Minneapolis Is Just The Beginning (How To Prepare Your City For ICE)

Sources

Glass, Fred. “The Citywide General Strike Has a Rich History in America.” January 22, 2026. https://jacobin.com/2026/01/ice-minneapolis-general-strike-history.

Watson, Julie, and Amy Taxin. “Immigrants Often Don’t Open the Door to ICE, but That May No Longer Stop Officers.” AP News, January 23, 2026.https://apnews.com/article/ice-arrests-warrants-forced-entry-fourth-amendment-26e9b492c7850982a85c554c24695a23.

Transcript

Hi it’s Saturday, January 24th, 2026, you’re tuned into Why, America? I’m Leeja Miller in Minneapolis. Yesterday, Minneapolis held the first and largest general strike in the US in a generation. Over 700 businesses shut down, and tens of thousands of people left work, left school, and took to the streets in an economic blackout to protest the unprecedented levels of ICE officers who have taken over our city, making us less safe and kidnapping and abusing our neighbors. In an effort to try to do the most good I can in this moment, I stayed home and did a 4-hour livestream yesterday and we raised over 35 THOUSAND dollars for the immigrant defense network, a coalition of over 90 local organizations working to support and defend immigrants in the state of Minnesota. That money will go towards helping with rapid response for our immigrant neighbors in need as well as ongoing trainings for constitutional observers, all of which have been packed to the gills with people trying to learn how to be of help. Once the final tally comes in from the fundraiser, including those who donated via YouTube yesterday as well as those who purchased Protect Immigrants tshirts and sweatshirts over at leeja miller merch dot com, once all of that is tallied I will post receipts with the final dollar amount. Suffice it to say that money is DESPERATELY needed in this city as we continue to be swarmed by 3000 ICE officers every day, so thank you to everyone who tuned in and donated it means so much. I will put the donation link in the description if you want to still donate. Today we’re talking about what yesterday’s massive day of action means, what’s been happening on the ground here in Minneapolis, and what other cities can learn from the incredibly successful and coordinated resistance Minneapolis has shown over the last two months, because make no mistake they are trying something new, something bigger here in Minneapolis and they’re not going to stop with us. It is on communities around the country, especially blue cities that are likely to be targets, to ensure that y’all are ready, and we’ve learned a lot of lessons here in Minneapolis that need to be exported around the country. First, thank you for your grace and patience as I pay the bills to keep my lights on.

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So like I said yesterday was the first major general strike in the nation in 80 years. The last time Minneapolis participated in a strike like this was in 1934. That year, in the height of the Great Depression, Minneapolis and St. Paul joined San Francisco where the International Longshore and Warehouse Union helped lead a general strike that was created in response to the police shootings of West Coast maritime strikers. And in Toledo, Ohio, autoworkers led a strike for unionization and wage increases that saw thousands take to the streets. That year, in Minneapolis and St. Paul, local teamsters demanded union recognition and wage increases and were joined by other unions in a general strike. After this successful day of general strikes, Minneapolis became one of the most unionized cities in the country, and the next year Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act, the law that protects unions and labor organizers, at least in theory. Of course that act has been shoddily enforced in the decades since to the point where labor organizing in this country is fraught with risk. Add on top of the degradation of labor protections the fact that in the US our health coverage is tied to employment and wages haven’t increased in decades, our government in the pocket of big business has made it nearly impossible for general strikes to happen, certainly on a nationwide level but even locally. And general strikes have historically been led by labor unions, whose membership has declined rapidly in the last 80 years, though growing interest in unionization has bumped up the numbers slightly in recent years, but we are nowhere near the numbers of unionized workers we had in the first half of the 20th century.

According to Jacobin, quote “However, over the past few decades some large-scale protests have referred to, and in some respects echoed, elements of citywide general strikes, like the 2006 immigrant rights demonstrations (“A Day Without Immigrants”); the Occupy Oakland port shutdown of November 2011; and the “red state revolt” of public education unions in 2018. Labor historian Jeremy Brecher has dubbed these mass actions “social strikes” in reference to their hybrid combination of workplace and community activities — maybe not involving an entire city at a standstill, but developing significant forms of resistance to the abuses to democracy and human dignity we are suffering.” That is similar to what we saw in Minneapolis yesterday, a social strike, but it did grind the city to a halt. Busses and trains were packed past capacity to get to downtown for the march, people were walking an hour in negative 10 degrees fahrenheit because they couldn’t fit in the buses. Cars and traffic obviously weren’t going anywhere in the throngs of tens of thousands that overtook downtown. Not only that, thousands protested at the federal building where ICE has set up headquarters as well as at nearby MSP airport, where 100 peaceful clergy members were reportedly arrested. Reports have indicated that ICE and CBP plan on increasing presence at the airport over the next three weeks to terrorize passengers attempting to come and go peacefully. And it was a peaceful day. At least on the part of protesters. ICE continued its operations across town and vowed to not back down in the face of protesters.

And I saw some discourse online and in my comments section over the last few days from people asking why this matters. One day of action that’s not going to stop them, see it’s not working, this isn’t the solution, why don’t Americans take to the streets like the Iranians or the French. I hope my explanation about how fragile and tied to work our lives have become in this country–we don’t have strong unions like we used to, we don’t have labor protections, most of us are one or two missed paychecks away from literal homelessness, we can be fired at will for any reason, and if we are we lose health coverage, all of it, for everything. It is a HUGE ask to get people to walk off the job and take to the streets and most people can’t or won’t do it. Which is WHY the sheer size of yesterdays demonstrations is monumental. The number of people who shut down their business, who walked out of school or off the job, that says so much. It shows how much the people of Minneapolis are willing to risk in order to stand up for what they believe in, it shows just how wrong the regime is, it shows who’s on the right side of history. And I would caution you from thinking that there is one “solution” to this, that there is one right way to show up in this moment, because anyone who’s a student of history will tell you that is not how movement building works. There is not one day or one action or one thing that will solve the problem that will topple a dictator. And by saying there is only one right thing, you are alienating the people who may show up in different but equally meaningful ways, and you are promoting despair and inaction. What’s the point? The point is that we’re doing SOMETHING. And so much of movement building is not in one great heroic gesture like the movies would have you believe, it is in the tireless work day in and day out of showing up in your community in whatever way that looks like for YOU. Not everyone is going to be on the front lines. Not everyone CAN be on the front lines. There is so much quiet, thankless organizing that happens behind the scenes, there is so much need for resources and for people to distribute those resources. There is SO MUCH to be done, that there is a role for everyone, and no one person can do all the things. Expecting perfection in activism leads to inaction. And what we accomplished yesterday isn’t a toppled dictatorship, obviously, but we showed the strength in our numbers, we showed how many of us are fucking pissed, to the point that we’re willing to walk off our jobs and go stand outside in negative 10 degree weather in the dead of winter and join, JOYFULLY, with our neighbors to say fuck ICE get the fuck out of our city you are not welcome here we love our immigrant neighbors. That is powerful. And that is an experience that will teach us as neighbors, as members of a community, and as organizers, what works, what doesn’t, what we can do next. And there are things we are doing here in Minneapolis, that outsiders have reported as being some of the best organizing they’ve ever seen, that NEEDS to be exported to other communities who WILL be facing the wrath of ICE next. Thankfully, even with the surge of new ICE recruits, there are SO few of them compared to how many there are of us. And their popularity is in the fucking gutter, NO ONE wants them around. They will have to retreat from some cities in order to spread to others. So once they are done with us here in Minneapolis, whatever that means, whenever that is, they will be coming for you next and you need to be ready. And they’ve had some tough training here in Minneapolis in the negative degree weather with a layer of ice on every surface, they probably won’t have quite as difficult environmental factors when they come to you. The Supreme Court last year told ICE they can racially profile people and that’s a-OK. A recent ICE memo leaked claiming that they can now forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge-signed warrant, which is, for the record, so clearly against the 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures it’s hard to even know where to begin on that one, and just because a secret ICE memo SAYS it’s fine under the constitution, that’s actually not within their purview to decide. A judge needs to decide that and so far the judges in this country have shown pretty wide consensus about the whole need a warrant signed by a judge to knock down someone’s door. Will THIS supreme court agree with that, once a case gets before it challenging this practice? Who knows! Probably not! They will always do the worst thing, just assume that, so probably not. I double dog dare them to prove me wrong. But at least as the law stands and the decades and decades of precedent have interpreted, ICE cannot get an administrative warrant, which is NOT signed by a judge, immigration judges are not part of the judicial branch they are part of the executive branch they are not real judges in the context of the 4th amendment and searches and seizures, they can’t claim that warrant signed by someone in their own branch gives proper authority to forcibly enter someone’s home, based on the current standing of the 4th Amendment. And only the Supreme Court gets the final say on what the 4th Amendment says. Just so we’re clear. But despite all that, ICE has been emboldened by that memo to continue its practice, which we’ve seen in action on the ground here in Minneapolis, of knocking down peoples’ doors and arresting them based on a warrant signed by an administrative judge. And they get addresses wrong ALL the time in these cases, which is why we’re seeing instances of, for example, a Hmong elder being forcibly removed from his home in his underwear in the frigid cold and then dumped once they realized they got the wrong guy.

And ICE has been further emboldened in the wake of Renee Good’s killing. Jonathan Ross shot a woman in the face at point blank range and the regime claims there’s no reason to investigate and Jonathan Ross is a hero and actually don’t even say his name out loud [insert clip.] And so ICE agents everywhere, who are already undertrained dipshits, see that and know that the regime will have their back no matter what heinous atrocities they commit next. This is a very volatile situation and when ICE officers swarm a city it means nothing other than chaos, because they are not properly trained, they don’t know what they’re doing, and they’re cocky as fuck. I can’t drive down the street without being on high alert not only for ICE operations, because there are SO many here you cannot drive more than 10 or 20 minutes without running into an active ICE operation like the one that was happening when Renee Good was murdered, but also I don’t know if I’m gonna get fucking T-boned by some ICE goon with a god complex on a high speed chase with someone’s who’s probably here legally and is someone’s plumber or something like it’s fucking stupid. And so in this reality, with an increasingly emboldened and militarized gestapo force on the loose in my city and coming to a city near you, we have to share notes on what’s working. So let’s talk about what’s working in Minneapolis.

You know how I said you can’t drive for 10 minutes without seeing an ICE raid? The reason you know it’s an ICE raid is not because of the flashing lights and the heavily armed men. You don’t see or hear them first. The reason you know ICE is up to no good is because within 2 minutes TWO MINUTES of an ICE sighting, there will be 10-50 people in the streets honking their horns and blowing their whistles and screaming at them, filming them, making their job as hard as possible. Every time. Without fail. Part of the strength of the anti-ICE rapid response in Minneapolis is because of how well organized and decentralized it is. Through word of mouth mostly residents have heard of a website, I’m not gonna give all of it away because I’m not a fucking narc, but I heard of it through word of mouth, I’ve seen handwritten signs around town, I’ve seen it discussed on Reddit, and you go to this website and you enter your name and email, everything is encrypted to the fucking teeth. A volunteer then reviews your information and within minutes sends you an email with further instructions. You click on an encrypted, password protected document. Within that document, there are links to encrypted documents based on your neighborhood. You click on that and it brings you to the document about your neighborhood. In that document there is information about your neighborhood Signal group. But before you can find any links, there are INCREDIBLY clear instructions about the rules of engagement within the neighborhood Signal chat. This is not a place for voyeurs, by joining the signal chat you are agreeing that you will be available as much as possible to drop everything at a moments notice and go out and blow your whistles and alert your neighbors should there be an ICE sighting in your area. You are not allowed to go into the chat and ask questions or gather information as someone who just wants to be “in the know” but aren’t willing to participate in the active rapid response. There are clear guidelines for HOW you are to report an ICE spotting, following the SALUTE model to spread information not panic: what is the size or strength of the presence, the ACTIONS what is ICE doing, the LOCATION or direction, what their UNIFORM or clothes look like, the TIME and date of the observation, and the EQUIPMENT and weapons they are carrying. And there are clear guidelines for how other members of the group chat can tactfully interrupt people who aren’t following the rules of engagement with the Signal group. And then you are put in a signal group not only for your neighborhood but also there are groups for your specific street. And there are mechanisms for how those street and neighborhood signal groups can communicate with other neighborhoods and streets so that the movement of ICE can be tracked. And this is so, so important. On multiple fronts. Not only does it mean that you are as close as possible when someone reports a sighting on your street, so there are always rapid responders on ICE’s ass at all times within minutes of a spotting. But it’s also even more powerful than that.

Because when you go to the Minneapolis subreddit, or you join your neighborhood Nexdoor app, or something, you are immediately inundated with vague unhelpful reports of danger everywhere within a few blocks to a few miles of you. It can make you feel frozen with fear and unable to act, similarly to how it feels to be on social media right now, it’s just too much all at once it’s impossible to act. With a hyper local chat group you are only getting the information you need to know and you know exactly what to do when you get that information. But also, remember how I’ve been harping for MONTHS if not YEARS at this point that you NEED TO KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORS because that is who we rely on in These Trying Times? Better late than never, now you have an ongoing direct chat with all of your neighbors. And this is important not only for the rapid response in this moment but for the months and years to come because again this is not the climax, I’m so sorry. This is not the end. And even if ICE leaves Minneapolis and our streets feel quiet and safe again, those connections and networks will still exist.

And why do you think the organizing in Minneapolis has been so good, and so robust? It’s not because, as the regime would have you believe, we’re all paid agitators and George Soros is just pumping billions in and sending outside agitators to the city. Because the regime cannot fathom caring about others, caring about your neighbors enough to show up for them unless you’re getting paid. Because they have no fucking souls left intheir bodies. No it’s not because we’re getting paid to agitate. It’s because we’ve been here before and we laid groundwork then that we are building on top of now. Ask anyone who’s lived in the city for years and they will pretty universally tell you that living in Minneapolis right now feels eerily similar to how it felt to live here in the summer of 2020 during the George Floyd uprisings. The constant helicopters overhead. The fear of leaving your house–then it was COVID, today it’s the gestapo chaos. The knowledge that the entire federal government, and a lot of the local government let’s be real, was working against you and would protect the worst actors, would put protecting property over protecting humans. And back then we banded together, we formed mutual aid groups, we showed up for our neighbors, and we created networks and coalitions that didn’t just go away when the unrest settled down. The more they try to bring us down, to pound us into the ground, to kill our spirit, the more determined we get to band together against a common enemy, to stand up and show up for our neighbors and our community. And so it’s backfiring on them. The determination in our resistance is getting stronger in the face of their increased hostility. And we are just building on what’s already been built before. Which is why I say not to discount how important yesterday was. Not because it was the solution to topple the regime, but because we are BUILDING key word BUILDING a movement, and every action builds on top of what came before.

And so I think it is imperative that the organizers in Minneapolis are in contact with local organizations and coalitions in other blue cities to help them build upon their own infrastructure. I don’t know who those people are, seriously it’s so decentralized here there is no one leader or person I could point to, I don’t know who organized those original signal chats, and that’s the point, but that also means there are likely MANY people who have knowledge and skills to be passed around the country for when ICE comes to a city near you. But even if you are not one of those organizers, there are so many stories on the ground in Minneapolis that can teach us all how to show up in this moment, stories that aren’t flashy they won’t make the nightly news there’s no influencer making clickbaity titles about them. It’s mothers standing outside their kids daycare so their child and the other children inside are safe but also so the care givers are safe. It’s neighbors shoveling neighbors sidewalks so they don’t have to leave their homes, without asking and without seeking anything in return. It’s food drives at churches and community centers that are so packed people are standing shoulder to shoulder trying to help with care packages and handle the influx of donations. It’s giving a ride to your neighbor who’s on kidney dialysis and terrified to leave the house. It’s giving your money to the organizations on the front line who know the best way to use it to do the most good. It’s standing on street corners in negative 20 degree windchill with a whistle watching and waiting to sound the alarm. It’s a small business providing free yoga classes to those in need of a quiet place to come and breathe. It’s a million small and large daily actions on a hyper local level done out of love and out of a sense of purpose and out of a sense of justice. The soulless ghouls like JD Vance who says he’s proud that ICE arrested a 5 year old, they have absolutely no fucking clue the strength in those actions. They are so quick to underestimate our feelings of love and justice. JD Vance thinks the reaction in Minneapolis is quote unquote “weird.” He literally doesn’t get what it means to love thy neighbor despite his born again catholicism he claims to be so dedicated to. To him it’s literally weird. It’s unfathomable. They have to blame it on outside paid agitators, on some large conspiracy, because they cannot fathom what it’s like to give a shit about other people and to be willing to show up for your neighbors in the face of clear and brazen injustice. And that is where our strength lies. Because despite how fucking cynical I often feel, despite The Horrors of These Trying Times, I still fundamentally believe that there is good in all of us, and that most people just want to do good. There are a LOT of people who don’t, don’t get me wrong. But most people do. And we don’t have to be superheroes in a movie and we don’t have to be armed warriors in the streets. The heroism and the strength lies in showing up every day and continuing to care and love and hope in the face of it all.

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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like my episode from Wednesday about how Trump is fucking over our relationship with Europe.