A legal observer murdered after being shot at point blank range. Civilians pulled from cars by the hair screaming. Youth workers picked up, beaten, and then shoved out of vehicles blocks away. Public schools raided and the staff, students and families attacked. People abducted without notice, leaving nothing but a broken car parked in the middle of the street as evidence of what had occurred. A reactionary government which raises the slogan “One of Ours, All of Yours,” and a city under a de facto state of siege. All this and more has streamed out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, plain for all to see, since the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “Operation Metro Surge” was launched in December 2025, and Renee Good killed in cold blood on January 7, 2026.
If nothing else, the reactionary offensive on the masses of the Twin Cities has exposed once again that the so-called “constitutional rights,” “civil liberties,” and “institutional protections” of American bourgeois democracy are a complete farce, an illusion created to confuse the masses into thinking that somehow the State of their own class enemy will save them. Despite the local and state government being largely Democratic, the Democrats’ false “opposition” to ICE’s operations in Minneapolis has so far mainly involved suing the federal government in its own court system, which of course is a complete dead end. The Democrats have been completely unable to even slightly put on the brakes on the current reactionary offensive, because in reality they are one of the key proponents and supporters of the goals and methods of that very same offensive. Even relatively moderate demands, like the elimination of ICE as an agency (its existence only dates back to the George W. Bush administration), have been sidelined by the Democratic party in favor of a repeat of the big tent “anti-Trump” coalition strategy that produced the reactionary Biden administration in 2020 and the failed Biden/Harris run in 2024.
Minnesota is no stranger to betrayal carried out under the banner of reformism and democratic illusions. Even the name of its state Democratic Party branch, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) is an illustration of this. The Farmer-Labor Party (FLP) of Minnesota was part of a wave of “left-wing populist” parties formed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and was a major feature of state politics for decades. Even the Communist Party (USA), under their incorrect application of the Popular Front strategy, had sunk many resources into trying to control and lead the FLP so they could carry out electoral work though it. This all came to an end of course when the FLP merged with the local Democratic Party in 1944, and the new Democratic leadership expelled all the communists and radical workers from the party.
The Democratic and Republican parties are two sides of the same coin, two faces of one class dictatorship and one unified US imperialism. While there might be superficial or policy conflict between them from time to time, their essence remains the same, something which the working and oppressed masses of the country are waking up to year-by-year through battles and hard-won lessons. Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr. Obama, Trump and Biden; they are all criminals servants of a beast which can only be defeated through revolution.
The actions of the masses in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Charlotte, and the partial results they achieved, make plain that the only thing that can beat back a capitalist offensive is an equally powerful offensive on the part of the multinational working-class and its allies, not electoralism or court-manuevering. We say partial results because although the masses have yet to truly “beat back” ICE, which maintains strategic dominance and an extensive militarized logistics system, they have been able to deal the agency temporary blows and force its hand on tactical questions in many cities. Despite their energy, these mass rebellions in response to ICE deployments, and in response to brutal repression like the murder of Renee Good, have been disorganized and their leadership has been largely dominated by opportunists and traitors.
This is why organizations like the People’s Defense Committee, who have lead actions against ICE in various cities, have raised the call of forming “neighborhood defense units” to mobilize, politicize, and organize the working masses in the street-by-street struggle against ICE, the police, and other forces of reaction in our cities and towns. The Partisan unites with this call, and with similar initiatives in universities and workplaces led by the Revolutionary Student Union and the New Labor Organizing Committee, respectively, to strengthen and consolidate to wide but disorganized wave of actions against ICE occurring throughout the country under class-conscious political leadership.
Ultimately, the ongoing wave of ICE operations around the country, such as Operation Midway Blitz, Operation Charlotte’s Web, and now Operation Metro Surge, all come as part of the process of increasing militarization and fascistization of the US. Now more than ever there is a pressing need to build up true revolutionary anti-fascism. Rejecting democratic illusions must not mean falling into the trap of tailing electoral opportunism, institutions of the class enemy, nor anarchist spontaneity. Given the rise of surveillance, policing, and general militarization of US society, revisionism cannot ever be tolerated which ever form it takes. A principled, militant, independent, and class-conscious anti-fascist movement is the only solution that can prevent future operations like that in Minneapolis from being replicated around the country.
