NEW YORK (AP) — Activists planned demonstrations at more than two dozen Target stores around the United States on Wednesday to pressure the discount retailer to take a public stand against a 5-week-old immigration crackdown in its home state of Minnesota.
ICE Out Minnesota, a coalition of community groups, religious leaders, labor unions and other critics of the federal operation, called for a week of sit-ins and other demonstrations at targeted locations. Target is headquartered in Minneapolis, where federal authorities last month killed two residents who participated in an anti-ICE protest, and its name adorns the city’s major league baseball stadium and the field where the basketball teams play.
“They claim to be part of the community, but they don’t stand up to ICE,” said Alan Axelbank, a member of the Minnesota chapter of Socialist Alternative, which describes itself as a revolutionary political group. He held a protest Wednesday outside a Target store in Minneapolis’ Dinkytown commercial district.
Demonstrations were scheduled in St. Paul, Minnesota, Boston, Chicago, Honolulu, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, North Carolina, San Diego, Seattle, and other cities, as well as suburban areas in Minnesota, California, and Massachusetts. Target declined to comment on the protest on Wednesday.
Target first became a bull’s-eye for critics of the Trump administration’s increase in immigration enforcement activity last month after a widely circulated video showed federal agents detaining two targeted employees at a store in the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield. Luis Argueta, a spokesman for Unidos Minnesota, an immigrant-led social justice advocacy organization that is part of the ICE Out Minnesota Coalition, said his group is focusing its protests on the Richfield store.
One of the demands of Wednesday’s protest is for the goal of denying federal agents entry into stores unless they have judicial warrants authorizing arrests.
Some lawyers have argued that U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can enter public areas of businesses at will without a signed warrant. Public areas include restaurant dining sections, open parking lots, office lobbies and shopping alleys, but also back offices, closed-off kitchens or other areas of a business that are generally off limits to the public and where privacy is reasonably expected, the lawyers say.
Target has not publicly commented on the store employees being detained. CEO Michael Fidelke, who became Target’s chief executive on Feb. 2, sent a video message to the company’s 400,000 workers two days after a Border Patrol agent and Customs and Border Protection officer shot and killed Minneapolis resident Alex Pretty on Jan. 24.
Fidelke said that “the violence and loss of life in our community is incredibly painful,” but he did not mention the immigration crackdown or the fatal shooting of Pretty, an ICU nurse at the American Veterans Medical Center in Minneapolis, and the mother of three, Renee Good, who was shot in her car by an ICE agent.
Fiddelke was one of 60 CEOs of the Minnesota-based company who signed an open letter following Pretty’s death, “calling for an immediate reduction of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.”
It comes a year after Target faced protests and boycotts over the company’s decision to scale back its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in protest of an alleged failure to oppose an immigration crackdown in Minnesota. At the time, critics said the decision betrayed the retail giant Target’s philanthropic commitment to fighting racial disparities and promoting progressive values in liberal Minneapolis and beyond.
The retail chain is also struggling with persistent sales malaise. Critics have complained of disorganized stores that are missing the budget-priced flair that long ago earned the retailer the “Tarzhay” nickname.
While Wednesday’s protests targeted a small portion of the company’s roughly 2,000 stores, the negative attention serves as another distraction from Target’s business, according to Neil Saunders, managing director of the retail division at market research firm GlobalData.
“The agenda has been hijacked by this,” Saunders said. “And it’s a bit of a distraction for the target that they don’t rather.”
In recent days, the National Coalition of Mennonite Congregations held nearly a dozen demonstrations inside and outside Target stores across the country, calling on Goun and Target to publicly call on Congress to back down on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other demands.
A spokesman for Mennonite Action said the coalition was not formally affiliated with ICE Out but was following the lead of organizers in Minneapolis.
Rev. Joanna Lawrence Schenck, associate pastor at First Mennonite Church in San Francisco, said the group had no action planned for Wednesday but was mapping solo events over the weekend at targets in a handful of cities and towns, including Pittsburgh and Harrisonburg, Virginia. He estimated more than 1,000 congregation members had attended by the end of the weekend.
Schenck noted that Mennonites sing “This Little Light of Mine” and other gospel songs and hymns.
“Singing is an expression of our love for our immigrant neighbors who are now at risk and who are also part of our congregation,” she said. “For us, it’s not just standing in solidarity with others but it’s also protecting vulnerable people.”
