Analysis of: More than 1,000 events planned in US after ICE shootings in Minneapolis and Portland
The Guardian | January 10, 2026
The fatal shooting of US citizen Renee Nicole Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis, followed by the wounding of two Venezuelan immigrants in Portland, has ignited over a thousand planned protests across the United States. This eruption of popular resistance reveals the sharpening contradictions in America's immigration enforcement apparatus—an institution that serves primarily to discipline and stratify the working class along lines of citizenship and documentation status. From a class perspective, these events expose how the state's coercive machinery operates against the broader interests of working people regardless of immigration status. The deployment of 2,000 federal agents to the Twin Cities represents a massive mobilization of state power that, while ostensibly targeting undocumented immigrants, resulted in the killing of a US citizen and has created an atmosphere of terror throughout working-class communities. The rapid, decentralized emergence of protests from Honolulu to Maine demonstrates a growing class consciousness that transcends the artificial divisions immigration enforcement seeks to maintain. The coalition forming around this weekend of action—Indivisible, the ACLU, National Day Laborer Organizing Network, and the 50501 movement—represents an attempt to build solidarity across citizen and non-citizen workers. The material basis for this solidarity lies in shared vulnerability: when ICE operates with impunity in working-class neighborhoods, all residents face potential harassment, violence, and disruption to their daily lives. Mayor Frey's profane rebuke of ICE and Democratic threats to withhold DHS funding signal fractures within the ruling class over these tactics, even as arrests of protesters in Portland demonstrate the state's willingness to suppress dissent.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Undocumented immigrant workers, US citizen workers in affected communities, ICE and federal law enforcement agents, Local political officials (mayors, city councils), Federal executive branch, Grassroots organizing coalitions, Democratic Party politicians
Beneficiaries: Employers seeking to maintain a vulnerable, exploitable immigrant labor pool, Political actors using immigration as wedge issue, Private detention facility operators, Sectors of capital benefiting from divided working class
Harmed Parties: Undocumented immigrants facing violence and deportation, US citizens in immigrant communities facing collateral violence, Mixed-status families facing separation, Working-class communities experiencing militarized policing, Day laborers and informal economy workers
The federal state exercises overwhelming coercive power through ICE, deploying thousands of armed agents into communities with minimal accountability. Local officials possess limited formal authority to resist but can mobilize political opposition. The working class, despite numerical superiority, lacks institutional power but is demonstrating collective capacity through mass protest. The contradiction between federal enforcement priorities and local democratic sentiment creates space for resistance.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Demand for cheap, exploitable immigrant labor in construction, agriculture, and service sectors, Cost of mass incarceration and deportation apparatus, Economic contributions of undocumented workers through labor and consumption, Federal funding mechanisms for local law enforcement cooperation
Undocumented workers occupy a structurally precarious position in the labor market—performing essential work while lacking legal protections, workplace rights, or political representation. This vulnerability allows for super-exploitation: lower wages, unsafe conditions, and no recourse against abuse. Immigration enforcement does not aim to eliminate this labor force but to maintain its vulnerability, ensuring capital has access to disciplined workers who cannot organize or demand better conditions without risking deportation.
Resources at Stake: Federal DHS and ICE budgets, Local tax revenues potentially withheld from federal cooperation, Labor power of immigrant workers, Political capital of elected officials, Community safety and social cohesion
Historical Context
Precedents: Palmer Raids of 1919-1920 targeting immigrant workers and radicals, Bracero Program and its termination creating cycles of criminalized labor, Operation Wetback mass deportations of 1954, Sanctuary city movements of the 1980s protecting Central American refugees, 2006 immigrant rights mega-marches, 2020 Portland federal agent deployments against protesters
US immigration enforcement has historically served to regulate labor supply and discipline working-class movements. Periods of economic expansion see relaxed enforcement to ensure labor availability, while downturns or political crises trigger crackdowns that scapegoat immigrants for systemic failures of capitalism. The current escalation follows the pattern of using immigration as a wedge to divide workers who share material interests, preventing the formation of class solidarity across citizenship lines.
Contradictions
Primary: The contradiction between capital's need for immigrant labor and the state's performative enforcement that terrorizes communities without actually eliminating the undocumented workforce. The system requires exploitable workers but must criminalize them to maintain their vulnerability.
Secondary: Federal enforcement power versus local democratic governance and community self-determination, Stated goal of 'public safety' versus actual violence inflicted on communities including US citizens, Democratic Party's rhetorical support for immigrants versus limited material action against enforcement apparatus, Individual ICE agents drawn from working class enforcing policies against fellow workers
These contradictions are unlikely to be resolved within the current framework. The protests may win tactical victories—funding restrictions, local non-cooperation policies—but the structural need for a vulnerable labor underclass will persist under capitalism. More likely outcomes include: temporary de-escalation followed by resumed enforcement, increased militarization to suppress protests, or the beginning of a broader working-class movement that connects immigration to labor rights, housing, and economic justice.
Global Interconnections
This domestic crisis connects to global patterns of migration driven by climate change, economic devastation, and political instability—conditions often created or exacerbated by US foreign policy and corporate extraction in Latin America. Venezuelan migrants fleeing economic collapse arrive in a US that helped engineer that collapse through sanctions. The global reserve army of labor created by imperialism provides capital with workers desperate enough to accept super-exploitation, while those same workers become targets of nationalist scapegoating when domestic contradictions sharpen. The international dimension also includes the growing authoritarianism visible across capitalist democracies, where militarized responses to migration and protest reveal the limits of liberal governance when class tensions escalate. The Portland deployment of federal agents echoes tactics seen in 2020 and mirrors repressive responses to protest movements globally. The question being tested is whether mass mobilization can constrain state violence or whether the coercive apparatus will escalate until resistance is crushed.
Conclusion
The ICE Out for Good weekend of action represents a significant moment of popular resistance, but its ultimate significance depends on whether it catalyzes lasting organization or dissipates after immediate tensions subside. The material basis for cross-racial, cross-citizenship working-class solidarity exists: documented and undocumented workers share employers, neighborhoods, schools, and churches. The challenge lies in building durable structures that can translate protest energy into sustained power capable of challenging not just individual enforcement actions but the entire system that requires a stratified, divided working class. The killing of a US citizen by ICE agents may prove to be a radicalizing event that demonstrates to citizen workers that the enforcement apparatus threatens them too—potentially the beginning of the broader consciousness needed to overcome divisions that have long served capital's interests.
Editorial Note: This analysis applies a dialectical materialist framework to news events. It represents one interpretive perspective and should not be considered objective reporting.
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