Protesters Stand Up to Trump Administration’s Dehumanizing Bigotry

By Sandi Sherman

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — Residents of Minneapolis and St. Paul — the Twin Cities — are organizing to defend their Somali neighbors and other immigrants targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), challenging the rhetoric of U.S. president Donald Trump and members of his administration.

A highlight of the organizing efforts was a December 3 rally held in subfreezing temperatures outside Signature Aviation, the private aircraft terminal at Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport. Speaking to the crowd of more than 100 people, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 26 President Greg Nammacher said ICE agents frequently arrest immigrants leaving Immigration Court at the nearby Whipple Building and bring them directly to the terminal for deportation to “god knows where.”

SEIU Local 26 and UNITE HERE Local 17 organized the protest, joined by airport workers wearing Airport Workers United hats and community supporters. Additional co-sponsors included Jewish Community Action, Minnesota Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Alliance, the interfaith group ISAIAH, SEIU MN State Council, Indivisible Twin Cities, Women’s March Minnesota, Minnesota AFL-CIO, Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, and 50501: Minnesota.

The crowd marched from the terminal to the offices of Signature Aviation — a private aviation terminal used by some private charter planes for deportation flights.

Geof Paquette, lead internal organizer for UNITE HERE Local 17, opened a short rally, saying, “The labor movement is proud to be here today with members of our community to fight for immigrant rights.” He noted that both his union and SEIU Local 26 are largely composed of immigrant workers who “make the airport run” and generate millions in profits for airline companies. Food-service workers in the terminal, he added, recently voted to strike ahead of the busiest travel days of the year; their action prompted the Metropolitan Airports Commission to grant the largest pay increases ever won at the airport.

Nick Benson, a photographer and longtime plane spotter, described his years of documenting deportation flights. He said their frequency appears to be increasing, citing open-source flight data used to track ICE flights. Benson publishes his findings online because, he said, “I think it’s important for people in the Twin Cities to realize that all of this stuff isn’t just something that happens in Chicago or Portland or somewhere else – that it’s happening here too…. I think it’s historic, and it’s worth knowing and documenting that it happens.”

Other speakers included representatives from 50501 Minnesota, organizer of the No Kings rallies, as well as faith leaders.

Organizing to defend neighbors

Minnesota is home to an estimated 107,000 Somali residents, the largest concentration in the United States. Some 58% were born in the United States; another 36.5% are naturalized citizens, many of them who came fleeing civil war and unrest. Among the remaining 5.5% are those with student, work, or visitor visas; refugees — including people with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients; and asylum seekers who have not yet had their cases heard.

The concern about these residents heightened after an ICE raid at a factory on November 18 and a November 21 announcement by Trump on his Truth Social account that he was ending TPS for Somalis in Minnesota, citing without proof their alleged involvement in money laundering. “Send them back to where they came from,” Trump wrote, “It’s OVER!”

Then, during an ICE raid on a St. Paul home on November 25, a large crowd, including two legislators and multiple journalists, confronted ICE and police officers. St. Paul police and ICE agents responded by discharging pepper spray against protesters at close range; one reporter was taken from the scene by ambulance and released shortly after. The St. Paul Police Department, which has a stated policy of not cooperating with ICE, has since faced criticism from city officials for its conduct.

Later that same night — the Thanksgiving holiday, Trump posted again on Truth Social, railing against the “foreign population … most of which are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.”

“Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’”, the president wrote. “The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota Tim Walz, does nothing … while the worst ‘Congressman/woman’ in our Country, Ilhan Omar [who herself came to the United States as a child fleeing civil war in Somalia — W-O], always wrapped in her swaddling hijab, and who probably came into the U.S.A. illegally in that you are not allowed to marry your brother, does nothing but hatefully complain about our Country.”

On December 1, Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem announced on social media, “I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”

At a cabinet meeting the next day, the dehumanizing rhetoric escalated. Trump called Somalis “garbage” with his vice-president J.D. Vance thumping the table in approval, a scene that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later called an “epic moment.”

The infrastructure of solidarity with immigrant workers in the Twin Cities — Signal chats, rapid responder and legal observer training sessions, and building alliances within the community — has been in place for months. But residents have recently stepped-up organizing efforts to defend their Somali neighbors, along with other immigrants targeted by ICE, as the government’s Operation Metro Surge got underway in Minnesota and the commentary from Washington turned more rabid.

After watching livestreamed video of the November 25 raid, this reporter signed up for rapid response legal-observer training; some 290 others attended the session.

Meanwhile, neighborhood groups are helping deliver food to those who fear leaving their homes and organizing people to escort students to and from school. The Minneapolis Public Schools is providing resources to people concerned about their safety and that of their children.

Defending immigrant workers while fighting for dignity on the job

After the December 3 rally at Signature Aviation, protesters marched to the airport holding lot for Uber and Lyft drivers — workers who are overwhelmingly immigrants, many of them Somali. Drivers are campaigning for access to basic facilities, including bathrooms and a place to pray. Protesters watched as drivers spread cardboard and a prayer rug on the wet pavement in subfreezing weather, removed their shoes, knelt, and prayed.

One woman driver said she sometimes must abandon her spot in the queue to find a bathroom at a nearby gas station or hotel, forcing her to the back of the line and reducing her income. SEIU Local 26 is now organizing rideshare drivers.

That same evening, more than 100 people gathered in St. Cloud — home to roughly 4,400 Somalis — to demonstrate solidarity after Trump’s comments. “We are not here tonight because we are afraid,” said Abdikadir Bashir, executive director of the Center for African Immigrants and Refugees Organization. “We are here because we refuse to be silent.”

On December 4, Minneapolis community members gathered outside the Lake Street Target, calling on the company to stop allowing ICE agents to use its parking lots to stage arrests. Lake Street is home to many Latino and Somali businesses.

Earlier that afternoon, community leaders at the Brian Coyle Center in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood — often called “Little Mogadishu” for its large Somali population — held a citywide prayer gathering.

The efforts by community groups, SEIU and UNITE HERE, and individual citizens in the Twin Cities are adding to the cumulative experience of working people in the United States on how to turn solidarity into action and resist the Trump administration’s efforts to dehumanize their neighbors. Minnesotans have drawn on their own experience and are fine-tuning the lessons of resistance drawn in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago to answer the Trumpian lie that immigrants “contribute nothing” to this country and are simply criminals to be feared.

“The truth is that the Somali community is beloved and long woven into the fabric of many neighborhoods and communities in Minnesota,” said Heidi Altman, policy director at the National Immigrant Justice Center. “Destabilizing families and communities makes all of us less safe and not more.”

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