EDITORIAL
Minneapolis Pushes Trump to Promise Reforms

February 16, 2026

The Trump administration said that it is pulling back on ICE deployment in Minneapolis. Trump’s lead enforcer Tom Homan said that ICE is leaving because it has “achieved the results we came here for” and added that the “surge” is over, BUT … he added that hundreds of officers “will continue” looking into “fraud allegations” and finished by saying “We’ll come back.”

The massive mobilizations in Minneapolis against ICE, in the face of guns, truncheons and gas, in the face of two recent murders of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, was courageous and impressive in scope and determination.

And it didn’t stop. Finally, even the powerful had to take notice. And Trump was advised to lower the temperature.

Homan was brought in and the hated, maskless commander Greg Bovino was ejected. It is no small thing. Trump and his reactionary band of co-conspirators and thugs had to bow to the negative public reaction. Trump’s claim of pulling back because they got what they wanted is bullshit, an attempt to cover the truth.

This determined opposition by the people of Minneapolis galvanized the public, was picked up by the media. It pushed the media to expose the lies of the Trump administration about the two murders and attracted people who wanted to do something to organize resistance in big cities and small towns across the country.

But Trump’s actions to pull back pressure on Minneapolis does not mean that things are going back to “normal,” the way they were before. Behind the scenes, the Trump administration continues its plans to impose a more repressive regime.

The federal government has announced that it intends to turn warehouses into ICE detention jails around the country. Kristi Noem brags about spaces to hold 100,000 people at a time. ICE is recruiting more agents and has more than doubled their forces in less than a year. The budget for ICE has grown from 6 billion dollars in 2016 to 85 billion dollars today. ICE’s budget alone is more than the whole military budget of all but 15 countries in the world.

Trump has postured, threatened and bullied his way through many situations. Will these prisons actually be built? Will these huge amounts of money being distributed to his cronies, large and small, result in such containment facilities? We don’t know for sure; it is enough to know they are building the capacity for it.

What is the purpose of this buildup of an internal military force? Can they really accomplish what they call “remigration” or first incarcerating, and then deporting, millions of workers who were not born in the U.S.?

Maybe, but not without tearing apart their own economy. Perhaps this buildup could be used against an even broader slice of the U.S. population if it begins to protest against the horrendous assault on their standard of living, or if and when the ruling class decides to expand war into a broader regional or world event. Maybe it’s to expand the incarceration system currently used primarily against black workers and for crimes against property. The prisons are already bursting.

The Democratic party leaders shut down funding for part of the government, saying that they are pushing back on what ICE is doing. But what they propose is not enough. It won’t get rid of ICE. That’s no surprise because the Democrats are part of a two-party system running a government that has always used repressive force against the population.

Stopping ICE and the repressive regime that is being prepared will not come from any politicians. It must come from the population.

The retreat by the Trump administration only happened because of the resistance started by the people of Minneapolis. People learn by mobilizing. They are learning that it is not enough to mobilize against ICE and the armed thugs sent against them. The problem is not just ICE, it is not just Trump and his corrupt administration, the problem is the whole capitalist system that Trump and ICE represent. That system is what needs to be gotten rid of.