By Louise Halverson

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — On December 14, 2025, some 100 letter carriers and their supporters gathered here as the temperature hovered at 4° F to demand “ICE Off Postal Property!” Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents had been using post office parking lots as staging areas for raids in nearby neighborhoods, disrupting postal workers as they tried to carry out their duties.

At a rally at Lake Street Station, Chris Pennock, vice president of National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) Branch 9, told the local NBC News affiliate: “At the Powderhorn post office, they arrested somebody right in the middle of when we’re bringing back our mail. Vans with tinted windows and body armor and guns. We shouldn’t have to work in that environment.”

Speaking to the crowd, Branch 9 members talked about their commitment to the safety of their neighborhoods and not wanting to be associated with ICE. Department of Homeland Security officials have said the arrests are intended to improve public safety, an assertion that these workers, along with local and state officials, dispute.

A female Powderhorn station carrier told this reporter that at the end of one shift, when a manager tried to clear the way for employees to do their work, ICE threatened to throw her in their van. Pennock said, “It’s not safe for them to be using federal property — post offices — as a staging ground.”

Carrying banners and signs promoting union solidarity, the chanting workers and their supporters then marched down Lake Street more than a mile to the Powderhorn station, taking up the right lane already narrowed by piles of plowed snow. They chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, ICE raids have got to go!” “Protect our route; get ICE out!” “When immigrants are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” “No ICE, no more, asylum for all!” Passing vehicles honked in solidarity.

“We go out in the community every day,” Pennock told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “We do not want to be associated with ICE, and we want them off postal property in Minnesota. We want to tell people that we’re supporting our immigrants, our neighborhoods and our coworkers.” He added, “We want to see a society free of secret police.”

In addition to KARE11 — the NBC affiliate — and the Star Tribune, two other TV stations covered the march and rally.

Union solidarity in action

The postal workers action is another example of workers organizing through their unions to defend immigrant workers. It comes on the heels of a December 3 rally called by Service Employees International Union and UNITE HERE to protest deportation flights from Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport where many of their members work.

Minneapolis and St. Paul — the Twin Cities — have been one of the most recent flash points in the ongoing resistance against the drive by the administration of U.S. president Donald Trump to arrest and deport immigrants en masse and to harass and intimidate communities — including U.S. citizens — in the process.

Minnesotans have staged multiple protests, and many are involved in monitoring ICE activities, alerting immigrants about potential raids, and documenting incidents they witness. This reporter is one of hundreds who hope to become an official observer. The training is full, but I was able to ride along with a trained observer in Richfield, a suburb of Minneapolis, on December 9.

We looked for ICE vehicles, which usually have tinted windows and their engines running in the parking lots of big hardware and grocery stores, as we monitored chat messages about possible sightings and calls for additional support. We did not see ICE that day but finished up by joining a group of observers in a line in front of a school to give parents some protection while they picked up their children.

The same day, Sue Tincher, a 55-year-old community observer, had just joined a rapid response Signal chat when she received a neighborhood alert that ICE was knocking on a door about 10 blocks from her home in north Minneapolis. She jumped in her car and drove to observe the immigration enforcement.

At the scene, she was arrested for allegedly refusing to back up and was held in custody for more than five hours. While she sat in a cell, Tincher told the Sahan Journal she thought about the immigrant detainees also in the building who “had no way to contact their families.”

Somali immigrants targeted

Speaking to CBS News affiliate WCCO, Minnesota congressional representative Ilhan Omar described the racial profiling that is part of the pattern of ICE Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities. “They are racially profiling, they’re looking for young men who look Somali that they think are undocumented,” she said. Omar has been a special target for Trump’s racist rants about immigrants “flooding America.”

Minnesota is home to a large population of Somali immigrants, many of whom came to the United States in the 1990s during a period of civil war in their home country. The vast majority are now U.S. citizens; just 5 percent are non-citizens, but most of them have visas, permanent residence, or other authority to work and live here.

Ilhan explained that her 20-year-old son, a U.S. citizen by birth, always carries his passport with him now. He has seen ICE agents enter the mosque he attends during prayer and also a restaurant that he frequents. He himself was pulled over by federal agents during a recent shopping trip to Target and eventually released once they allowed him to show his documentation.

“Immigrants are a part of our neighborhood, they’re our coworkers,” said union leader Pennock. “And they’re not the reason for the problems that we have in society.”

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