Leftist Hysteria in Minneapolis is About Votes, Not Immigrants
President Trump’s opponents are betting heavily that the political fallout from the thoroughly well-organized anti-ICE demonstrations by largely white residents in Minnesota’s Twin Cities will advance their aims. In response to what authorities have described as the largest anti-illegal immigrant operation in American history, tens of thousands of protestors were in the streets over the weekend, braving persistent subzero temperatures to make their voices heard.
Some hopeful leftists are already describing these localized events as the turning point in stopping Donald Trump. Others, including former Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who themselves presided over millions of deportations at a time when their party still took our country’s immigration and border control laws seriously, are full of apocalyptic rhetoric about the future of democracy and suggest that the very ideals of America are at stake.
Some protestors are visibly following a detailed playbook shared on Signal group chats, which were exposed and published on X by independent journalist Cam Higby. This playbook offers instructions on coordinating activists to harass, frustrate, and disrupt ICE actions as they unfold. Higby released a list of the Signal chat’s administrators, and he and others also speculated that an admin on the Signal chats named “Flan” is Minnesota’s Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan. Flanagan has released a statement denying those allegations. FBI Director Kash Patel said he has opened an investigation into the Signal chats.
According to media reports, the Minnesota National Guard was under orders to provide the protestors with coffee and donuts, while local law enforcement appears either under orders or unwilling to assist federal agents. Egged on by state and local politicians to be confrontational, many of the protestors have become violent, attacking businesses where ICE agents eat and sleep and harassing these agents and, in some cases, civilians who simply look like they might be ICE agents, in public places.
Dozens of protesters have been arrested, and two of them—the ill-fated lesbian mother Renée Good and unfortunate gun-toting male nurse Alex Pretti—have died in confrontations with federal law enforcement. Earlier this week, President Trump signaled that ICE may have gone too far and reshuffled the personnel in charge of the operation.
Why are these protesters willing to risk so much? Some may sincerely care on a human level about the fate of illegal immigrants. Others may believe that aiding and abetting people unlawfully present in our country is an act of empathy and compassion. A certain type of narcissistic white saviorism could lead individuals with severe guilt complexes or low self-esteem to go to extreme lengths to prove their commitment to a cause in service to disadvantaged minorities. Still more may be venting anti-Trump rage for which they have no other outlet.
But these attitudes and predilections are in no way common or reliable enough to account for the sustained numbers and sophisticated organization behind them as they continue to function in adverse conditions.
What, then, is the point of deploying what appears to be a staged or at least poorly cultivated protest against administration immigration policy—a policy that more than half of Americans support in absolute terms on an issue that many polls identified as the most important concern in the 2024 presidential election?
The answer most likely lies in the deep recesses of Democratic politics. For generations, Democrats comforted themselves with the mantra that “demographics is destiny.” As the country became less white, the argument went, these ethnic minorities would support the Democrats in elections. Although minorities cast votes for Donald Trump in numbers once unimaginable for Republican presidential candidates, that prediction has proved largely correct. Why else did Joe Biden allow more than 10 million illegals cross the border in just four years, all while falsely claiming that there was either no problem or that he could not solve the problem due to a lack of appropriate legislation?
Since he returned to office last January, Donald Trump managed to shut down the border almost immediately, presided over the repatriation of some 3 million illegal immigrants, and realized a population influx that is now a net negative. He is undoubtedly fulfilling his campaign promises, but in doing so, he also struck a powerful blow against this demographic shift that most Democrats still hope will lead them to a permanent electoral majority.
In Democrat thinking, every illegal in the country is a potential voter, a future voter, or a parent to future voters. Trump’s closing of the border has shut off the supply of new arrivals, but his active removal of illegals and other measures—such as excluding them from the census, which determines each state’s number of congressional representatives—is reducing the absolute numbers already present and reducing their weight in American electoral politics.
The 3 million illegals who were sent back in the past year almost certainly will not be able to come back to vote for Democrats as citizens or, in blue states without voter ID laws, otherwise. Successful ICE operations can only add to Democrats’ precipitously declining party registration numbers. Removing millions more in Trump’s three remaining years—another 9 million illegals if his officials keep the same pace—could prove a death blow to Democrats in future elections.
This, more than anything else, explains why left-wing activists view this operation as an existential crisis, and why many leftists are indulging in hysteria over Minnesota. It also accounts for the close attention Democratic Party leaders and organizers—and probably those who fund them—appear to be devoting to it. The left knows that the only way to prevent dramatic declines in future Democratic voter rolls is to stop ICE. For this, they are willing not only to march, but to attack, provoke, intimidate, and even die. All Republicans need to do is stay the course.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/leftist-hysteria-in-minneapolis-is-about-votes-not-immigrants