with specific people who could say yes. These strikes succeeded partly because they targeted employers who could implement the demands and sustained pressure until they did.

Strategic Options for Amplifying Impact

Research on general strikes and economic shutdowns identifies specific conditions that increase likelihood of policy impact. Cathy Creighton, director of Cornell University’s Buffalo Co-Lab, stated that the action “could be extremely effective” because it “gives people who are frustrated a way to show that this is how we feel and we’re doing something about it” and that “now is probably the time to do it while tensions and emotions are high.”

However, the same research indicates that most successful strikes involved preparation: months of advance planning, stockpiled resources, strike funds, and systems for people to help each other. The 2026 strike, mobilized in fewer than two weeks following the Alex Pretti shooting, operated under extreme time constraints that limited preparation depth.

Here are strategic options based on what’s worked before and research on movement strategy, presented as ideas for the movement to consider, not orders:

Rotating Sector-Based Strike Actions

Rather than attempting nationwide general strikes in all sectors simultaneously, the movement could organize rotating sector-specific strikes over months, with each sector conducting a one-to-three-week strike. Agricultural workers could mobilize first, creating food scarcity and direct pressure on agribusiness employers. Transportation workers could follow, immobilizing enforcement infrastructure. Healthcare workers could coordinate timing to affect detention facility operations.

Historical precedent includes the United Farm Workers’ grape boycott, which succeeded partly through sustained focus on specific corporate targets rather than pressure on entire industries. This would maintain momentum, escalate pressure progressively, and provide multiple opportunities for negotiation as economic disruption increases.

Using Pension Fund Power

Teacher pension funds, union pension funds, and public employee retirement systems hold substantial ownership stakes in corporations. The movement could coordinate with investors to formally ask as shareholders that corporations cease contract relationships with ICE and CBP, refuse to provide detention services, and divest from private prison companies contracting with ICE.

This worked for divest-from-fossil-fuels campaigns and for apartheid-era divestment. It creates corporate pressure without requiring mass participation and uses the power of big institutions in a way that lasts beyond one-day actions. The California State Teachers’ Retirement System and other large funds have divested based on human rights concerns, demonstrating precedent.

Electoral Strategy With Specific Conditions

The movement could develop a sophisticated electoral strategy for 2026 midterms, not instead of protests and strikes but alongside them. Organizers could identify specific swing district candidates and declare primary and general election support only if they clearly commit to defunding ICE, abolishing the agency, or refusing federal cooperation.

This mirrors the successful strategy of progressive movements in 2018-2020 in moving candidates toward positions previously considered marginal. The movement could pledge field organizing capacity and voter mobilization to candidates meeting these thresholds, creating real reasons for them to agree.

Coalition Expansion to Law Enforcement Communities

The movement hasn’t yet systematically attempted to build relationships with current and former law enforcement officers concerned about federal overreach, federal workers impacted by changes to agency mission, or military personnel opposed to deployment of soldiers for enforcement.

Police chiefs and sheriffs in Democratic-led jurisdictions have expressed frustration with federal operations. Former federal agents have spoken out about training and culture concerns. Creating pathways for these constituencies to participate could add credibility and bring in different groups while potentially splitting the government.

Sustained Local Sanctuary Campaigns

Rather than demanding federal ICE withdrawal, the movement could shift to demanding explicit local protection through formal deals negotiated between cities and federal authorities. Minneapolis and Saint Paul could formally declare themselves sanctuary jurisdictions and negotiate formal deals that specify no ICE operations in places like schools, hospitals, churches, and courthouses, mandatory police cooperation requirements with explicit limits, body camera mandates with public accessibility, and enforceable rules to calm situations down.

This uses local government power that the Trump administration can’t override without explicit congressional action. Historical precedent includes sanctuary city movements’ success at maintaining protections for specific populations even as federal enforcement increased nationally.

What Comes Next

The organizers of the 2026 actions explicitly framed their mobilizations as the opening of a sustained campaign. The statement that the movement would pursue keeping people active through the midterm elections indicates intention to maintain pressure beyond the initial one-day action. University of Minnesota student unions called for a second general strike on the 30th, escalating from the action on the 23rd, and announced that organizers would continue demanding ICE withdrawal, criminal prosecution, and abolition.

In the weeks following the National Shutdown, border czar Homan announced a shift in ICE tactics toward more “targeted” operations and indicated plans to reduce federal agent numbers in Minneapolis if local cooperation with federal enforcement increased. This represents a change in tactics rather than a real victory, but it suggests the federal government recognized the political costs of continued Operation Metro Surge’s scale.

Tom Homan explicitly stated that fewer federal agents would be needed if local jails provided access to detained immigrants, proposing a model in which federal authorities could conduct arrests “in the safety and security of the jail” rather than on streets, thereby reducing confrontational encounters. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison responded by clarifying state law but appeared to signal willingness to work within legal parameters.

The longer-term political situation remains uncertain. The 2026 midterm elections in November present potential opportunities and risks. Democrats have begun mobilizing against the Trump administration’s enforcement as a central midterm issue. Multiple Democratic candidates have adopted abolitionist or deeply critical stances toward ICE. Some are calling for Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s impeachment.

However, politicians using this for votes may end up wanting different things than the movement if Democratic candidates shift positions post-election. Conversely, Republican candidates in swing districts have warned that aggressive enforcement could become a political liability, suggesting genuine electoral vulnerability. The outcome will depend on whether the movement can maintain pressure through the electoral cycle without becoming taken over by Democratic Party campaigns.

Sustainability challenges remain substantial. Movement scholars note that one-time large mobilizations frequently face people stopping and burning out. The participants who stayed home from work on the 23rd faced real economic costs. Workers in unstable jobs or without union protection risked discipline or termination. The emotional intensity following the deaths of Good and Pretti provided initial ability to get people to act, but keeping people angry and urgent for months is consistently hard in American organizing history.

The coalition that united unions, faith, student, and immigrant rights organizations may fracture if different groups want different things or if the electoral campaign pulls people’s attention away. Federal government response remains unpredictable. The Trump administration has explicitly rejected calls for de-escalation from Stephen Miller and other hardliners, with Bannon stating “raise the temperature” rather than lower it.

Subsequent federal actions could include escalated enforcement, legal retaliation against organizers and participants, or harassment of officials and institutions that support them. The arrests of journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, and the prosecution of activists under the FACE Act (originally written to protect abortion clinics), signal willingness to use federal criminal law aggressively against opponents.

The movement’s success in the longer term will depend on converting the proven ability to get people out into lasting organizing networks, keeping the coalition together when groups want different things, and either achieving sufficient federal policy change to justify the effort or transforming the campaign’s objectives toward more achievable local and electoral victories.

Historical precedent suggests that movements following one-day actions tend either to rapidly demobilize or to shift toward sustained campaigns with smaller but specific demands aimed at things they can win. The ICE Out movement stands at this juncture: having demonstrated capacity to mobilize millions on a single issue, it now faces the fundamentally different challenge of turning that ability into power that can force sustained policy change from federal authorities determined to continue their enforcement mission.

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.