Mobile billboard shines light on price of Trump’s deportation agenda

October 26, 2026 by 1 Comment

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham talks about a mobile billboard the labor federation is sending into communities across the state.

The cost of unleaded isn’t the only painfully high price confronting drivers in St. Paul – at least not today. That’s because the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s mobile billboard is crisscrossing the capital city, highlighting the local cost of President Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

The public-awareness campaign, which arrives in St. Paul after tours through the Rochester and Mankato areas earlier this month, takes aim at $170 billion in funding for immigration enforcement in Trump’s signature tax and spending legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) of 2025.

The funding, which runs through September 2029, will build up two agencies, ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), that were heavily involved in Operation Metro Surge here last winter.

That means Minnesota is on the hook for about $4.4 billion, or $2,050 per taxpayer, to expand the campaign that brought violence and chaos to our communities.

“That’s money people could use in their pockets,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said. “Affordability is such an issue right now. People are spending more on gas, on healthcare. They are making choices about whether to get groceries or go to the doctor.”

The Minnesota AFL-CIO’s mobile billboard spotlights a new online calculator, developed by the Economic Policy Institute, to isolate the cost of mass deportations on the local level.

The calculator also shows what those funds could have meant for public education and essential services that keep people fed, healthy and safe. The roughly $385 million paid by Ramsey County taxpayers, for example, could have been used to hire 1,300 public school teachers or to keep 11,261 people on Medicaid through the rest of Trump’s term.

Burnham said the state’s largest labor federation doesn’t want voters to forget how Trump and Republicans cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid, Obamacare subsidies, and food assistance in their “Big Beautiful Bill,” while handing tax breaks to large corporations and the ultra-wealthy.

“We want to have candidates who are supporting children, working people and communities,” she said. “If we continue to lose this money (to mass deportations), people are going to keep coming up short every day.”

The mass deportation calculator adds to a growing body of research about the high cost of Trump’s immigration policies and, specifically, Operation Metro Surge.

The three-month occupation cost Minnesota an estimated 32,000 jobs, according to a report released by the Minnesota Budget Project earlier this month, and reduced economic activity, especially in the hospitality sector. Meanwhile, security costs for local communities increased by an estimated $700 million in the metro area.

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Feds spied on local unions during Operation Metro Surge

August 27, 2026 by

Communications Workers (CWA) Local 7250 President Kieran Knutson speaks during a demonstration outside Target’s corporate offices in Minneapolis. Federal agents issued administrative summons to obtain information on the union’s recent political spending.

Minnesota’s largest labor federation accused the Trump administration of “bringing back McCarthyism” after court filings exposed wide-reaching federal surveillance of local unions during the deadly and chaotic immigration dragnet last winter.

While purportedly investigating a criminal conspiracy to impede Operation Metro Surge, Department of Homeland Security agents infiltrated a meeting at the United Labor Center in Minneapolis, demanded one local union’s transaction log from U.S. Bank and dug into the political spending of another.

DHS investigators dubbed the spying campaign “Operation Puppet Master.”

Undercover agents, posing as protesters, also surveilled meetings at churches, parks, libraries and schools, “at times working to entice people into discussing or committing crimes,” according to court documents filed Aug. 13 by an attorney for one of 15 Minnesota protesters facing federal charges stemming from Metro Surge protests.

The filings also unearthed a diagram produced by DHS to show 18 organizations allegedly leading “The Conspiracy.” They include the Minnesota AFL-CIO, the Service Employees, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE).

Attorney Kevin Riach, who filed the motion, said DHS investigators “conjured up a vast and irrational conspiracy” without any criminal predicate.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham and other labor leaders called it an attempt to criminalize dissent.

“The Minnesota AFL-CIO and several of our affiliated unions are being targeted simply because our state’s labor movement stood in solidarity with our immigrant union members and neighbors when our state was under siege this past winter,” Burnham said.

“Minnesotans and most people across our country have rejected this administration’s attempts to demonize immigrants. They are now bringing back McCarthyism to paint unions and organizations that advocate for workers and families as threats to the nation.”

MAPE member Alec Stewart, one of 15 ICE protesters facing charges, says DHS surveilled unions “because our community connections and solidarity were so effective.”

The motion for discovery exposing the surveillance measures used here last winter seeks to compel DHS to provide a fuller picture of how its agents spied on Minnesota unions, nonprofits and activists.

Riach filed the motion earlier this month on behalf of Isaac Sant, one of 15 Minnesotans, including some union members, charged in June with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer as part of a coordinated Justice Department operation. Sant also faces interstate stalking charges for allegedly following an ICE vehicle to Hudson, Wis.

Unions and civil rights groups roundly condemned the charges.

In a public statement, 50 organizations accused the Trump administration of weaponizing the Justice Department to punish a few activists for a historic campaign of popular resistance to Metro Surge.

The statement, signed by the Minnesota AFL-CIO, Education Minnesota, the Minnesota Nurses Association and 13 other union groups, decries that the charges come from “the very same (agency) that refuses to investigate or press charges in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.”

The 15 protesters charged were among thousands of Minnesotans who rose up to defend their neighbors – tracking ICE agents, alerting communities to their presence, documenting their actions and demonstrating in the streets.

Organized labor lent critical support to those efforts – and federal agents clearly took notice, MAPE member Alec Stewart, one of the activists facing charges, said.

Stewart, a forestry worker for the State of Minnesota, joined a press conference last month outside Target headquarters in downtown Minneapolis, where labor, faith and immigrant organizations called on Minnesota’s large companies to publicly reject political surveillance and retaliation.

“The revelation of Operation Puppet Master exposes that while the government was targeting immigrant communities, tearing families apart, abducting children and murdering folks in the street, they were also attempting to disrupt and dismantle one of the facets of Minnesota that makes us so unique,” Stewart said. “That is our strong and unified labor movement.

“They were doing this simply because our connections and our community solidarity were so effective.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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AFL-CIO convention spotlights strength, solidarity of Minnesota’s labor movement

June 7, 2026 by

Minnesotans who joined the solidarity efforts during Operation Metro Surge take the stage on Day 1 of the convention. (AFL-CIO photo)

Union leaders and activists from across the U.S. are gathering in the Twin Cities this week for the 30th AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention, the American labor movement’s biggest event.

The national labor federation picked Minneapolis as the site of its four-day convention well before a violent surge of federal agents in Minnesota drew worldwide outrage over the winter. But among the first orders of business on Day 1 was a recognition of local unions’ role in organizing resistance to the occupation.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, reelected to a five-year term later in the day, turned the Convention Center stage over to three local leaders, Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham, St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Kera Peterson and Minneapolis RLF President Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou.

The presidents offered visiting delegates an overview of unions’ response to Operation Metro Surge – and the work that prepared Minnesota’s labor movement to meet the moment with solidarity.

The federal occupation saw unions raise funds for mutual aid and legal defense of detained members. Unions tapped into local solidarity networks, hosting training sessions for constitutional observers and preparing members to respond if ICE showed up on their worksite. And union members not only showed up in the streets as observers and demonstrators, but dozens of activists trained to become “union peacekeepers,” who kept marches safe and orderly.

“They thought Minnesota nice meant we would stand by quietly while federal agents disappeared our friends, neighbors and co-workers,” Burnham said. “But they mistook kindness for weakness. They invaded a winter people in winter, and our solidarity froze them in their tracks.”

(AFL-CIO photo)

Delegates on the convention floor rose for a standing ovation as Burnham welcomed anyone in the room who joined the solidarity efforts in Minnesota onto the stage.

“Now they know Americans are not afraid,” Burnham said. “They know if they send ICE into any of your communities, you will fight just as hard.”

Shuler thanked Minnesotans for their “sacrifice and resilience” before returning to the business of the convention – committee reports, elections and a roll call of affiliated unions, which included the 2-million-member Service Employees (SEIU) for the first time in 21 years.

The AFL-CIO also recognized seven new affiliates representing professional athletes, including WNBA players, who this year won historic gains in a new union contract, and Major League Baseball players, who are in a bitter round of negotiations with owners intent on suppressing their pay with a salary cap.

The theme for the 2026 convention is “With You, It’s Better in a Union.” Organizers expected between 1,500 and 2,000 delegates and guests to attend the four-day affair.

Delegates from the AFL-CIO’s 65 affiliated unions and from state and local labor councils come together at conventions to conduct required business and chart the future of the labor movement.

The event will feature prominent guest speakers and expert panelists to discuss issues facing workers and their families, from artificial intelligence to the rising cost of living.

AFL-CIO Minneapolis convention, Sunday June 7, 2026. Afternoon plenary. Photo: Jay Mallin
AFL-CIO Minneapolis convention, Sunday, June 7, 2026. Photos: Jay Mallin

The convention put a spotlight on Minnesota again on Day 1 when the AFL-CIO recognized the state’s labor movement as one of two recipients of the 2025 Meany-Kirkland Human Rights Award, celebrating the most powerful examples of solidarity in action from across the world.

Minnesota shares the award, presented during a dinner reception, with the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions (BKDP).

The federation’s executive board announced winners of the award in March. Its announcement cited Minnesota union activists’ “courage and commitment to fighting for democratic rights” during the surge that began last December.

Peterson, president of the St. Paul RLF, said the convention was an “exciting opportunity for our nation’s union movement to find inspiration and advance the coalition work that will meet the challenges ahead for working people across the country.”

“The world watched as Minnesotans joined together last winter to protect our neighbors and defend our democracy, and local unions and federated labor bodies, through their organizing work, helped build power and solidarity to meet that moment,” she added.

Both Shuler and Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond were re-elected on Day 1 after no other nominations emerged from the floor.

Watch video of the convention’s proceedings at aflcio.org.

— Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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