The Minnesota Target Workers Who Walked Out Against ICE
This article is a joint publication of The American Prospect and Workday Magazine, a nonprofit newsroom devoted to holding the powerful accountable through the perspective of workers.
Rob doesn’t want anyone else to experience what his co-workers at the Target store in the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield went through.
On January 8, federal immigration agents violently tackled and detained two Target workers during their shift. Rob was on the clock that day, and while he did not see the abductions, he did witness the aftermath. “We had a lot of people who were scared,” says Rob, who is using a pseudonym to protect him from retaliation. “A lot of people were crying at the time. It became very hectic.”
So when Rob found out that a coalition of unions, faith, and community groups were organizing a day of “no work, no school, no shopping” on January 23 to protest the thousands of armed, masked federal agents who have descended on Minnesota since December, he was eager to participate. He says he became one of about 50 workers at his store—roughly half of those scheduled to work that day—who called in sick to participate in the statewide day of action.
“It was really, really fulfilling to see all the people around Minneapolis and Minnesota and all over who joined in on this,” he says. “It felt like a little bit of comfort within all of the hate and mayhem going on.”
The January 23 economic shutdown to demand federal agents immediately leave Minnesota was not the first broad call for a mass work stoppage. But it stands out for its union support. The shutdown was led by SEIU Local 26, UNITE HERE Local 17, the Minnesota Nurses Association, and a host of other unions and community organizations. And it was backed by a broad array of major unions and labor federations, including the executive board of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, a federation of more than 1,000 unions. About 1,000 local businesses shut their doors on January 23, organizers say, some due to pressure from workers and community members.
The January 23 economic shutdown was not the first broad call for a mass work stoppage, but it stands out for its union support.
The action also garnered support from workers who are not in unions, and are employed by notoriously anti-union companies like Target. Rob hails from one of at least two Minnesota Target stores that saw half or more of their staff stay out of work on January 23. He marched in a downtown Minneapolis rally alongside tens of thousands of others, some of whom stayed off the job that day.
There are signs that the day of action did deliver. As Thomas Birmingham, Ari Bloomekatz, and I noted in In These Times, about 1 in 4 Minnesota voters took part in the January 23 day of shutdown and protest against ICE, or have a loved one who did, according to new polling data. Of those, 38 percent did not work that day, either because they stayed out, or because their employer closed for the day of action.
Any shop, union or non-union, acting together against federal immigration agents is noteworthy. But that’s especially true when, in the case of Rob and his co-workers, they went up against a powerful company like Target, the third–largest employer in the state, which has been accused of complicity with the federal onslaught against Minnesotans. “For me, it was about speaking out for those who really can’t,” Rob says, “and helping out my neighbors.”
ANGELINA WORKS AT A TARGET in the Dinkytown neighborhood of Minneapolis. On January 23, about 16 workers who were scheduled for the day called out, she says. This is a smaller store, and those 16 represent about three-quarters of the roughly 21 scheduled to work that day, “not counting the leadership and security team, who we did not feel were wise to necessarily loop in,” says Angelina, who is going by a pseudonym to protect her from retaliation.
She had already seen the call for “no work, no school, no shopping” on social media. On the morning of January 19, some organizers from the group Socialist Alternative canvassed the store, she says, “handing out flyers and striking up conversations. I got in a conversation with a couple of their representatives, and they told us that there was a meeting that afternoon.”
Angelina went with a co-worker, and says, “We were inspired by the push for this strike and for meeting the moment of the horrific violence that’s happening in our city right now.” She was particularly focused on Target workers having a presence in the work stoppage. “This is its hometown, and it’s claiming to support the community that it’s based in, but is failing completely to contribute,” she explains. “We agreed to start organizing our co-workers.”
The workers were up against a tight deadline: just four days. “We just started spreading the communication network as fast as we could,” Angelina says. “We identified key co-workers first, people we knew were going to be aligned with the cause and would help us spread the word further, people who already had close relationships with other co-workers beyond themselves.” Even in that short time frame, the organizing covered most of Friday’s crew.
Angelina was originally scheduled to work that day. Instead of going to work, she went with about seven of her co-workers to the 2 p.m. march through downtown Minneapolis, where she rallied alongside tens of thousands of others in subzero temperatures.
“It was so, so cool that so many of my co-workers were ready to get on board and ready to take some action, to varying degrees, but many of them were prepared to do something together,” she says.
SINCE DECEMBER 2025, thousands of armed, masked federal agents have descended on Minnesota, where they have roamed neighborhoods to abduct residents, tear-gassed high school students and teachers, detained preschooler Liam Ramos, visited child care centers, and taken construction workers while they were on the job. Federal agents have carried out home raids without signed judicial warrants, and killed two 37-year-old Minneapolis residents: poet and mother Renee Good and intensive care nurse Alex Pretti.
January 23 was marked by boisterous acts of civil disobedience, arrest, and picketing at the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport, followed by a huge march through downtown Minneapolis in negative 30 degree windchill. (Organizers’ estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000 people.) Alongside the demand for federal immigration agents to immediately leave, the organizers called for legal accountability for federal officers who kill civilians, no more federal funding for ICE in the upcoming congressional budget, and an end to corporate complicity with ICE.
Kieran Knutson, president of Communications Workers of America Local 7250, tells me that 80 percent of the Minnesota members of his local were “absent” on January 23 as part of the day of protest. His union represents 650 Minnesota workers in the telecom, satellite television, home security, and video game industries.
Sheigh Freeberg is the secretary-treasurer of UNITE HERE Local 17, which represents more than 6,000 workers for stadiums, convention centers, and hotels in the Twin Cities metro area. He tells me that several workplaces that do not have their first contract or have open contracts saw large numbers of workers stay out, and one shop had to entirely close as a result.
It can be difficult to get numbers from unions. Some worry that sharing too openly could put workers or the union at risk of retaliation from the employer. But there are signs that the January 23 day of action reached into the zeitgeist. The poll, conducted by Blue Rose Research and commissioned by the May Day Strong coalition, found that 83 percent of Minnesota voters were aware of the day of action, and that 45 percent “support the call for no work, no school, no shopping as a form of protest.”
NEITHER OF THE TARGET WORKERS I spoke to saw their stores close on January 23, “which I am actually a little disappointed about,” Angelina told me. “It’s hard to say, because none of us were there, but what we were able to put together is that they were just fighting for scraps to keep the store open.”
“We did have one of our group swing by the store later in the evening just to see what the status was, and we had our HR manager running the cash register,” Angelina said. “So they were doing everything they could to keep that store open, which I’m surprised by. I really didn’t think they were going to be able to, but they found a way, I guess.”
Target has been the site of frequent protests. The company is headquartered in Minneapolis, and gave $1 million to President Trump’s inaugural committee. Federal agents have used Target stores for staging, and have made incursions inside of them. Community members accuse the company of cooperating with the ferocious federal crackdown in Minnesota, as well as other cities and states.
Target’s incoming CEO, Michael Fiddelke, whose first official day was February 2, did sign an open letter on January 25, two days after the day of shutdown, calling for “an immediate deescalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.” But Fiddelke is an executive board member of the National Retail Federation, which lobbied on behalf of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the law that “allocated more than $170 billion over four years to deport one million immigrants annually,” Whitney Curry Wimbish and David Dayen noted in The American Prospect.
Now that Angelina and her co-workers have had a taste of collective action, they are determined to continue. On January 30, as part of a nationwide call for a shutdown against ICE, four Target workers at the Dinkytown store walked off the job, Angelina among them. They were met by about 60 community members picketing outside, chanting, “Fuck ICE, shut it down, every Target, every town.”
The next day, Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America hosted a protest at the Dinkytown Target, one of 23 throughout the metro area, with other sit-ins hosted by community organizations and unions, like Minneapolis Federation of Educators, Local 59. The actions were part of a nationwide peaceful protest against Target. The Dinkytown store closed to avoid a planned sit-in, according to Angelina. (Target did not respond to a request to confirm this, or to respond to workers’ and community members’ concerns.)
Speaking at a press conference outside of the Richfield Target to announce the January 31 day of action, Ulla Nilsen of the community organization Unidos MN said, “Companies like Target can and must use their influence and force the administration to end the occupation of our cities and stop this regime of terror across the country.” She continued, “Target is Minnesota’s leading corporate citizen … Minnesota sports teams play in stadiums and wear jerseys with Target’s logo on it. Where Target leads, others follow.”
“Yet,” she added, “Target has failed to speak out against the violent abductions of workers, or to call for immigration reform. Instead, there are numerous reports that Target has collaborated with ICE by allowing them to stage operations in its parking lots.”
Angelina says that the actions of federal agents “and their extraordinarily violent and intrusive presence into this community is destructive to every single person who lives in this city, whether they understand it or not.”
“It’s incredibly frustrating to know these corporations, which have an enormous amount of power and weight in our community, could be contributing towards a push to stop this violence and get this agency out of our community and aren’t,” she says.
Rob remains troubled by the abduction of his co-workers, who are U.S. citizens and have since been released. “I don’t think that ICE should be allowed to roam through our stores, at a minimum, or do stakeouts in our parking lots,” he says. “That’s what led to two employees being pulled out, kidnapped basically, while they were just doing their job.”
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