Andrés Gil Miércoles, 21 de Enero del 2026, 00:50
Rallies were held in Washington, DC, Houston, Atlanta, Miami and Los Angeles, among other cities, as protesters accused President Trump of driving an increasingly hardline and punitive immigration agenda.
By Andrés Gil
Washington Correspondent — One of Donald Trump’s most popular campaign pledges among his base has also become the policy that best illustrates what critics describe as the president’s increasingly authoritarian turn. That is the message underscored by a wave of protests that swept through Washington, DC, Houston, Atlanta, Miami and Los Angeles, among other cities, on Tuesday.
The demonstrations came a day after the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday — observed on the third Monday of January — and on the eve of a strike called for Friday in Minneapolis following the killing of Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who was shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.
Protest in downtown Washington, DC, against Trump and ICE, January 20, 2026. Andrés Gil
Rather than focusing on the actions of the ICE agent involved, the federal government has launched a criminal investigation into Minnesota state authorities over alleged “obstruction” of immigration enforcement.
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice subpoenaed five senior Minnesota officials, including Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, accusing them of conspiring to interfere with the work of federal immigration agents such as ICE, according to the Spanish news agency Efe.
In a statement, Walz warned of a broader pattern. “Two days ago it was Elissa Slotkin [the Michigan senator who urged the military not to follow illegal orders]. Last week it was Jerome Powell [the Federal Reserve chair]. Before that, Mark Kelly [the Arizona senator who appeared in a video with Slotkin],” he said. “Weaponizing the justice system and threatening political opponents is a dangerous and authoritarian tactic. The only person not under investigation for the shooting of Renée Good is the federal agent who pulled the trigger.”
Nearly 3,000 federal immigration agents have been deployed to Minneapolis, a move the Department of Homeland Security has described as the largest operation in its history.
The heavy federal presence has sparked widespread local backlash, triggering protests and clashes, particularly after last week’s killing of Good by an ICE agent.
Walz and Frey, both Democrats, have openly condemned the federal deployment in the Twin Cities, accusing immigration agents of sowing chaos and undermining public safety through aggressive tactics.
According to CBS, the federal investigation is based on a statute that makes it a crime for two or more people to conspire to prevent federal officers from carrying out their official duties through “force, intimidation, or threats.”
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