Do Corporate Pressure Campaigns Work? Target Sit-Ins Put Theory to Test
Protesters gathered in Lancaster, Pennsylvania—over 100 Mennonites and Christians inside a Target store, singing hymns and disrupting the day’s shopping. Similar scenes unfolded in Minneapolis, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and Philadelphia—part of a coordinated wave of protests demanding that the retailer oppose ICE raids. The actions followed a January incident where Border Patrol agents assaulted and detained two U.S. citizen Target employees in Richfield, Minnesota. As activists occupied retail locations, made specific demands, and faced arrests, they tested a basic question: Can organized pressure on corporations change how the government handles immigration?
The answer, based on historical evidence and current outcomes, reveals both the power and limits of pressuring corporations in American politics.
What Happened
Crowds gathered outside Target stores across the Twin Cities on February 5, chanting and holding signs demanding that the retail giant take a stronger stand against ICE activity near their locations. Two days later, the intensity escalated.
Demonstrators with groups including the ICE Out Minnesota Coalition, Unidos Minnesota, Mennonite Action, the 50501 movement, and associated faith communities staged protests at over two dozen Target locations. Their demands were consistent: Target should call for ICE to leave Minnesota, put up signs saying ICE needs a warrant to enter, train staff on handling ICE encounters, and publicly call for shutting down ICE.
About 20 people were arrested at the Richfield Target alone. In Philadelphia, over 40 people were arrested, including clergy members. In Asheville, North Carolina, over 160 people gathered inside a Target and sang for over an hour, with faith leaders giving speeches from a sound system placed in a shopping cart.
The protests occurred against a backdrop of a massive immigration crackdown. The Trump administration had deployed what it described as “the largest immigration enforcement operation ever” to Minneapolis-St. Paul, with reports of 2,000 to 3,000 federal agents conducting sweeping arrests. This surge followed the January 8 incident where Border Patrol agents tackled and detained two Target employees—both U.S. citizens—outside the Richfield store.
The Coalition Behind the Campaign
The February protests represented a diverse coalition bridging immigrant rights advocates, faith communities, secular activists, and labor-aligned organizations. Unidos Minnesota, a grassroots group started by young undocumented immigrants, brought organizing infrastructure and immigrant community connections. The Mennonite Action network brought in religious groups, drawing on the Mennonite tradition of peaceful protest.
The coalition also included organizations with financial power. The American Federation of Teachers, representing 1.8 million members, sent a letter to incoming Target CEO Michael Fiddelke. AFT President Randi Weingarten noted that union members participate in pension funds worth about $4 trillion and directly own 6.79 million shares of Target common stock.
This combination—grassroots disruption plus pressure from pension funds and investors—represented a two-part strategy. The protests created visible disruption and media attention. The pension fund leverage created financial pressure that corporate leadership had to take seriously.
Target’s Response
Target’s response reveals the limits on what corporations can do when activists demand they take political positions on federal policy. The company issued no public statements about ICE operations or the detained employees. When pressed by news organizations, Target said it had “no comment” on the strike or backlash.
Internally, Target took a more active approach. Chief Human Resources Officer Melissa Kremer sent a memo to employees indicating that security teams were increasing communication about expected disruptions and that senior leaders were engaging with government officials, community partners, and faith leaders. Target later released an FAQ stating that “Target does not have formal deals with ICE or any other immigration enforcement agency.”
The FAQ clarified that federal agents are legally allowed in parking lots and public-facing store areas without a warrant, but “the law indicates that they cannot be in employee-only areas, like our backrooms, supply chain buildings and HQ locations, without a judicial warrant.” This legal clarification, while factually accurate, didn’t give activists what they wanted—for Target to actively deny ICE agents entry or lobby Congress for ICE defunding.
Target remained neutral—neither actively facilitating ICE operations nor adopting the positions activists demanded.
The broader Minnesota business community’s response revealed similar constraints. On January 25, the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce released an open letter from over 60 CEOs calling for “everyone to calm down immediately” and cooperation between leaders. The signatories included Target’s incoming CEO alongside leaders of 3M, Medtronic, UnitedHealth Group, Best Buy, and General Mills.
The letter avoided endorsing activist demands. Instead of calling for ICE to leave Minnesota, the CEOs called for “de-escalation” and “real solutions”—language that activists characterized as insufficient. Randi Weingarten’s assessment was pointed: the “de-escalation” language “falls far short of showing real leadership to end ICE’s occupation in Minnesota.”
Historical Precedents: When Corporate Pressure Works
The 1960s Lunch Counter Sit-Ins
On February 1, 1960, four freshmen from North Carolina A&T sat down at the “whites only” lunch counter at a Woolworth’s department store and requested service. When denied, they refused to leave. By February 4, more than 300 students participated. By spring, an estimated 50,000 protesters had taken part in similar actions across the South.
Woolworth’s in Greensboro lost a reported $200,000 due to boycotts. On July 25, 1960, store manager Charles Harris decided to desegregate the store. Actions in other cities similarly created economic hardship by taking up spaces normally filled by paying customers.
The businesses being pressured could make the change themselves and had financial reasons to do it. Woolworth’s managers could choose to desegregate without requiring congressional action or executive orders. The economic impact hit them directly in lost sales—store managers could directly observe revenue loss.
ACT UP and Pharmaceutical Pricing
On September 14, 1989, seven ACT UP members infiltrated the New York Stock Exchange and chained themselves to the VIP balcony to protest the high price of AZT, the only approved AIDS drug. Burroughs Wellcome had priced it at approximately $10,000 per patient per year. The group displayed a banner reading “SELL WELLCOME.”
Several days following this demonstration, Burroughs Wellcome lowered the price to $6,400 per patient per year.
ACT UP succeeded because the demands were specific, measurable, and the company could act unilaterally. A pharmaceutical company can set drug prices without requiring legislative action or government approval.
Anti-Apartheid Divestment: A More Complex Story
The divestment campaign against South Africa in the 1980s is often cited as evidence that corporate pressure works. By the mid-1980s, numerous colleges and universities had voted to divest completely from companies with major South African interests. A U.S. divestment policy adopted in 1986 is credited with helping pressure the South African government toward negotiations that dismantled apartheid.
But while divestment movements affected some corporate decisions, their direct financial impact was limited—when institutions divested, somebody else purchased the stocks. What gave divestment campaigns their leverage was alignment with government policy. U.S. government sanctions, international isolation of South Africa, and internal resistance within South Africa combined to create conditions where corporate divestment symbolically reinforced broader pressure.
Divestment succeeded not primarily through companies acting on their own but through backing up what the government was already doing.
Why the Campaign Faces Limits
The campaign sits in an unclear spot relative to these past examples. Unlike the 1960s lunch counter actions, activists aren’t asking Target to change a discriminatory practice the company directly implements—they’re asking the retailer to take public political positions and engage in federal lobbying. Unlike the ACT UP case, the demands involve political speech and government advocacy that make it difficult for Target to take political sides.
And unlike the anti-apartheid case, activists are asking the company to oppose rather than align with current government policy.
Studies show that nonviolent protests are effective at getting supporters involved, while more disruptive protests can push people to change policies. But corporate policy change requires something more specific: the corporation being pressured must determine that doing what activists want serves its interests better than resistance.
This calculation depends on multiple factors—economic impact, reputation damage, investor pressure, employee concerns, and legal risk. Target’s cautious response reflects this tension. The company acknowledged employee and community concerns but declined to take the specific political positions activists demanded. This positioning allowed the retailer to appear responsive while avoiding what the company likely calculated as political risk on a controversial issue.
What Could Amplify Impact
Sustained Shareholder Activism
Building on the AFT’s strategy, activists could work with institutional investors to file formal shareholder proposals requiring Target to establish human rights policies addressing ICE cooperation. Rather than one-time letters, this means yearly proposals asking Target to reveal company interactions with federal enforcement agencies.
The anti-apartheid divestment movement initially focused on shareholder activism and votes by shareholders. Institutional investors controlling trillions in assets have demonstrated willingness to vote on human rights issues when framed as business risk—reputation damage, employee retention, legal risk—rather than ideology.
The challenge: companies can ask the SEC to block these proposals, and the SEC has increasingly sided with companies in recent years.
Coalition with Retail Workers
Rather than focusing exclusively on demands to Target corporate leadership, activists could organize workers to collectively document instances of ICE presence at Target locations and impacts on the workplace. Present it as a worker safety issue and workplace rights rather than purely as policy.
Target currently employs approximately 34,000 Minnesotans. These employees have both direct knowledge of company operations and a stake in workplace safety. If the company faces worker complaints or employee retention problems related to ICE-related workplace concerns, the company’s thinking changes.
The Fight for $15 movement succeeded partly by centering the voices and experiences of fast-food workers themselves, rather than outside activists speaking for them.
Municipal and State-Level Legal Leverage
Rather than pressuring Target, activists could mobilize local and state governments where the company operates to pass laws limiting how businesses can help ICE. Frame these as workplace privacy protections (based on the Fourth Amendment) that apply to all private employers in the jurisdiction, including Target.
The Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s successfully convinced hundreds of cities and states to pass sanctuary policies limiting cooperation with enforcement. San Francisco’s 1989 Sanctuary City Ordinance became a model copied in numerous jurisdictions.
If Minneapolis, Boston, Seattle, Philadelphia and other cities with Target stores passed laws restricting federal enforcement cooperation in private workplaces, the retailer would face consistent legal requirements across multiple jurisdictions, making following the same rules easier to explain to corporate leadership.
The challenge: the Supreme Court and federal courts have consistently ruled that federal agents can override state and local laws.
Developing Voluntary Standards
Rather than making demands that Target respond, activist organizations could develop detailed, practical policy standards that corporations could adopt without disrupting their daily business. Create a “Fourth Amendment Workplace” certification specifying what policies, signage, employee training, and security protocols would constitute corporate opposition to federal enforcement.
The Sullivan Principles in the anti-apartheid movement created specific standards that corporations could adopt regarding employment practices in South Africa. Corporate leadership often resists activism partly from uncertainty about what adoption would entail. Providing specific policy models that are feasible, legal and practical makes adoption easier.
Current Status
On February 12, the Trump administration announced it was concluding its operation in Minnesota. Border chief Tom Homan reported that the operation had resulted in over 4,000 arrests, though many individuals without criminal records, including children and U.S. citizens, had been taken into custody. The announcement of operation wind-down potentially diminishes the urgency of the campaign’s main demand that Target oppose ongoing operations in the state.
But the underlying issues remain unresolved. The American Federation of Teachers has indicated ongoing engagement, having passed a resolution requesting that incoming Target CEO Michael Fiddelke address both the ICE operations question and earlier controversy over Target backing away from diversity programs. This two-issue framing suggests activists won’t allow the retailer to treat the ICE campaign separately from earlier civil rights concerns.
Historical patterns suggest that singular protest campaigns rarely achieve their full demands. The 1960s movement took years of litigation and negotiation to produce desegregation, even after the immediate wave. The anti-apartheid campaign operated across multiple decades. ACT UP achieved specific victories on drug pricing but didn’t fundamentally transform the pharmaceutical industry’s approach to pricing life-saving medications.
The Bigger Picture
The February campaign reveals both the power and limits of pressuring corporations in American politics. Activists successfully mobilized diverse constituencies, got ongoing media coverage, disrupted normal business operations across multiple states, and forced corporate leadership to respond. These wins represent successful organizing and use of stores as protest sites.
But the gap between organizing people and changing policy remains stark. Target hasn’t acceded to the specific demands. The company issued no public political statements about the issue. The broader business community positioned itself as seeking “de-escalation” rather than endorsing activist demands.
This outcome reveals limits on what pressuring corporations can achieve. When the demanded change involves taking political sides on federal issues—asking a company to take sides in debates over government priorities—the corporation faces constraints that don’t apply when asking for policy changes over discriminatory practices the company directly implements.
Corporate pressure campaigns work most effectively when the demanded change is something the company can do on its own, the economic pressure is concentrated and measurable, the campaign is supported by broader political and institutional pressure, and the corporation calculates that compliance serves its interests better than resistance.
The campaign met some of these conditions. The demand for establishing worker-protective policies is within corporate authority. The disruption is visible. It includes pressure from pension funds. Reputation concerns might incentivize compliance. But the core demand for corporate opposition to federal policy is less clearly in Target’s interest.
What emerges isn’t a simple verdict on campaign effectiveness but rather an understanding of how corporate pressure functions in American politics. The campaign achieved accomplishments in visibility and mobilization. Whether it leads to corporate or policy change depends on whether the movement can sustain pressure, find new leverage points, and make compliance in the company’s interest.
The campaign also raises questions about whether corporate pressure is the appropriate focus for addressing federal policy, or whether attention should focus on government policy, electoral politics, and legislative change. When the goal requires changing government action rather than corporate behavior, pressuring corporations becomes a limited tool—one that might generate visibility and build movement capacity but can’t substitute for directly pressuring Congress and the White House.
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.