Minnesota ICE Resistance Echoes Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s
Roughly 100 clergy members knelt in prayer at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, blocking vehicle access to terminals where ICE deportation flights departed. The action, which led to minor trespassing charges for everyone, deliberately echoed the 1980s Sanctuary Movement’s mix of religious belief and breaking laws to make a point.
Alongside the faith leaders were 300,000 union members walking off their jobs, 700 businesses shuttering their doors, and tens of thousands marching through minus-20-degree temperatures. What started as a response to Operation Metro Surge—the biggest ICE raid in U.S. history—became a test of whether organized peaceful protests could force the federal government to retreat.
Ten weeks later, Tom Homan, the official in charge of border enforcement, announced the operation’s end. The question now isn’t whether the tactics worked—it’s whether the victory will last.
How a Federal Operation Sparked Mass Mobilization
Operation Metro Surge sent about 3,000 immigration agents to Minneapolis-Saint Paul in early December 2025. Federal officials said they were going after dangerous people, while also looking into fraud scandals involving Somali community members.
The raid might have proceeded like countless others—until January 7, 2026. That’s when ICE agent Jonathan Ross fired three shots through the windshield of a vehicle driven by Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three and U.S. citizen who’d stopped her car to support immigrant neighbors facing enforcement. Good’s death, captured on video and widely circulated, occurred blocks from where George Floyd was murdered in 2020.
Seventeen days later, federal agents killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital. ProPublica found that Border Patrol agents Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez fired about ten shots at Pretti during an encounter where video showed him holding only his phone.
Good was a citizen supporting her neighbors. Pretti was a healthcare worker with secure employment. The deaths made it harder for the federal government to say they were only going after criminals.
The Coalition That Shut Down Minnesota
On January 23, 2026, somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 people marched through downtown Minneapolis in temperatures dropping to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. The march, called “ICE Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth & Freedom,” represented one of the largest protests in state history.
An estimated 700 to 800 businesses closed or changed their hours to show support. Restaurants, bookstores, theaters, and cultural institutions from the Twin Cities to Grand Marais participated in the work stoppage.
Labor’s Role
The Minnesota AFL-CIO executive board, representing over 300,000 workers across more than 1,000 member unions, officially endorsed the action. SEIU Local 26 (healthcare and service workers), UNITE HERE Local 17 (hospitality and cultural institution workers), AFSCME Local 3800 (public employees), and CWA Local 7250 (communications workers) took public leadership roles.
UNITE HERE Local 17 circulated petitions ensuring workers taking the day off couldn’t face discipline. SEIU coordinated participation from healthcare workers despite the need to keep hospitals running. The unions provided what grassroots movements often lack: organization, lawyers, and protection from being fired, plus the ability to get tens of thousands of people to show up quickly.
Faith Communities as Moral Authority
The 100 clergy arrested at the airport included Rev. Mariah Furness Tollgaard of Hamline Church in St. Paul, Rev. Katherine Lewis of St. David’s Episcopal Church in Minnetonka, Rev. Daniel Ruth of Lutheran Partners in Global Ministry, and Rev. Amanda Lunemann of Grace United Methodist Church in Burnsville.
Ruth explained his participation: immigrant families “are my neighbor, and I feel that at a deep faith level.” Tollgaard described the strike as feeling “holy—like Resurrection morning, like Pentecost fire on the prairie wind.”
Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish, and Muslim organizations coordinated through networks like Faith in Minnesota and the Minnesota Religious Leadership Coalition. This broad interfaith participation reflected both long-standing commitment to sanctuary protection and organizing systems built during previous Trump administration immigration enforcement campaigns.
Immigrant Rights Organizations and Student Movements
Organizations like the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, Navigate MN, and the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota provided legal expertise and community connections. They coordinated legal support, had trained volunteers record what federal agents did, and connected community members to immediate assistance.
Minneapolis City Council Member Jason Chavez emerged as a prominent political voice, repeatedly stating: “we will not rest until ICE is no longer here in this state.”
Student movements at the University of Minnesota—including the Graduate Labor Union, AFSCME Local 3800, the Black Student Union, and Student Government—collectively called for a “National Shutdown” action and organized campus-based mobilizations demanding sanctuary campus policies.
The Federal Retreat
Tom Homan, the official in charge of border enforcement, arrived in Minnesota on January 29, 2026, taking charge himself. Throughout late January and early February, he met with Governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and Attorney General Keith Ellison, emphasizing that federal operations targeted public safety threats and people with criminal records being deported.
On February 4, 2026, Homan announced that 700 federal immigration officers would be withdrawn immediately, reducing the deployed force from about 3,000 to 2,000 agents. He said this was because of what he called “cooperation from state and local officials like never before,” specifically citing agreements regarding telling ICE when people with criminal records were in jail.
Attorney General Keith Ellison immediately disagreed, publicly stating he “did not negotiate” with Homan, “come to any agreement, or offer any compromise,” and reiterated that state law says jails can’t hold people without judicial warrants even when ICE asks them to.
One week later, on February 12, 2026, Homan announced the complete conclusion of Operation Metro Surge. All remaining surge agents would be withdrawn over the following week, with a few agents staying to wrap things up and finish ongoing fraud investigations.
A federal district court judge had previously found that federal ICE agents in Operation Metro Surge had violated at least 96 court orders since the start of the year. Continuing the operation became too politically damaging as public opinion polling showed 53 percent of Americans believed the shooting of Renée Good was unjustified, while only 35 percent approved of Trump’s immigration enforcement approach.
What the 1980s Sanctuary Movement Teaches Us
The contemporary Minnesota resistance deliberately drew upon organizing lessons from the 1980s Sanctuary Movement, which emerged from Central Americans fleeing civil wars that the U.S. was involved in.
The Original Sanctuary Movement
The Sanctuary Movement originated in 1980 when Rev. John Fife of Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona, and Jim Corbett, a Quaker activist, began helping with legal issues and basic needs for Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees fleeing conflict. After two years of witnessing asylum denials despite proof they’d be harmed, they publicly announced their church as a sanctuary for Central American refugees on March 24, 1982—the second anniversary of Archbishop Óscar Romero’s assassination.
By 1985, about 500 congregations had joined the movement, with another 1,000 organizations supporting sanctuary protection. The movement combined secret methods—smuggling refugees across borders through underground networks—with public disobedience announcing their illegal actions and accepting legal consequences.
Movement members argued that the 1980 Refugee Act created an obligation to provide asylum to those with “well-founded fear of persecution,” and that rejecting Central Americans fleeing U.S.-supported violence meant the government was violating its own law.
As activist Jim Corbett framed it, sanctuary workers weren’t breaking the law but following the law when the government wasn’t.
Federal Prosecution and Movement Expansion
The Reagan administration responded with federal prosecution. A ten-month undercover investigation called Operation Sojourner, launched in 1985, sent paid spies into sanctuary communities to gather evidence. The Justice Department charged sixteen religious activists, including Rev. John Fife and Jim Corbett, with helping undocumented immigrants enter and stay in the country.
The resulting “Sanctuary Trials” in Texas and Arizona became flashpoints of church-state confrontation. Judge Earl Carroll didn’t allow the defense to talk about violence in Central America and U.S. foreign policy—preventing defendants from explaining why they thought they were doing the right thing. Despite these restrictions, sanctuary advocates used the courthouse steps and media platforms to put U.S. Central America policy on trial.
Eight defendants were convicted but received only probation or short house arrest. The movement expanded after the trials concluded.
The 1980s movement achieved concrete policy gains, though not through dramatic courtroom victories. A lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights and a coalition of faith organizations secured an agreement that changed how asylum worked and resulted in temporary protected status for certain Central Americans. The sanctuary cities and sanctuary campus movements that originated from 1980s Sanctuary Movement activism have since become standard frameworks for local immigration policy—thousands of cities and counties now call themselves ‘sanctuary’ places with policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration agents.
How 2026 Differed
The Minnesota movement deliberately adapted Sanctuary Movement tactics while expanding their scope. Like the 1980s movement, contemporary activists employed faith institutions as moral authority, broke laws expecting to be arrested, and combined public and private acts of resistance.
The Minnesota movement expanded beyond the Sanctuary Movement model in several dimensions. First, it brought in major union participation that the 1980s movement hadn’t achieved. The AFL-CIO endorsement and participation of over 300,000 union members represented a dimension the Central American refugee crisis hadn’t sparked.
Second, the Minnesota movement demanded the complete elimination of ICE, whereas the 1980s Sanctuary Movement focused on asylum law reform and refugee protection. The phrase “ICE Out of Minnesota” and repeated demands for permanent ICE withdrawal represented criticism of the entire immigration enforcement system, not a demand for more humane implementation of existing law.
Third, the Minnesota resistance operated in an entirely different media environment. The 1980s Sanctuary Movement operated before social media, requiring print and broadcast media coverage for amplification. The 2026 movement used social media, livestreaming, and viral sharing to bypass traditional media gatekeepers, allowing immediate sharing of video of shootings and federal agent behavior.
Fourth, the movement’s scale and sustained intensity reflected organizational lessons from the 2020 George Floyd uprising. The networks and systems built during Black Lives Matter protests—community monitoring networks, rapid response legal teams and bail funds—transferred directly to immigration enforcement resistance.
Did It Work?
The Concrete Achievement
The most concrete achievement involved forcing announcement of Operation Metro Surge’s termination—the main demand protesters made. However, it was hard to confirm whether federal agents left.
Two weeks after Homan’s announced drawdown, Minneapolis City Council Member Jason Chavez stated that he and community members “are seeing many of our neighbors continue to get kidnapped in Minneapolis,” and “many people are going back into the shadows… scared to go outside, to pick up groceries, to throw their trash out, to move their cars, to drive to work.”
The gap between official statements and what people saw suggested that the announced changes may have been cover for continued enforcement, though on a smaller scale.
What Didn’t Change
Regarding criminal prosecution of officers involved in the fatal shootings, the movement didn’t achieve much. The Department of Justice announced an investigation into whether Alex Pretti’s civil rights were violated on January 30, 2026, but Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche declined to open a similar investigation into Renée Good’s death, saying the Justice Department doesn’t investigate every police shooting.
No criminal charges had been filed against ICE agent Jonathan Ross (who killed Good) or CBP agents Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez (who killed Pretti) by the time of the announced drawdown. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension conducted independent investigations, but state investigators said federal agents blocked them from seeing evidence and crime scenes—”totally unusual” according to BCA superintendent Drew Evans, who stated this represented his first experience in over twenty years of law enforcement being not allowed to see the crime scene.
Economic Impact
The City of Minneapolis released an early report showing $203.1 million in economic costs within a single month, including $6 million in city worker pay and operating costs responding to the raid. However, these economic disruptions only lasted while protests continued and didn’t permanently restrict federal enforcement power.
Public Opinion Shifts
Polling conducted by Blue Rose Research on behalf of the May Day Strong coalition found that roughly one in four Minnesota voters either participated in the action or had a loved one who did, with 45 percent of voters “generally supporting” the “no work, no school, no shopping” protest format.
Support was strong among different groups: two-thirds of Black voters supported the action, along with 50 percent or more support from women, voters under 34, college-educated voters, Asian voters, and Hispanic voters. But these opinion changes stayed mostly in Minnesota and didn’t prevent immigration enforcement continuing across the country.
What Research Says About Nonviolent Campaigns
Harvard’s Erica Chenoweth documented that peaceful protests succeed about 53 percent of the time compared to 26 percent for violent uprisings. Chenoweth’s analysis identified a “3.5 percent rule” suggesting that when a campaign gets at least 3.5 percent of people involved, it’s never failed to achieve its objectives.
The Minnesota action, getting about one in four voters to participate, went well beyond this level in Minnesota—suggesting power to win statewide. However, whether the movement could spread beyond Minnesota and have national impact remained constrained by Operation Metro Surge only happening in one place.
The Sustainability Question
Multiple sources indicated organizers were planning continuation, with “ICE Out of Minnesota” protests continuing into February, and broader national mobilizations planned for May 1, 2026, under the “May Day Strong” coalition banner.
The Minnesota movement generated national attention and inspired solidarity actions in over 300 locations nationwide, from Los Angeles to New York to Portland. However, turning support protests into lasting organizing in other locations requires organizing skills, local leaders, and community ties that can’t transfer from Minnesota.
The 1980s Sanctuary Movement shows both hope and warning. That movement achieved concrete policy gains—reformed asylum procedures, Temporary Protected Status, sanctuary city ordinances—but these required sustained effort across multiple administrations and took years to become permanent. The Minnesota movement’s immediate achievements appear more dramatic but might not last without similar pressure over many years.
Tom Homan’s statements during the drawdown announcement included clear warnings: operations would conclude “depending on protesters stopping illegal and threatening activities against ICE” and “provided steady cooperation” from state and local authorities continued. This language suggests the federal government could restart the operation if protesters disrupt things again.
The most uncertain element involves whether criminal charges will be filed against officers involved in the shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigations proceeded despite federal obstruction, and Minnesota County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s office could still file criminal charges under state law. However, history shows that prosecuting federal law enforcement officers is difficult—previous cases involving federal agent shootings rarely result in criminal convictions, and the president’s power to pardon gives reasons to protect federal agents.
The Minnesota ICE resistance mobilization represents a significant moment in American protest history, demonstrating that regular people and organizations can create pressure against federal immigration enforcement operations. The movement adapted tactics from the 1980s Sanctuary Movement while using modern organizing networks from labor movements, faith communities, student movements, and digital communication networks.
The announced conclusion of Operation Metro Surge, while a meaningful immediate victory, leaves longer-term objectives around criminal prosecution and reform or abolition of ICE unresolved. The movement showed that organized peaceful resistance combining protests, economic pressure from business closures, disobedience by faith leaders and community members, and political pressure from elected officials can change federal policy.
Yet the movement also encountered limits. The federal government could still override or circumvent local authority, federal investigators protected federal agents from state prosecution, and federal political leaders remained insulated from economic pressure. The sustainability of the movement beyond the immediate crisis moment remains uncertain, with history suggesting movements fall apart after initial victories unless organizers invest in building lasting relationships and groups.
Whether this moment becomes a turning point or a temporary disruption depends on what happens next—and whether the coalition that shut down Minnesota can turn this immediate victory into permanent change.
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