NEW YORK (AP) – Activists planned protests at more than two dozen Target stores across the United States on Wednesday to pressure the discount retailer to take a public stance against the 5-week-old immigration crackdown in the state of Minnesota.
ICE Out Minnesota, a coalition of community groups, religious leaders, labor unions and other critics of the federal operation, called for sit-ins and other demonstrations to continue at Target locations for a full week. Target is headquartered in Minneapolis, where federal officials last month killed two residents who had participated in anti-ICE protests, and its name adorns the city’s major league baseball stadium and an arena where its basketball teams play.
“They claim they’re part of the community, but they’re not looking at ICE,” said Elan Axelbank, a member of the Minnesota chapter of Socialist Alternative, which describes itself as a revolutionary political group. He staged a protest Wednesday outside a Target store in Minneapolis’ Dinkytown business district.
Demonstrations were also scheduled in St. Paul, Minnesota, Boston, Chicago, Honolulu, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, North Carolina, San Diego, Seattle and other cities, as well as in suburban areas of Minnesota, California and Massachusetts. Target declined Wednesday to comment on the protests.
Target first became the focus of criticism of the Trump administration’s increased immigration enforcement activity after a widely circulated video last month showed federal agents detaining two Target employees at a store in the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield last month. Luis Argueta, a spokesman for Unidos Minnesota, an immigrant-led social justice 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 protests is that Target deny federal agents entry into stores unless they have judicial warrants authorizing arrests.
Some lawyers have argued that anyone, including US Border Patrol and Immigration and Enforcement agents without signed warrants, can enter the public areas of a business at will. Public areas include restaurant dining sections, open parking lots, office lobbies and shopping arcades, but not back offices, closed kitchens or other business areas that are generally off-limits to the public and where privacy is reasonably expected, those lawyers say.
Target has not commented publicly on the detention of the store employees. CEO Michael Fiddelke, who became CEO of Target on February 2, sent a video message to the company’s 400,000 workers two days after a Border Patrol agent and a Customs and Border Protection officer shot and killed Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti on January 24.
Fiddelke said the “violence and loss of life in our community is incredibly painful,” but did not mention the immigration crackdown or the fatal shootings of Pretti, an ICU nurse at a US veterans medical center in Minneapolis, and Renee Good, a mother of three shot in her car by an ICE agent.
Fiddelke was one of 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies who, after Pretti’s death, signed an open letter “calling for an immediate de-escalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.”
The protests over its alleged failure to oppose immigration crackdowns in Minnesota come a year after Target faced protests and boycotts over the company’s decision to roll back its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. At the time, critics said the decision marked a betrayal of 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 a persistent sales slump. Critics have complained about stripped-down stores that lack the budget-priced range that long ago earned the retailer the nickname “Tarzhay.”
While Wednesday’s protests targeted a small fraction of the company’s nearly 2,000 stores, the negative attention serves as another distraction from Target’s business, according to Neil Saunders, managing director of the retail division of market research firm GlobalData.
“The agenda has been hijacked by this,” Saunders said. “And it’s a bit of a distraction for Target that they’d rather not have.”
In recent days, a national coalition of Mennonite congregations organized roughly a dozen demonstrations inside and outside Target stores across the country, chanting and urging Target to publicly call on Congress to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement among other demands.
A spokesman for Mennonite Action said the coalition was not formally connected to ICE Out but was led by organizers in Minneapolis.
The Rev. Joanna Lawrence Shenk, associate pastor at First Mennonite Church of San Francisco, said the group had no action planned Wednesday but was planning weekend events at Targets in a handful of cities, including Pittsburgh and Harrisonburg, Virginia. She estimated that by the end of the weekend more than 1,000 members of the congregation will have participated.
Shenk noted that the Mennonites sing “This Little Light of Mine” and other gospel songs and hymns.
“The singing was an expression of our love for the immigrant neighbors who are currently at risk and who are also part of our congregation,” she said. “For us, not only are we in solidarity with others but it also protects people who are vulnerable.”