Student organisers called for walkouts and protests across the US yesterday to demand that federal immigration agents withdraw from Minnesota, where the fatal shootings of two US citizens have sparked public outrage.
The planned national day of protest, which saw students and teachers walking out of schools from Arizona to Georgia, came amid mixed messages from the Trump administration on the future of Operation Metro Surge, which has sent some 3,000 federal agents to the Minneapolis area in an immigration crackdown.
The fatal shootings by federal agents of citizens Alex Pretti on Saturday and Renee Good on January 7 in Minneapolis during the Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation have stoked public outrage and fuelled calls for more protests.
In a Minneapolis neighbourhood near the sites where Good and Pretti died, about 50 teachers and staff members from local schools marched yesterday, holding anti-ICE signs, yelling into bullhorns and calling for federal immigration officers to leave their city.
One teacher said they were marching “to send a message to the rest of the country to organise and resist, because the aggressive invasion of federal officers may be coming for them next.” Protests stretched well beyond Minnesota.
“No work. No school. No shopping. Stop funding ICE,” ran a slogan on the organisers’ website, nationalshutdown.org, that listed 250 sites for yesterday’s protests across 46 states and in major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington.
In Georgia, students at 90 high schools from Atlanta to Savannah planned to walk out of class. “We are saying no business as usual while ICE is allowed to terrorise our communities,” said Claudia Andrade, an immigrant-rights organiser with Atlanta’s Party for Socialism and Liberation.
In Aurora, Colorado, public schools closed due to large anticipated teacher and student absences. The Denver suburb was the target of intense immigration raids last year after President Donald Trump claimed it was a “war zone” overrun by Venezuelan gangs. And in Tucson, Arizona, at least 20 schools cancelled classes in anticipation of mass absences of students and employees.
Meanwhile, the backlash against the administration’s immigration policy threatened to spark a partial US government shutdown. Democrats in Congress last week said they refused to pass a spending bill that included funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE.
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