[[link removed]]

MINNESOTA CEOS CRY CROCODILE TEARS OVER ICE  
[[link removed]]


 

Whitney Curry Wimbish and David Dayen
January 28, 2026
The American Prospect
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Executives who lobbied for Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act,
which enabled the immigration terror in their state, now want everyone
to believe they are on the people’s side. _

Demonstrators hold signs during a protest outside the office of Sen.
Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), January 26, 2026, in Minneapolis. , Credit: Adam
Gray/AP Photo

 

Dozens of Minnesota-based corporate executives issued an open letter
[[link removed]]
this week urging an “immediate deescalation of tensions” after an
immigration agent executed legal observer and ICU nurse Alex Pretti
last Saturday.

The 79 CEOs and trade group leaders referred to President Trump’s
terror campaign without naming it directly, citing “the recent
challenges,” and claimed they have been hard at work “every day
behind the scenes with federal, state and local officials to advance
real solutions,” though they did not specify anything they had done.
Instead, they said only that they “have been working for generations
to build a strong and vibrant state here in Minnesota.

After weeks of silence and in some cases allowing immigration agents
to use their property as a staging ground, they used the Minnesota
Chamber of Commerce website to “call for peace and focused
cooperation.”

They failed to mention that they were instrumental in bringing
Operation Metro Surge to Minnesota, through their public support and
active lobbying of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The
law allocated more than $170 billion
[[link removed]]
over four years to deport one million immigrants annually. Congress
had already appropriated $10 billion to Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) when the law dropped; the additional money nearly
tripled its funding for 2025 alone to almost $29 billion.

Immigration agents have killed at least eight people
[[link removed]]
and wounded nine more nationwide during their extended terror
campaign, while causing at least 32 others to die in detention camps.

OBBBA paid for what ICE acting director Todd Lyons called its
“largest immigration operation ever,” including sending 3,000
agents to the Twin Cities—five times
[[link removed]] the number of
Minneapolis Police Department cops. Agents have committed daily
atrocities since they arrived in December, including using toddlers as
bait and then throwing them in ICE prison, and publicly executing
legal observers Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

As Brad Johnson points out in his newsletter Hill Heat
[[link removed]], “America’s corporate titans
lobbied hard last summer for the devil’s bargain of the One Big
Brutal Bill Act,” including the multiple CEOs of Minnesota-based
companies. That includes 3M (originally known as Minnesota Mining and
Manufacturing), which directly endorsed OBBBA on a White House
endorsement sheet [[link removed]],
citing the extension of corporate tax cuts, which it said were
“crucial for maintaining a competitive edge in global markets and
fostering innovation.”

CEO William Brown of 3M was a signatory to the open letter. Winnebago
Industries, whose president and CEO Michael Happe also signed the
letter, was part of a statement of support for OBBBA
[[link removed]]
last year that highlighted research and development and expensing tax
breaks.

Johnson listed four other CEOs who are executive board members of
trade organizations that lobbied for OBBBA: Land O’Lakes CEO Beth
Ford (Business Roundtable), Hormel CEO Jeff Ettinger (the Meat
Institute), Allianz CEO Jasmine Jirele (U.S. Chamber of Commerce), and
Target CEO Michael Fiddelke (the National Retail Federation). Target
also makes its property available for ICE
[[link removed]]
to use, even after agents targeted its own employees.

A comparison of the open-letter signatures and the executives listed
among Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill endorsements shows several more
Minnesota-based executives who want to have it both ways: Best Buy CEO
Corie Barry, C.H. Robinson CEO Dave Bozeman, and US Bancorp CEO Gunjan
Kedia, all of whom are members of the Business Roundtable, which
lobbied for OBBBA. In addition, Minnesota-based Medtronic and Boston
Scientific, whose executives signed, are on the board of directors of
the trade group AdvaMed, which supported OBBBA
[[link removed]].
And the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce also supported OBBBA
[[link removed]];
they coordinated and released the open letter.

Seventeen companies whose CEOs signed the letter—Allianz, Ameriprise
Financial, Boston Scientific, Cargill, CHS, Inc., ECMC Group, Ecolab,
General Mills, Hormel, Land O’Lakes, Mayo Clinic, Medtronic,
Securian Financial Group, Solventum, Target, UnitedHealth, and Xcel
Energy—also reported lobbying directly on OBBBA
[[link removed]]
in federal lobbying disclosures. Blue Cross and Blue Shield reported
52 separate lobbying reports
[[link removed]]
about OBBBA; Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota president and CEO
Dana Erickson signed the letter.

Many of these companies have employees at their headquarters who are
leaving work to go out and legally observe or defend their neighbors
from ICE enforcement. The muted response in the letter doesn’t match
the anger of the workforce, even before you get to the prodigious
lobbying resources wielded by these companies that helped to create
the situation inside the state.

The _Prospect_ contacted all of the companies asking for comment,
including why the CEO signed the open letter; whether they regret
supporting Trump’s spending bill; and how they will contribute to
repairing the damage ICE has caused in their state, including whether
they will allocate corporate resources and funds to do so.

A spokesperson for Xcel Energy responded by sending a link to a press
release
[[link removed]]
about a $3.5 million fund to help small businesses organized by the
Minneapolis Foundation, to which several of the open-letter
signatories had donated. He did not respond to a follow-up asking how
much Xcel, which has a $45 billion market cap, had contributed.

A spokesperson for ECMC Group, meanwhile, said that the open letter
speaks for itself. She would not say whether the company regretted its
support of OBBBA, only that it wanted to support student loan borrower
efforts “to rehabilitate their defaulted loans a second time in the
event of financial hardship,” which is not what the _Prospect_ asked
about.

A spokesman for Allianz said the company declined to comment. Other
companies did not respond, including UnitedHealth Group, which brings
its own brand of hypocrisy to the discussion. Stephen Hemsley, CEO of
the Minnesota-based company, signed the open letter.

UnitedHealth is the largest Medicare Advantage insurer, serving about
eight million people
[[link removed]],
and is responsible for perpetrating what can reasonably be described
as a fraud against U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for services.
According to a new analysis by the Medicare Payment Advisory
Commission
[[link removed]],
the fraud will require taxpayers to cover an estimated $76 billion in
unnecessarily expensive charges this year, significantly more
expensive than the $1 billion alleged Medicare fraud that supposedly
prompted the immigration operation in Minnesota.

THE STATE OF MINNESOTA IS REELING after weeks of aggressive
immigration enforcement and practical occupation by federal agents.
These actions have had significant immediate and long-term costs,
according to researchers at North Star Policy Action, an economic
analysis group in the state.

According to their estimates
[[link removed]], it costs state,
local, and federal taxpayers roughly $18 million a week to pay the
federal salaries of 3,000 immigration agents, food and lodging,
maintenance of detention facilities and transportation, and overtime
for local and state law enforcement. More broadly, the occupation has
slowed economic activity to a crawl, as immigrants and people of color
across the state go into hiding. “It’s an economic and social dead
zone. It’s worse than the pandemic,” said Jake Schwitzer,
executive director of North Star Policy Action.

One in seven businesses in Minneapolis and St. Paul are run by
immigrant entrepreneurs
[[link removed]],
according to the American Immigration Council. Those businesses have
seen drops in revenue between 50 and 100 percent
[[link removed]],
published reports indicate. Businesses that rely on tourism or leisure
activities are also suffering.

Schwitzer said that conditions are most dire for local restaurants,
construction sites, and day care facilities, which have large
percentages of employees from immigrant populations. Those businesses
have routinely shuttered, and some have gone out of business entirely.
When child care facilities close, caregivers must take off work if
they can’t find someone else to watch their kids. “Day care
isn’t a thriving economic situation to begin with,” Schwitzer
said. “How do you further break a broken market?”

Overall, North Star Policy Action conservatively estimates a 10
percent decline in economic activity, which translates to $80 million
in losses per week. The group added that long-term costs are even more
dire, like from Black and Latino students missing over a month of
school, acute health care needs rising as residents skip preventive
care, and housing costs rising as construction slows and housing gets
built more slowly.

Schwitzer wondered when an immigrant or a family of color would decide
that it’s safe to come out from hiding. “That is not an obvious
switch that flips,” he said. “So some of these acute impacts may
end up becoming long-term impacts.”

When the state casts around for ways to recoup these economic losses,
they are likely going to go to the very signatories of this open
letter and the businesses they run. “We’re going to have to find
the resources somewhere,” Schwitzer said. “Our state budget is
already under intense strain from that very bill, because of Medicaid
and SNAP cuts and administrative burdens on our cities.”

The _Prospect_ asked signatories to the letter whether they would be
willing to contribute to a fund to offset Minnesota’s costs from the
immigration surge they effectively enabled by backing OBBBA. None of
them said they would. The $3.5 million in grants
[[link removed]]
from the Minneapolis Foundation’s Economic Response Fund, which
several signatories contributed to, is less than one-tenth the amount
of donations given after George Floyd’s killing in 2020, and too
small to cover the economic loss in the state from the federal
activity.

Said Schwitzer: “I don’t expect to see them lining up and
offering.”

_WHITNEY CURRY WIMBISH is a staff writer at The American Prospect. She
previously worked in the Financial Times newsletters division, The
Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh, and the Herald News in New Jersey.
 David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. He is
the author of Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power and
Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s
Great Foreclosure Fraud. He hosts the weekly live show The Weekly
Roundup and co-hosts the podcast Organized Money with Matt Stoller._

 

* Minnesota
[[link removed]]
* ICE
[[link removed]]
* CEO'S
[[link removed]]
* Crocodile Tears
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Bluesky [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]