After ICE invaded Minnesota with 4,000 agents last winter, the Twin Cities working class responded with a mass movement of rapid response networks and a 350,000-strong citywide general strike. It remains the high point of struggle so far under Trump’s second term and forced the wannabe dictator’s personal army to retreat. Now, the regime is trying to win back in the courts what they lost in the streets. We can’t let them.

To date, the single day with the highest number of immigrants in ICE detention was January 24, the day after the general strike. But now, after months of decreased detentions and deportations as a result of this historic struggle, ICE activity is back to full steam. More immigrants were detained in July than in any other month in DHS history, and the January record of total detainees on a given day is on pace to soon be broken. Just in the past few months multiple people have been killed by ICE, and abhorrent conditions and deaths continue in detention centers.

As part of the new surge, the regime wants to inflict punishment for its defeat in Minneapolis. In June, the Department of Justice indicted 15 activists, known as the Minnesota 15, on spurious charges in an attempt to strike fear into the movement. Then on August 13, news broke that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been engaged in a months-long investigation of multiple unions and left groups, including Socialist Alternative, for the roles we played in the resistance to ICE’s occupation of the Twin Cities. In Texas, Washington state, and Chicago, peaceful protesters have also been indicted and, in some cases, given extremely harsh decades-long sentences.

We will not be intimidated. The only way to fight back against this authoritarian state repression is with a massive public defense campaign demanding to drop the charges against the Minnesota 15 and all anti-ICE protesters, and to defend the right to protest, organize, and strike. This must be linked to the fight to abolish ICE to fund housing, schools, and healthcare instead, and for immediate, unconditional legalization and equal rights for all undocumented immigrants.

Operation Puppet Master

Officially named Operation Puppet Master, the DHS’ investigation into unions and left groups involved spying on community members and activists at meetings in churches, parks, libraries, schools, and union halls. They sent undercover agents to organizing meetings, including one hosted by Socialist Alternative that drew 100 people and was covered by two TV news stations called “How to Organize a Sickout or Strike in Your Workplace” on January 19, four days before the general strike. The undercover agent’s report to Homeland Security Investigations explains the meeting was called by Socialist Alternative and describes us as a “revolutionary organization working to build a movement for a democratic, socialist society” and “fighting for an end to all capitalist exploitation and oppression.” If this is our “crime,” then guilty as charged.

As part of this operation, the state also secretly seized three years of financial records of SEIU Local 26, the majority-immigrant union of janitors, airport workers, Uber drivers, and more that initiated the general strike, as well as CWA Local 7250, the union with the highest percentage of its members out on strike on January 23. They seized six years of the personal finance records of Kieran Knutson, the left-wing president of CWA Local 7250, who played a leading role in the resistance to the invasion and in building for the general strike, including speaking alongside Socialist Alternative members at multiple organizing meetings.

Socialist Alternative is proud to stand with the organizations in the DHS’ “wheel of conspiracy,” in reality a wheel of working-class power which dealt Trump and ICE their biggest defeat at the hands of our movement yet. We have no secrets and we hide nothing about our intransigent opposition to ICE or our revolutionary socialist program that fights for a future without war, poverty, exploitation, and oppression.

Fighting State Repression Throughout History

The state has not found evidence of a single crime committed by any of the organizations targeted by Operation Puppet Master. Rather, what they have done is identify political enemies of the Trump administration and go on a fishing expedition to try to find crimes that could justify their crackdown. Meanwhile, their definition of criminal activity has rapidly expanded to meet the needs of their far-right authoritarian regime. Operation Puppet Master explicitly arose from National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, known as NSPM-7, which identifies anybody holding “anti-Christian, anti-American, or anti-capitalist views” as a potential domestic terrorist. Renee Good, too, was labeled a domestic terrorist by then-DHS secretary Kristi Noem after she was brutally murdered by an ICE agent for peacefully observing ICE agents from her car.

NSPM-7 is a new 21st-century McCarthyism. It follows in the tradition of the Palmer Raids following the Russian Revolution, which arrested and deported thousands of suspected socialists, anarchists, and communists. It echoes the Smith Act, a 1940 law which made it illegal to advocate the overthrow of the US government and was most famously used to jail leading Trotskyists who led the Minneapolis general strike of 1934. And it certainly follows in the footsteps of COINTELPRO, the string of covert operations to “discredit, disrupt, and destroy” anti-war, communist, and, most infamously, Black power organizations from the mid-1950s through the early 1970s.

State repression has always ramped up when the ruling class feels that their power is threatened. Today as ruling classes the world over plunge us deeper into a new era of imperialist war and genocide, AI dystopia, climate devastation, and unfathomable inequality, they once again are turning to state repression to try to stave off uprisings and revolutions.

Fighting back against state repression has always been a key focus for radicals and the left during periods of heightened repression. The ACLU, a far more radical organization at its founding than it is today, formed out of the campaign against the Palmer Raids. James Cannon’s timeless book Socialism on Trial contains the live courtroom transcript of his trial under the Smith Act and details how the Trotskyists fought back, not by hiding their views but by explaining them in an accessible manner to the widest possible audience. The Free Huey campaign waged by the Black Panther Party resulted in the overturning of Panther leader Huey P. Newton’s manslaughter conviction and his release from prison.

In each one of these cases, organizing meetings, grassroots fundraising to pay for legal defense, mass protests, and building support within wider working-class organizations such as labor unions were all critical tactics as part of building a mass public defense campaign. The more that defendants could be made famous and turned into household names, the stronger the movement was. This required doing the down and dirty work of canvassing, leafleting, and having thousands upon thousands of individual conversations with ordinary people. Tying the defense of persecuted activists to offensive struggles for better working and living conditions, against racial discrimination or war, and to solving any number of capitalism’s myriad of other crises also helped to bring more people into these important campaigns.

It’s time to dust off these lessons of the past and put them into practice now.

Next Steps

In the leadup to the trial of the Minnesota 15, and in response to the recent news of DHS’ investigation into unions and left groups, the worst thing we could do would be to slink into the shadows and shy away from a public fight. The courts are the capitalist state’s preferred terrain. We need to take the fight into our domain: the streets.

Socialist Alternative is actively participating in the Minnesota 15 defense campaign and has begun building the defense campaign in cities across the country, and even internationally. This movement must not be limited to already-existing activists but include all working-class people and students outraged at ICE’s barbarity and Trump’s attacks on our democratic right to protest and strike. This approach was also the key to defeating Operation Metro Surge.

The defense campaign will be organizing a national day of action this fall and Socialist Alternative urges all progressive and working-class organizations to help build for it once a date is announced. You can follow both the official campaign as well as Socialist Alternative’s activity within it on Instagram. If your union, immigrant rights organization, student group, or other organization would like to get involved with this fight, message us on Instagram or email at [email protected].

• Drop the charges on the Minnesota 15 and all anti-ICE protesters!
• Defend the right to protest, organize, and strike!
• Abolish ICE to fund housing, schools, and healthcare!