‘We need Target to stand up’: activists in Minneapolis press retailer amid ICE arrests at its stores

While thousands of protesters marched through downtown Minneapolis yesterday to demand that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents leave the city, a smaller group of activists set their sights on a specific destination: the downtown headquarters of national retailer Target.

Dozens of clergy members and their supporters planted themselves in the atrium of the store. “Say it loud and say it clear, immigrants are welcome here,” the group chanted. “Something ’bout this isn’t right – why does Target work for ICE?”

Anti-ICE organizers’ focus on Target, as part of Friday’s economic blackout in Minneapolis, is part of a renewed movement to boycott the retailer over the immigration enforcement taking place on its grounds and in its hometown.

“You can’t walk into a Target store here without seeing [how] they position themselves as being for the health and wellbeing of the community,” said Grant Stevensen, a Lutheran pastor in Minneapolis who organized the protest with Unidos, an immigrant-led organization that advocates for working families. “So we need Target to stand up where it really matters right now.”

Calls for a boycott reached a new pitch in recent weeks. On 8 January – the day after an ICE agent shot and killed Minneapolis resident Renee Good – about a half-dozen masked ICE agents forcefully detained two workers at Target’s Richfield, Minnesota, store.

In video captured by bystanders, agents can be seen piling on top of the two workers, pinning them to the ground. One agent is seen jamming his knee into one worker’s head. A worker yells that he is a US citizen as an agent marches him into the parking lot.

ICE did not charge the workers, but dumped at least one of them at a different parking lot, said Minnesota state representative Michael Howard, a Democrat, who spoke to the two workers who were detained, in an interview.

The protest at the Target store in St Paul, Minnesota, on 19 January. Photograph: Tim Evans/Reuters

“I keep hearing more from my constituents about their frustration for how Target, in particular, has chosen silence,” said Howard, who has met with Target representatives, including the outgoing CEO, over the past year. “Target has been light on actual action steps, especially on anything that would be public-facing, and it’s a fallacy to say Target doesn’t have actions it can take to safeguard employees and customers against ICE.”

The Guardian asked Target for comment about the employees’ detainment and the boycott, but did not hear back by the time of publication. When asked about ICE’s treatment of Target employees, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that when ICE officers are faced with violence, they take “necessary steps to ensure their own safety [...] up to and including the use of force”. DHS alleges that one of the Target employees shoved and assaulted an ICE agent.

Local advocates like Unidos are demanding that Target speak out against immigration enforcement taking place on its grounds. The corporation has not issued a statement about ICE’s violent detainment of Target employees. Local faith groups, immigrant rights supporters and other community organizers have sprung into action, viewing Target’s silence as cooperation with the masked agents.

The retailer has been the subject of public backlash for years. After consumers called for a boycott over Target’s rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in early 2025, it reported a decline in first-quarter sales, and said the backlash contributed to declining foot traffic and weakened spending. In August, after a persistent sales slump, Target’s longtime CEO Brian Cornell announced he had stepped down.

Stevensen said Cornell met with a group of clergy on Thursday, but that he declined to offer details about which steps, if any, Target said it would take to mend its relationship with the customers it had alienated. “They are at least beginning to talk to us,” he said.

“Target has an opportunity to step up and be the leader that we know that they can be, but are choosing not to be,” said Andi Otto, the executive director of Twin Cities Pride, an LGBTQ+ organization that has been in talks with Target leadership about its DEI policy changes. “What is happening right now is absolutely appalling, and Target’s silence shows us that they will likely keep moving in the direction they’ve been going in the past year.”

Sit-ins and salt purchases: Protest takes many forms

Actions against Target have taken different forms since Good’s killing. More than 100 clergy members from across Minnesota, organized by the local interfaith group Isaiah, held a press conference outside Target’s downtown Minneapolis store on 15 January and asked corporate leaders to join Minnesotans in demanding that DHS “end its surge terrorizing families, neighborhoods and businesses”.

The clergy members then walked to Target’s headquarters, where they sang This Little Light of Mine in the building’s lobby, livestreaming the action on Facebook and drawing 20,000 views since.

Other organizations are boycotting Target with specific immigration-related demands. SURJ-TC (Showing Up for Racial Justice Twin Cities), a grassroots organization that aims to mobilize white people to fight racism, has called for Target to post signs stating that ICE agents cannot enter without a warrant, and asked that it train its employees on how to handle ICE agents who enter stores illegally. The organization has also asked that Target call for Congress to stop funding ICE and to publicly demand that ICE leave Minnesota.

On Martin Luther King Day, SURJ-TC said it had gathered 70 people at a Minnesota Target to “interrupt business as usual”. Participants repeatedly lined up to purchase salt, return it and repeat the process as a way to hold up lines, representing a desire “to melt ICE”, the organization wrote online. The organization plans to repeat this tactic at five Twin Cities Target stores until the company speaks out against ICE. On the same day, nearly 100 leaders and supporters of SURJ-TC and Unidos gathered at the downtown Minneapolis Target for a sit-in.

Target’s long history of boycotts

Target boycotts have come from all sides in the past decade. In 2016, a conservative group launched a boycott against Target after the company announced a policy allowing transgender customers and employees to use restrooms and fitting rooms corresponding to their gender identity. The backlash caused Target to invest in more single-occupancy restrooms to address critics’ concerns. In 2023, Target faced public outrage over its Pride Month merchandise, which conservatives said was inappropriate for children. The following year, Target sold Pride merchandise at fewer stores and faced counter-backlash from LGBTQ+ advocates as a result.

The organizers calling for Target to take a stand on ICE said they were buoyed by the example of the earlier DEI boycotts. They included a “Target fast”, a 40-day boycott launched by Black pastor and activist Rev Jamal Bryant. Later, it became a broader boycott movement that urged shoppers to refrain from spending at Target until it restored its commitments.

“We know that from a historical perspective, nonviolent activism and civic pressure always wins,” said Ulla Nilsen, a lead organizer with Unidos. “We have an administration that’s making everyone afraid. So we are calling on the CEO of Target and other businesses in Minnesota to stop being afraid because when we stand together, we will get through this.”