Scores of businesses across Minnesota were closing up for the day yesterday in what religious leaders and labour unions describe as a general strike to protest against US President Donald Trump’s deployment of thousands of immigration enforcement officers on the streets of Minneapolis.
‘Ice out!’ was the message of fliers posted on businesses’ doors, referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency yesterday, a frigid day in snowy Minneapolis with temperatures well below freezing. ‘No work. No school. No shopping’.
Across the state, bars, restaurants, museums, shops and other local businesses were shuttering for the day. Many workers in Minneapolis planned to join a march in the afternoon, intended by organisers to be the largest display of opposition yet to the federal government’s surge, which Mayor Jacob Frey and other Democrats have likened to an invasion.
Miguel Hernandez, a community organiser who closed his business, Lito’s Bakery in Minneapolis for the day, put on four layers, wool socks and a parka before heading out to protest.
“If this were any other time, no one would’ve gone out,” he said, bracing for the weather.
“For us, it’s a message of solidarity with our community, that we see the pain and misery that’s going on in the streets, and it’s a message to our politicians that they have to do more than grandstand on the news.”
Trump, a Republican, launched the Minnesota crackdown in response to fraud allegations against some members of the state’s large community of people of Somali origin.
He has called Somali immigrants ‘garbage’ and said they are to be removed from the country.
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