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 stand against a 5-week immigration crackdown in his home state of Minnesota.
ICE Out Minnesota, a coalition of community groups, faith leaders, 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’s headquarters are located in Minneapolis, where federal officers last month killed two residents who had participated in protests against ICE, and its name adorns the city’s baseball stadium and an arena where its basketball teams play.
“They claim to be part of the community, but they don’t oppose 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 shopping 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 suburban areas in Minnesota, California and Massachusetts. Target declined to comment on the protests Wednesday.
Target first became a target for critics of the Trump administration’s increased law enforcement after a widely circulated video 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 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 protests is that Target bar federal agents from entering stores unless they have warrants authorizing arrests.
Some lawyers have argued that anyone, including U.S. border and immigration and customer enforcement agents, without signed warrants can enter public areas of a business at will. Public areas include restaurant dining areas, open parking lots, office lobbies and shopping lobbies, but not back offices, closed kitchens or other areas of a business that are generally off limits to the public and where privacy would be reasonably expected, those attorneys say.
Target has not commented publicly on the retention of store employees. CEO Michael Fiddelke, 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 a Customs and Border Protection officer shot and killed Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti on Jan. 24.
Fiddelke said the “violence and loss of life in our community is incredibly painful,” but he did not mention the immigration crackdown or the fatal shootings of Pretti, an intensive care nurse at a U.S. Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Minneapolis, and Renee Good, a mother of three, who were pulled over in their car by an ICE agent.
Fiddelke was one of 60 Minnesota business executives who, following 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 the alleged failure to oppose Minnesota’s immigration crackdown 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 giant Target’s philanthropic commitment to fighting racial disparities and promoting progressive values in liberal Minneapolis and beyond.
The retail chain is also experiencing a general malaise in sales. Critics have complained about cluttered stores that lack the budget-priced flair that long ago earned the retailer the nickname “Tarzhay.”
While Wednesday’s protests targeted a small portion 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 has held about 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 affiliated with ICE Out, but was following the lead of Minneapolis organizers.
The Rev. Joanna Lawrence Shenk, associate pastor at First Mennonite Church in San Francisco, said the group has no action planned for Wednesday, but plans weekend events at Targets in a handful of cities and towns, including Pittsburgh and Harrisonburg, Virginia. She estimated that by the end of the weekend, more than 1,000 members of the congregation would have attended.
Shenk noted that Mennonites sing “This Little Light of Mine” and other gospel songs and hymns.
“The song was an expression of our love for our immigrant neighbors who are in danger right now and who are also part of our congregation,” she said. “For us, it’s not just about being in solidarity with others, it’s about protecting people who are vulnerable.”