Minnesota Protests Spark Nationwide Response To ICE Actions

Activists are calling for a nationwide general strike this Friday -- January 30th -- to protest the Trump Administration's crackdown on immigration not only here in Minnesota, but across the country.

The National Shutdown calls for "No work. No School. No shopping. Stop funding ICE."

The call for a national general strike follows Minnesota's own statewide general strike last Friday where an estimated 50,000 people protested in the streets of Minneapolis and Minnesotans were encouraged to not go to school or work and to not buy anything.

That strike was held just the day before federal Border Patrol agents shot and killed Minneapolis Veterans Affairs ICU Nurse Alex Pettri.

PHOTO ABOVE: A woman stops to look at the memorial for Alex Pretti on the fence line outside the VA Medical Center on January 28, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Pretti, an ICU nurse at the VA Medical Center, died January 24, after being shot multiple times during a brief altercation with U.S. Border Patrol agents in the Eat Street district of Minneapolis (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

And the Pretti killing follows the ICE shooting death of Renee Good on January 7th.

All of this while some 3,000 Department of Homeland Security agents are focused on the Twin Cities, St. Cloud and points all across Minnesota as part of "Operation Metro Surge," making arrests amid a sizeable resistance, especially in the Twin Cities.

ACTIVISTS SAY "SHUT IT DOWN"

The website announcing the National Shutdown explains:

"Every day, ICE, Border Patrol and other enforcers of Trump’s racist agenda are going into our communities to kidnap our neighbors and sow fear. It is time for us to all stand up together in a nationwide shutdown and say enough is enough!"

The website encourages the entire country come together to protest mass deportation and the way DHS agents are carrying out that mass deportation policy.

"The people of the Twin Cities have shown the way for the whole country – to stop ICE’s reign of terror, we need to SHUT IT DOWN. On Friday, January 30, join a nationwide day of no school, no work and no shopping."

ANOTHER NATIONWIDE DAY OF PROTEST SCHEDULED FOR MARCH

Meanwhile, organizers with the activist group "Indivisible" has announced their third nationwide "No Kings Day" of protest will be held March 28th.

Prior to the that, the group says will be leading regular ICE watch trainings, pressuring Democrats to hold the line on reining in ICE and denying the agency any additional funding, as well as mobilizing the American public.

"...On March 28 we'll take to the streets, ready to bring millions of new allies along with us to declare, in one voice: NO thugs terrorizing our neighborhoods. NO troop deployments in our streets. NO imperial wars of conquest. NO KINGS," read an email to media announcing the nationwide protests.