Minneapolis businesses exploiting illegal immigrants should be compensated by ordinary Americans for economic losses amid federal enforcement of popular immigration and civil rights laws, according to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
White House adviser Tom Homan said Thursday he was withdrawing most ICE officers after arresting more than 4,000 illegal immigrants in Minneapolis, leading Walz to complain, “They ruined us economically.”
Walz said he would give $10 million of Minnesotans’ tax money to companies that have built their business on illegal immigrants in his “sanctuary city economy”:
One of the first things we can do, and that’s what we’re focused on today, is: What can we start to do on the economic recovery, the damage that has been done to our economy, particularly for small business owners, and even more specifically, for immigrant small business owners… The federal government has to make them pay for what they broke here.
“Many Minnesota businesses – especially small businesses – are facing economic hardships due to federal enforcement that may prove insurmountable,” said Matt Verilek, Walz’s economic development manager. he adds:
The widespread negative economic impact resulting from this fact is very [company] Employees don’t feel comfortable coming, a lot of customers don’t feel comfortable coming, and so we’re seeing a huge reduction in traffic, a huge reduction in revenue.
“My customers are afraid to shop,” said Henry Garcia, a Colombian immigrant who runs a grocery store in St. Paul. His sales halved, even as many white Minneapolis residents began using his stores, standing with Walz, saying:
Since federal ICE activity increased late last year, everything changed.. My customers are afraid to shop. …Sales are cut in half, and Goodwill doesn’t cover rent… We need more [grants].
During his remarks, Walz praised immigrants without distinguishing between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants.
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According to Walz, the “American Dream” is mostly for immigrants, not Americans: “Immigrant small business owners, who … for most of our history, [are] Symbol of the American Dream: ‘Come to this country with nothing and build something to be proud of!’
He continued:
I want to speak directly to the immigrant community in Minnesota, in short, to the immigrant community in America. We see you, we hear you, we value you Everything We believe in the words you bring… “Give us your weary, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
The country’s population of 275 million Americans and their children are peripheral to America because “immigration is the core of our existence,” Walz said.
Walz offered no recognition for US citizens, except those who support immigration or those who obstruct ICE operations against illegal immigrants. “There is no Minnesota without our immigrant community,” he said.
Minnesota’s Sanctuary City Economic Strategy
Sanctuary cities generate additional revenue for local governments, investors, and CEOs by importing illegal immigrant workers, consumers, and tenants into the economy.
Immigrants are paid much less because they are much better paid and safer in the United States than in their homeland, and because the federal and state governments provide them with many benefits, such as education and free health care for their children.
Advocates of sanctuary city economies often praise the emergence of many low-productivity, immigrant-driven businesses, such as restaurants serving exotic foods to older homeowners who enjoy subordinate restaurant staff and higher property values. For example, Walz used his speech to claim that immigrants “have created a food scene in this state that is second to none.”
new York Times One restaurant owner who profits from the sanctuary city economy described:
Oscar Murcia arrived in St. Paul from El Salvador in 2000 and started a restaurant and bakery called El Guanaco a few years later. He now has four locations, serving pupusas and tacos to a mostly Latino clientele. As ICE activity intensified in December, traffic at the Minneapolis location dropped 80 percent, so he closed it. They have cut hours and staff at the remaining stores, and have asked their landlords and bankers for relief on rent and loans.
Even if customers return, Mr. Murcia will miss some of his 64 staff members — four of whom were detained even though he said they had work permits and pending asylum applications.
But American citizens in those cities lose income and status as helpful immigrants are steered into jobs by CEOs, into shared apartments by grateful landlords, and into welfare programs by agency workers.
In Minneapolis, the median income was $52,000 in 2024, while rents rose to $16,500. Roughly speaking, it takes three full-time, minimum wage jobs to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Minneapolis, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a left-wing group. In 2023, Minnesota ranked forty-fourth in the state ranking for growth in “median household income”, which was near the bottom, partly because state officials were not prioritizing workplace productivity.
But the economic problems are overshadowed by the Biden-era revenue generated by the flood of illegal immigrants and the pro-immigration coalition of business, immigrants, Democratic elites and establishment journalists.
Trump’s immigration law enforcement is now ending the institutional exemptions of peculiar sanctuary cities from popular laws that protect Americans’ civil rights to fair markets for jobs and homes.
Americans’ civil rights enforcement of fair markets is causing legal setbacks in many sanctuary city economies in Los Angeles, Chicago, and elsewhere. Those legal shocks are being felt by landlords, by businesses that employ or sell to immigrants, and by local agencies that rely on property taxes and per-capita federal welfare programs.
The economy of the sanctuary city of Minneapolis has been boosted by the influx of immigrants from the pre-modern tribal societies of Somalia. In Minneapolis, many refugees were encouraged Pirate Federal Spending Programoften through Minnesota agencies where top Democratic politicians are Contraband inspection and law enforcement.
Imported Somali poverty also became a revenue-generator as federal governments massively funded the resettlement of legal refugees, and those funds were recycled into local rents, autos, groceries, health care, teachers, and more.
Responding to reporters Thursday, Walz insisted that his government should be allowed to participate in a federal investigation into the massive, Somali-driven fraud of federal taxpayers. That investigation is expected to uncover a major diversion of federal cash into Walz’s Democratic political machine, in part because many Somalis now face prison or even deportation for fraud in their refugee applications.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is leading the country toward a prosperous economy based on trade, innovation, and productivity. “We will need robots to run our economy because we don’t have enough people,” he told Breitbart News in August.
So we have to be efficient…we’ll probably add something to this [the existing workforce] Robotically—it’s going to be robotically…it’s going to be big. Then, someone has to build a robot. The whole thing, it operates itself… We’re going to streamline things. We need efficiency.
Trump’s focus on productivity is a far cry from the Democrats’ preferred colonial-style strategy of human-resource extraction migration.
Democrats’ protest against Trump’s deportation is an indirect attack on Trump low migrationHigh Productivity National Economic Strategy and their 2026 policy potency.
Under Trump’s low-immigration, high-deportation reforms, Americans’ wages have gone up, housing costs have gone down, inflation is down, transportation costs are down, crime is down, and corporations are spending heavily to help Americans become more productive and earn higher wages for each work hour. However, his economic reforms are opposed by Republicans and their progressive partners.
RestaurantBusinessOnline.com reported on January 23 that Trump’s representatives are pushing voters to raise wages by deporting illegal immigrants: “Fewer workers means restaurants will once again have to compete for workers by paying higher wages. According to Oxford Economics, wages are expected to increase over the next two years from 3.7% this year to 5.6% by 2027.”
The pro-citizen, pro-wage policy is deeply opposed by Democrats, who instead promise to raise living standards for immigrants and citizens through government benefits.
