Thousands in Minneapolis brave bitter cold to protest ICE crackdown 

Thousands of demonstrators have braved bitter cold to march through the streets of Minneapolis in the United States and demand an end to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in their city.

Friday’s march started with temperatures as low as minus 29 Celsius (minus 20 Fahrenheit), with organisers saying that as many as 50,000 people took to the streets, a figure that could not be independently verified.

Many demonstrators later gathered indoors at the Target Center, a sports arena with a capacity of 20,000.

Organisers and participants said dozens of businesses across Minnesota closed for the day as part of the “ICE OUT!” show of defiance that organisers billed as a general strike.

Workers headed to street protests and marches, which followed weeks of sometimes violent confrontations between US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and protesters opposed to Trump’s surge.

“It is 23 degrees below zero but the stores are closed and these demonstrators are out braving the coldest day on record since 2019 all to send a simple message to ICE: Get Out,” Al Jazeera’s John Hendren said, reporting from Minneapolis.

Just a day earlier, US Vice President JD Vance visited Minneapolis in a demonstration of support for ICE officers and to ask local leaders and activists to reduce tensions, saying ICE was carrying out an important mission to detain immigration violators.

In one of the more dramatic protests, local police arrested dozens of clergy members who sang hymns and prayed as they knelt on a road at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, calling for Trump to withdraw the 3,000 federal law enforcement officers sent to the area.

Organisers said their demands included legal accountability for the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good, a US citizen, in her car this month as she monitored ICE activities.

They ignored commands to clear the road by officers from local police departments, who arrested and zip-tied dozens of the protesters, without resistance, before putting them onto buses.

Organisers said about 100 clergy members were arrested.

Faith in Minnesota, a nonprofit advocacy group that helped organise the protest, said the clergy were also calling attention to airport and airline workers, who they said had been detained by ICE at work. The group asked that airline companies “stand with Minnesotans in calling for ICE to immediately end its surge in the state”.

Across the state, bars, restaurants and shops were closing for the day, organisers said, in what was intended to be the largest display yet of opposition to the federal government’s surge.

“Make no mistake, we are facing a full federal occupation by the United States government through the arm of ICE on unceded Dakota land,” said Rachel Dionne-Thunder, vice president of the Indigenous Protector Movement.

She was one of a series of Indigenous, religious, labour and community leaders to speak, calling on ICE to withdraw and for a thorough investigation into Good’s shooting.

Trump, a Republican, was elected in 2024 largely on his platform of enforcing immigration laws, with a promise to crack down on violent criminals, saying his predecessor, Democratic President Joe Biden, was too lax in border security.

But Trump’s aggressive deployment of federal law enforcement into Democratic-led cities and states has further spurred political polarisation in the US, especially since the shooting of Good, the detention of a US citizen who was taken from his home in his underwear, and the detention of schoolchildren, including a five-year-old boy.

The numerous Fortune 500 companies that call Minnesota home have refrained from public statements about the immigration raids.