If They Can Criminalize the Minnesota 15, They Can Criminalize All of Us

As federal repression expands, the fight to defend indicted activists is becoming a test of working-class solidarity — and our ability to organize against authoritarianism.

Cynthia Sarver and Kip Hedges

Oct 09, 2026

Against a backdrop of rising class struggle internationally — from Spain and France to Northern Ireland — the fight against the criminalization of anti-ICE activism, attacks on democratic rights, and union-busting has gained momentum over the past two weeks.

On October 3, nearly 500 people marched through downtown Minneapolis in support of the Minnesota 15 (MN15), political and union activists indicted by Donald Trump’s Justice Department for their organized opposition to the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota known as Operation Metro Surge. That same day, solidarity events ranging from fundraising dinners to public meetings took place in 28 cities around the world, from New Haven, Connecticut, to Manchester, England.

The Minneapolis march drew broad support from the Minnesota labor movement, including the Minnesota AFL-CIO, Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA), Minneapolis Federation of Educators (MFE Local 59), Saint Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE Local 28), Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, and eight other union locals.

This growing labor support reflects an understanding of what is at stake: the indictments of the MN15 are not simply an attack on 15 individuals. They are an attack on the ability of workers to organize collectively against government repression.

Why the Government Is Targeting Labor Organizers

Evidence emerging from the MN15 discovery documents reinforces the seriousness of this threat. The documents reveal that federal agents infiltrated the Twin Cities’ resistance and labor movements during Operation Metro Surge, which began in December 2025. Such surveillance may have much deeper historical roots.

On February 15, 2026, four undercover federal agents attended a mass Workers’ Assembly, where workers representing more than 30 union locals participated in democratic debate and decision-making about how to continue the fight against ICE. Other discovery materials suggest an extensive effort to map the organizations, relationships, and networks that sustained resistance to the federal occupation. Taken together, these revelations raise serious questions about the government’s interest in identifying and potentially disrupting centers of working-class organization and power.

Nor is this happening only in Minnesota. At the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, federal authorities subpoenaed three years of meeting minutes and financial records from the 4,000-member Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) as part of an investigation involving union members who opposed Israel’s war in Gaza. The implications extend far beyond any single investigation. When the government subjects unions and political organizations to sweeping surveillance and demands for internal records, it threatens the relationships of trust and solidarity upon which collective action depends.

In Minnesota, organized labor played an indispensable role in resisting ICE. Union members provided peacekeepers at marches and rallies, helped train legal observers, organized patrols to protect immigrant students and their families, and helped lead the January 23 mass strike, when an estimated 300,000 workers stayed away from their jobs. That collective action demonstrated something the government would prefer workers to forget: when working people organize across workplaces, unions, and communities, they can exercise enormous social and economic power.

Following January 23, union activists continued organizing through the February 15 and April 5 Workers’ Assemblies. These gatherings brought together a militant layer of the local labor movement to debate how to build on the strike, strengthen workplace organization, and sustain the fight against ICE. It is no accident that eight of the MN15 are union members who were directly involved in planning and producing the workers’ assemblies. By indicting these activists, the federal government has placed some of the Twin Cities’ most experienced and committed class-struggle organizers under the threat of lengthy prison sentences, disrupting their ability to organize at precisely the moment their experience is most needed.

A Defense Campaign Gathering Momentum

Support for the MN15 has been, in the words of defendants and Defense Committee organizers, “overwhelming” in both breadth and depth. And that support continues to grow. Alongside the October 3 demonstrations, recent weeks have seen benefit concerts, fundraising dinners, public meetings, and screenings of the documentary When ICE Melts, which chronicles the Twin Cities resistance and the January 23 mass strike.

The film drew a sold-out audience of more than 200 in Minneapolis and 130 in Madison, Wisconsin, with smaller screenings from Albuquerque to Berlin. Additional events are planned on both coasts, in Colorado, and across Europe this fall. These events are doing more than raising money for legal defense. They are introducing new audiences to the experience of ordinary Minnesotans who organized to protect their neighbors, resist federal repression, and drive ICE out of their communities. They are also helping people recognize the connections between what happened in Minnesota and the attacks on democratic and labor rights unfolding elsewhere.

The breadth of this support points toward an important strategic opportunity: the MN15 defense campaign can become a catalyst for building a much wider movement against political repression.

From Defending the MN15 to Defending Our Right to Organize

The defense of the Minnesota 15 is about more than winning justice for those facing prosecution, essential as that is. It is also about defending the right of working people everywhere to organize collectively against authoritarianism. The MN15 defendants are being prosecuted for activities connected to a movement in which thousands of Minnesotans participated: protecting immigrant neighbors, documenting federal operations, organizing protests, and mobilizing workers against ICE.

As more people learn about the case, they will have opportunities to examine the government’s allegations, challenge its narrative, and understand the broader political stakes of the prosecution. That understanding can help inspire defense campaigns in other communities, including those supporting the Michigan 8 and Prairieland defendants, who also face federal prosecution arising from protest activity.

Such campaigns need not be limited to responding after activists have been indicted. They can also help build the relationships, organizations, and public support necessary to defend communities confronting new ICE detention centers, expanding surveillance technologies such as Flock cameras, attacks on immigrant workers, or other forms of government repression. The point is not simply to replicate the Minnesota experience. It is to take its lessons seriously: build relationships before a crisis, establish democratic organizations rooted in workplaces and communities, and develop the capacity to respond collectively when people come under attack.

As the MN15 defense campaign reaches a wider audience, it can help make political repression more costly for those who carry it out. A movement involving hundreds of thousands, potentially millions, of working people could exert enormous political pressure against the prosecution of activists and the criminalization of dissent. That kind of movement could help keep the MN15 and others facing similar charges out of prison. Just as importantly, it could strengthen the willingness and ability of working people to resist the next attack.

Building the Broadest Possible Defense Movement

Achieving this will require defense committees across the country that are broadly inclusive, democratically organized, and capable of reaching well beyond existing activist circles. We need the participation of unions, community organizations, immigrant rights groups, students, civil liberties advocates, religious organizations, and ordinary working people who may never have attended a political demonstration.

We also need to reach people and institutions in the mainstream of American political life. One example is the effort that secured Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal’s support for the Minnesota 15. Blumenthal is a mainstream Democratic politician, and the Democratic Party remains firmly committed to capitalism. That does not make his support unimportant. On the contrary, winning support from elected officials and other influential figures can help bring the case to people who might otherwise never hear about it. It can broaden public scrutiny of the prosecutions and increase the political costs of repression.

The challenge is to build the broadest possible united front without surrendering the political independence of the working-class movement.

A defense campaign does not require everyone to agree about capitalism, electoral politics, or the ultimate direction of social change. It requires agreement that people must be able to organize, protest, defend their neighbors, and exercise their democratic rights without facing politically motivated prosecution. That is a basis for solidarity far broader than the existing socialist left, and we should take every opportunity to build it.

What Is at Stake for Every Worker?

The prosecutions of the MN15, Michigan 8, and Prairieland defendants should concern every worker, whether or not they have ever participated in an anti-ICE demonstration. If the government can use sweeping investigations, surveillance, and criminal charges against people organizing to defend immigrants or oppose federal policies, what prevents similar tactics from being used against workers organizing against union-busting, environmentally destructive data centers, climate devastation, or other threats to their communities?

These are not abstract concerns. The Trump administration has already made clear its intention to expand federal immigration enforcement operations into other sanctuary jurisdictions. As recently as September 8, border czar Tom Homan described federal operations in New York as an initial phase of a broader effort targeting such jurisdictions. The machinery of repression is being expanded even as communities are organizing to resist it.

And the consequences of failing to defend those already targeted extend beyond the defendants themselves. Every prosecution sends a message to workers considering whether to organize, join a protest, protect an immigrant neighbor, or take collective action: This could happen to you. If people see that those who took risks before them were left isolated, the next person may decide the risks are simply too great.

But when communities and unions mobilize to defend those under attack, they send a different message: You will not have to face repression alone. This is why defense work is not separate from the struggle to build a stronger movement. It is part of that struggle. The ability to organize depends not only on formal legal rights but on the confidence that comes from knowing others will stand with us when those rights are threatened. That confidence is built through solidarity in practice.

An Injury to One Is an Injury to All

The Minnesota resistance showed what can happen when working people move beyond isolated acts of protest and begin exercising their collective power. The January 23 mass strike demonstrated that organized workers, acting together with their communities, can disrupt business as usual and force a political response.

Now the defense of the Minnesota 15 presents another opportunity to build the organizations, relationships, and solidarity that made that action possible. We cannot afford to wait until the next wave of repression reaches our own workplaces and neighborhoods. The old labor slogan has rarely been more relevant: An injury to one is an injury to all.

Support the Minnesota 15. Organize a benefit or public meeting. Book a screening of When ICE Melts for your union, community organization, or local group. And begin building a defense committee in your own city or town.

The immediate task is to keep these activists out of prison. The larger task is to build a workers’ movement strong enough to defend all of us