Minnesota

How One Minnesota Union Is Helping Members Survive the Federal Siege

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This article is a publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.—When Feben Ghilagaber delivers food to fellow union members hiding from the thousands of federal immigration agents swarming Minnesota, the lights to their homes are often off when she gets there. 

“People are scared for their lives,” she tells me as we drive to UNITE HERE Local 17 office in Minneapolis, a labor union representing more than 6,000 workers in hotels, stadiums and convention centers in the Twin Cities metro area. It also represents many of the workers at the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport and Ghilagaber, an airport food service worker and steward for the union, says the people she delivers food to “are sitting in the dark.”

“ICE,” she says, “is attacking everybody.”

The majority of Local 17’s members are immigrants and/or people of color, which puts them at risk of being detained for merely being in public where border patrol and ICE are present. And they’re present everywhere. 

Under its so-called Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration has deployed thousands of federal agents to Minnesota, where they have raided homes, schools and daycares, detaining school-aged children and violently attacking many of those resisting their presence. An ICE agent shot and killed poet and mother, Renee Good, on January 7 and she has become a rallying cry for the efforts to push ICE out of the area.

Midwest

How Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Chills Organizing and Erodes Conditions for All Workers

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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and The Nation. In late 2025, federal immigration authorities detained a non-union janitor who had recently—and publicly—accused contractors for Minnesota’s Ramsey County of mass wage theft. “Despite a bunch of intimidation and threats to his job by his non-union employer, who was trying to pay less, he came forward at a press conference launching these allegations,” Greg Nammacher, the president of SEIU Local 26, told me. 

The courage of this worker, who has been released but is now in deportation proceedings, played a vital role moving the case forward, according to the union, and it supported a similar wage theft case against Hennepin County contractors, which was also announced at the press conference where he spoke. The effort delivered for workers. The case against Hennepin County contractors resulted in the disbursal of nearly $400,000 in back pay to more than 70 subcontracted workers in December 2025, and the case against Ramsey County contractors is ongoing and has already led to some internal policy changes. 

When someone who fought so successfully for workers—both immigrants and non-immigrants—is detained, “it sends a chill through all the workers in the non-union companies that are trying to stand up and get their rights enforced,” Nammacher said.

Minnesota

“We Are Facing a Tsunami of Hate”: Amid ICE Crackdown, Unions and Community Groups Call for Minnesota Shutdown in 10 Days

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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. Unions and community groups gathered in front of the Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota this morning to announce a day of “no work, no school, no shopping” on January 23 to oppose the ferocious assault on the state by federal immigration authorities. “We are facing a tsunami of hate from our own federal government,” Abdikarim Khasim, a Minnesota rideshare driver, told the crowd. “We’re going to shut it down on the 23rd. We’re going to overcome this.” 

JaNaé Bates Imari, representative of the church Camphor Memorial UMC., told the crowd that the joint action will be “a day when every single Minnesotan who loves this state—who loves the idea of truth and freedom—will refuse to work, shop and go to school.

Workers

“There Is a War Against Us”: Worker Leader, Released from ICE Custody, Speaks Out

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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. Willian Giménez González is a day laborer in Chicago known for organizing for workers’ rights. He was part of a group that filed a federal lawsuit over the alleged beating and harassment of day laborers at a Home Depot. 

On September 12, federal agents detained him outside of his barbershop, beginning a 47-day ordeal in which he was held in the Broadview ICE detention center in Illinois and then moved to the North Lake detention center in Michigan. The abduction came in the early days of ​“Operation Midway Blitz” as the Trump administration dramatically ramped up the presence of heavily armed, masked federal agents throughout the Chicago area. Giménez González’s community responded with outrage and concern, rallying at the Broadview facility the day after he was detained.

Midwest

Visible and Invisible: How ICE Is Terrorizing Chicago’s Working Class

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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. When federal immigration agents thread through her Chicago neighborhood and circle above her home in a helicopter, Araceli hides with her husband. ​“You hear the whistles,” she says through an interpreter. ​“You hear the people yelling, ​‘Don’t go out! Stay inside! There’s immigration here!’ ” 

Sometimes they are forced to hide for days. 

“It’s alarming, it’s not normal, it’s like being in a crisis,” explains Araceli, who is 55 and originally from Mexico City, though she has lived in Chicago for 30 years. That means Araceli often misses work as an apartment cleaner and her husband misses work in construction.

Midwest

Chicago Day Laborer, in ICE Detention, Says He’s Facing Retaliation Because Supporters Are Protesting His Abduction

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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. Willian Giménez González, a known advocate for the rights of day laborers who was abducted by federal agents on September 12, is speaking out from ICE detention. 

He says that federal authorities transferred him from the Broadview, Ill., ICE facility, to a detention center in Michigan, to move him away from his supporters. “I believe I was moved to Michigan at the last minute because I had the support of the community, and because my lawyer and politicians were protesting outside the jail,” he said, referring to the Broadview ICE facility. 

“I believe that because I had people fighting for me, I was targeted for transfer to prevent my supporters from helping me.” The statement was passed to me by his lawyer, Kevin Herrera, who is also the legal director of Raise the Floor Alliance, a legal clinic and worker advocacy organization. 

Willian Giménez González, who is in his late 30s and originally hails from Venezuela, is one of five day laborers who filed a federal lawsuit in August 2024 against the city of Chicago, Home Depot, and off-duty police officers moonlighting as private security guards for the alleged harassment and beating of day laborers. His supporters say there is reason to be concerned that his role in the lawsuit made him a target of federal agents, and for 35 days they have been fighting to secure his release. “This sets a really dangerous precedent where we are seeing that if people speak up about their rights, they could be targeted for that,” says Miguel Alvelo Rivera, executive director of the Latino Union of Chicago, where Giménez González is a member. ​“What feels dangerous about all of this is the silencing of folks who advocate for their community.”

The lawsuit says the workers ​“have endured physical violence at the hands of off-duty Chicago Police Department officers as they have been targeted based on their race, ethnicity, and national origin and thrown to the ground, aggressively handcuffed, and beaten by officers in displays of excessive force.”

According to the lawsuit from 2024, on October 23, 2023, when Giménez González sought work outside of a Home Depot, he was pushed to the ground, repeatedly slapped, then instructed to sign a paper written in English that he ​“did not understand.” That paper turned out to be his agreement that he had been trespassing.

Midwest

How ICE Terror Campaigns Are Used to Discipline Labor

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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and The American Prospect. CHICAGO – The last time Regina heard from her mother, Laura Murillo, she was calling from inside the ICE detention center in Broadview, Illinois, last Friday. “She just told us that she loved us. She seemed shocked, and she said she’s wanting to fight the case,” Regina says. Regina, 19, is standing at the street vendor booth in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago, where Murillo was detained.