Protests in 250 US cities for ICE to leave Minnesota and against Trump’s immigration policy

The national day of protest called by student organizations It started with students and teachers leaving schools from Arizona to Georgia and amid contradictory messages from the Trump Administration about the future of the 3,000 federal agents deployed in Minneapolis.

To add fuel to the fire, the president Donald Trump described Thursday as “agitator” and “perhaps insurgent” to nurse Alex Pretti, who died on January 24 after being shot by an immigration agent in Minnesota when he was kneeling on the ground and subdued by several security members.

In a Minneapolis neighborhood near where Good and Pretti died, about 50 local school teachers and staff members marched Friday, holding anti-ICE signs, shouting into megaphones and calling on federal immigration officers to leave their city.

Beyond Minnesotaabout 250 protests They are repeated in 46 states and large cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington.

In Georgiastudents at 90 high schools from Atlanta to Savannah planned to walk out of classes on Friday.

In Aurora, Colorado, public schools closed Friday due to the expected large absence of teachers and students. The Denver suburb was the target of intense immigration raids last year after President Donald Trump claimed it was a “war zone” overrun by Venezuelan gangs.

and in TucsonIn Arizona, at least 20 schools canceled classes in anticipation of mass student and employee absences.

The Justice Department arrested the former CNN anchor on Friday Don Lemon and accused him of violating federal law during a protest inside a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month.

Lemon, a frequent critic of Trump, has stated that he was covering the protest as a journalist, not participating. His attorney, Abbe Lowell, called the arrest an “unprecedented attack on the First Amendment.”

The Justice Department had previously charged three other people in connection with the protest, but a magistrate judge rejected the agency’s earlier attempts to charge Lemon and several others, citing a lack of evidence.

Changes in public opinion

weeks of Viral videos showing the aggressive tactics of heavily armed and masked officers on the streets of Minneapolis, as well as the deadly shootings of Renee Nicole Good y Pretti, have brought public approval of Trump’s immigration policy to the lowest level of his second term, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.

As the scandal over the ICE operation grew, Trump was forced to send his ‘border czar’, Tom Homan, to Minneapolis following national protests over Pretti’s death.

In his first public statements Thursday, Homan said agents They would return to more “selective” operations, instead of extensive raids on the streets that have led to chaotic clashes with protesters, and suggested that the Administration would seek to reduce the number of officers in the city.

The organizers of Friday’s protests seek increase pressure on Trump to keep his word earlier in the week, when he said he wanted to “de-escalate a little.”

But Trump raised doubts Friday when he told reporters that his administration was “absolutely not” reducing its deployment.

In a late-night social media post, he called Pretti an “agitator and, perhaps, an insurgent” in reference to a newly discovered video showing Pretti had a confrontation with other officers 11 days before he was killed, in which Pretti shattered a vehicle’s taillight with a kick.