On January 7, Renee Nicole Good was murdered by an ICE agent in the streets of South Minneapolis. She was a mother of three and lived just a few blocks from where she was gunned down.
The attack provoked fury, with thousands in Minneapolis gathering for vigils and protests against ICE terror. Protests have already spread across Minnesota and to cities around the country.
Donald Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem leaped to defend the killer, ICE agent Jonathan Ross, slandering Good as a “domestic terrorist.” “She behaved horribly,” Trump said, “and then she ran him [Ross] over.” Noem claimed Good used her car as a “weapon” and that Ross shot her dead in “self-defense.”
Video evidence and eye-witness reports tell a different story. Grim video shows Good in her car getting accosted by an ICE agent trying to open her door. As she maneuvers to escape, Ross fires at her three times. Her vehicle then crashes into a parked car. Federal agents, including Ross, then jump into their vehicles and flee the active crime scene before medical responders arrive.
Federal authorities claim that Good clipped Ross’s arm badly enough to require stitches. Even if this were true, it’s hardly a crime punishable by summary execution in the street. This is nothing less than state-sanctioned murder.
Good was no domestic terrorist. The real terrorists are the ICE agents and the ruling class that sent them—the same ruling class which arms the genocidal Israeli state and bombs civilians in Venezuela.
Trump’s deployment of ICE agents and National Guardsmen across the country was a conscious provocation. Their unwelcome presence was inevitably going to lead to deadly confrontations. Since Trump launched his terror campaign, ICE has shot at least 16 people and held at least 15 others at gunpoint. Good was the fourth to be killed. The day after Good’s murder, ICE agents shot a married couple in Portland, Oregon.
New wave of ICE terror
The deadly shooting followed Trump’s announcement that an additional 2,000 federal agents are making their way to Minneapolis. He is doubling down on ICE mobilizations in Minnesota and targeting Somali workers following fraud allegations against some in the Somali diaspora.
To be clear, the ruling class does not care about fraud. Trump himself has pardoned fraudsters who pleaded guilty to similar accusations. The real fraudsters and criminals are the ones behind the ICE mobilizations.
The purpose of this fresh wave of ICE terror is to distract from the worsening economic situation and Trump’s inability to solve any of the issues facing the working class, reflected in his falling poll numbers.
Trump is using Somalis—and immigrant workers in general—as scapegoats, attempting to pit workers against each other. The capitalist state persecutes and terrorizes immigrant workers in order to drive down wages and conditions for everyone. These are the class-war methods of our enemy. We must respond with class-struggle methods of our own.
Fight ICE with class struggle
Immigrants are not responsible for the crisis we face today. It is the capitalists and their failing system that are to blame. Workers must meet ICE terror with militant class defense, and the struggle against ICE must be a struggle against the system as a whole.
An injury to one is an injury to all, and the labor movement has a responsibility to lead this fight. The existing union leadership is well positioned to do so. Over 300,000 workers in Minnesota are organized in the AFL-CIO, including the 80,000-strong Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation. The union leaders support immigrant workers in words, but so far, they have failed to take decisive action, like pickets, strikes, and mass protests against ICE.
The unions in Minneapolis should mobilize workers in a drive to organize the unorganized and establish workers self-defense committees in every neighborhood and workplace targeted by ICE. These self-defense committees could convene an assembly to elect a citywide leadership and coordinate the struggle to drive ICE out of Minneapolis entirely.
And we shouldn’t stop there. Similar committees should be organized in every major city in the country to put an end to ICE terror and the capitalist system that creates it.
Tradition of struggle
Minneapolis has a rich history of class struggle and these methods have been successfully deployed here before. During the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike, 67 people were shot by police at a picket line on “Bloody Friday,” July 20. Many were bystanders and a majority of those injured were shot in the back. Two workers were killed: Henry Ness and John Belor.
In response, Teamsters Local 574 linked up with unions across the city to coordinate a one-day strike of the transport workers. This included bus drivers who refused to transport National Guardsmen mobilized to break the strike. On July 24, roughly 40,000 people—10% of the city’s population—attended Henry Ness’s funeral procession and Minneapolis was effectively shut down as a result.
In the words of Farrell Dobbs, one of the strike’s leaders and a member of the Communist League of America, “There was not a cop in sight as the grim thousands gathered.” The police were in hiding, hopeless in the face of a coordinated and disciplined working class.
The lessons of the 1934 strike are clear. The capitalist class and their state are highly organized. Workers need our own organization to meet their force with our force. The leadership of the Communist League of America was essential to the Teamsters’ victory in 1934. The Revolutionary Communists of America are building the same type of party today, in connection with our comrades all over the world in the Revolutionary Communist International.
No trust in Democrats or the courts
Since the shooting, Mayor Jacob Frey and Governor Tim Walz have called for the removal of ICE. But their words are empty. Neither Democrat has done anything to protect immigrant workers. If anything, they’ve given credence to Trump’s racist accusations against Somalis.
Both Democratic and Republican administrations have attacked immigrant workers. Nearly 4.4 million immigrants were deported under the Biden-Harris regime. The difference between Trump and the Democrats is that Democrats want to deport immigrants as quietly as possible, while Trump wants dramatic scenes to distract from his failures and try to shore up his fracturing MAGA base.
Frey has counseled Minneapolis to meet ICE’s “hate with a whole lot of love.” Both Frey and Walz have called for “peace and calm.” ICE murdered Renee Good less than a mile from where police killed Floyd nearly six years ago, and Minnesotans have not forgotten that Walz deployed the National Guard during the George Floyd uprising in 2020. Now he has mobilized the National Guard once again, and has it ready to deploy against anti-ICE protests.
Neither can we rely on the courts to deliver justice for Renee Good and end ICE terror. The courts ultimately maintain the exploitative relationship between workers and capitalists. We need to look no further than the ruling on Derek Chauvin—the cop who murdered Floyd. He was convicted and imprisoned, but racist police violence continues to wreak havoc in neighborhoods across the country. Safety and justice can only be guaranteed by the organized and mobilized working class.
These words were spoken at Henry Ness’ funeral, and they are still true today:
The life of our murdered brother typifies the lives of all workers. The social system gave him no chance. There is only one way, one struggle in which a worker has a real interest. That is the struggle of Labor against Capital … This struggle against oppression is no easy task. On the side of the bosses are the police, the army, the courts. The mayor of Minneapolis does not consider the lives of the strikers worth protecting. The only thing of importance to him is the protection of the bosses’ property, the bosses’ right to keep workers enslaved at low wages and in misery … Brothers, sisters, as we leave this demonstration we must bear in our hearts a fierce resolve to carry on Brother Ness’s struggle. We must not fail him! We must avenge his murder. This we shall do if we struggle to win this strike, if we struggle to throw the exploiters from off our backs and to establish a new social order in which the worker may enjoy the fruits of his toil.
An injury to one is an injury to all!
Organized labor must step into the fight!
Workers’ self-defense committees in every workplace and neighborhood targeted by ICE!
No faith in the Democrats! Down with both ruling class parties!
Immediate amnesty and full rights for undocumented workers and their families!
Build a communist party that can defeat ICE and the capitalist system once and for all!
