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Two weeks ago, three of my employees were ridesharing to work at our Minneapolis nonprofit when they realized they were being followed by federal agents. As soon as they parked, agents surrounded them with guns drawn and pointed at my staff. They grabbed one employee who, they said, “fit the description” of somebody they were looking for — essentially meaning he just happens to have brown skin. “Just checking his paperwork,” they said. Side note: he is here legally. By morning, he was in Texas.
This is our reality here in Minneapolis: constantly monitoring daily atrocities committed by ICE agents as they swarm our neighborhoods and terrorize our neighbors. The results of two months of ICE occupation in Minnesota? Two Americans dead, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both shot by federal agents on video. Ninety-six court orders violated in one month. Massive warrantless searches ruled unconstitutional. Businesses destroyed to the tune of millions of dollars a week, according to The Minneapolis Star Tribune. Before Operation Metro Surge, there were only 150 immigration officers in Minneapolis. We saw nearly 3,000 in our city at the operation’s peak, which Border Czar Tom Homan announced Thursday is finally coming to an end. But it remains to be seen how quickly the officers will actually depart, and another American city could easily be next.
Congress votes on Department of Homeland Security funding this Friday. Before another blank check happens, they need to understand what they’re funding. This isn’t just immigration enforcement. This is economic sabotage wrapped in racism.
Restaurants simply can’t function when workers are terrorized based on skin color. In Minneapolis, Mexican mercados sit empty, Somali businesses close, and immigrant-owned restaurants are down 60 to 70%. But this goes far beyond restaurants. Seventy-three percent of agricultural workers are immigrants. Over a million immigrants work in restaurants. Our food system will collapse when you consider the impact on manufacturing, distribution, institutional kitchens, and tourism. You can’t violently harass immigrant communities and expect our food systems to survive when immigrants and people of color have been the backbone of the American food system throughout its history.
What should terrify every American city: following the money. Congress allocated around $75 billion to ICE in the Big Beautiful Bill, including $45 billion for detention expansion. Private prisons managed by GEO Group and CoreCivic, both massive Trump donors, are building facilities across the nation for more than 100,000 prisoners, almost doubling the size of the entire federal prison system. Congress needs to question what the motive is for these federal facilities and why they would double the size of our current federal prison system for ostensibly temporary holdings.
Those facilities run on forced and cheap labor. Detainees work 40 hours weekly for as little as $1 per day, unchanged since 1950. With inflation, that number should be over $13 today. ICE pays these companies $100 to $150 per person daily to operate their detention centers.
Nothing stops detention centers from contracting detainees for labor to farms, slaughterhouses, and manufacturers, turning immigration sweeps into a for-profit business. Prisons already do it. The DHS is building permanent infrastructure as it creates labor shortages through immigration sweeps, then fills them with $1-per-day forced labor while private prisons profit.
Minneapolis is the test case. We are living the blueprint that could be rolled out to every major city in America. Our restaurants, our markets, our entire food system is being dismantled in real time. The economic devastation we’re experiencing — $10 to $20 million in weekly losses — is what awaits Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, any city with vibrant immigrant communities that make our food system function.
All Democrats must hold the line, not just on DHS funding, but on all attempts to dismantle checks, balances, and equality in America. The SAVE Act must also be stopped, as it requires passports or birth certificates to register to vote. Twenty-one million Americans lack these documents. The bill disproportionately impacts low-income voters, people of color, and married women who have changed names. Trump’s allies is already floating having ICE agents at polling stations. Steve Bannon said explicitly, “We’re gonna have ICE surround the polls.” That’s voter suppression, pure and simple.
Here’s what we must demand from Congress: Freeze DHS funding citing unconstitutional violations, undertrained and over-militarized agents, racial profiling, and negative economic impact proven in Minnesota. Kill the SAVE Act. Investigate private prison contracts and show where that $45 billion actually goes. End detention and hunting of people with no criminal record.
I’m delivering a letter with nearly 3,000 signatures from the food industry to every Senate and House office this week. Our communities cannot function under terror, and we can’t watch our entire food system dissolve because of poor planning and horrendous execution.
Democrats and a handful of Republican senators blocked DHS funding two weeks ago and this week must negotiate reforms. Hold the line. No funding without accountability. No SAVE Act stripping voting rights. No permanent detention centers that many people of color view as a modern-day slavery system.
The food industry is watching. We will remember who voted to continue this terror.
