Despite Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s erroneous assertions, the anti-ICE activists interfering with immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities aren’t organic groups focused on peacefully protesting.
The liberal agitators are members of radical groups tied to dark money networks and the Left’s premier foundations, which are bankrolled by left-wing financiers including George Soros and Neville Roy Singham.
The Sunrise Movement, Unidos MN, Defend the 612 and Copal MN are among the organized activist groups at the center of the civil unrest and anti-ICE resistance in Minneapolis.
Grassroots activism and violent agitators abound in Minneapolis — a city where residents set businesses ablaze and destroyed their own communities in 2020.
Together, these organized activist groups have received millions of dollars from several progressive nonprofits, including George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund, according to a recent report by the Washington Free Beacon.
“The groups’ funding sources underscore the extent to which Democratic billionaires prop up some of the more radical left-wing activism across the country,” the Beacon noted.
Anti-ICE activism has exploded in Minneapolis — a city that officials let burn during the out-of-control George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020 — following an ICE-involved shooting on Jan. 7 amid the ongoing Operation Metro Surge immigration enforcement effort.
The Trump administration has surged more than 2,000 federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol, HSI and the FBI to Minnesota to investigate widespread welfare fraud and round up criminal illegal aliens protected under Minneapolis’ sanctuary policies.
In response, Minnesota and Twin Cities officials filed a lawsuit on Monday to stop the surge and get ICE out of Minneapolis.
Frey continues to spin the narrative involving the woman who was fatally shot, 37-year-old activist Renee Good, after accelerating her car toward an ICE agent. During an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” over the weekend, Frey said “you had a person who was definitively trying to just get out of there.”
The facts, however, tell a different story from Frey’s narrative. Good was not an innocent woman at the wrong place at the wrong time, randomly targeted by ICE. Rather, she was part of an ICE watch group who was actively impeding ICE operations, blocking traffic and harassing agents throughout the morning.
Good had blocked a neighborhood road and honked her horn for several minutes when agents finally had enough and ordered her to get out of her SUV. Good’s wife, Becca Good, was outside of the car recording and told Good to “drive, baby drive” as the agents confronted Good.
Becca Good reportedly followed an Instagram page, “MN Ice Watch,” that describes itself as an “autonomous collective documenting & resisting against ICE, police, & all colonial militarized regimes.”
Last June, the page posted training slides that it described as a “basic introduction to de-arresting,” a tactic in which activists pressure police to release arrestees.
Based on various reports, MN Ice Watch does not appear to be organized professionally and does not list a fundraising page. But it does maintain ties to Sunrise Twin Cities, Unidos and Defend the 612.
Sunrise Twin Cities and Defend the 612 tagged MN Ice Watch in a post listing local hotels that house ICE agents. Unidos, meanwhile, is one of the 184 accounts MN Ice Watch follows on Instagram, the Free Beacon reported.
One particular group with influence on a national scale, the Sunrise Movement is a left-wing, youth-led climate activist group based in Washington, D.C. Sunrise has since directed its local chapters to battle “authoritarianism” under the Trump administration.
For Sunrise Twin Cities, that means harassing and impeding ICE agents on the ground and other resistance efforts, the Free Beacon reported. Sharing protest posters and calls to action on the group’s Instagram, Sunrise Twin Cities holds in-person “action trainings” on how to “stop ICE & build a revolution.”
The Sunrise Movement’s broader financial support comes from various left-wing organizations, and it has a Sunrise PAC (political action committee) disclaimer on its website. Open Society Foundations has sent it $2 million since 2019, according to its grant database.
The Ford Foundation contributed $150,000 in 2024 and $550,000 in 2025, while the MacArthur Foundation—the 12th-largest private charity in America—gave $250,000 in 2024, according to tax filings and grant disclosures.
Based on its financial backers, Sunrise’s website claims the economy is broken, billionaires are stockpiling wealth and “the elite will spend a small percentage of this wealth under the auspice of charity.”
Sunrise will “receive a sliver” of money being hoarded in financial philanthropic institutions to fight for the Green New Deal while building its grassroots fundraising base, according to the website.
Sunrise added that it has turned down “checks that come with expectations of input on our strategy.” Donations go to support its local chapters with “materials, housing, technology, food, travel, training expenses, and more.”
In addition, the Sunrise Movement’s five founding members were part of the Biden transition team. Their role was to launch the Federal Plan for Equitable Long-Term Recovery and Resilience that was framed off of the Thriving Together Springboard—the legal framework that would funnel $2 trillion in IRA funds through NGOs.
The local Sunrise Twin Cities group also updates followers on the Twin Cities hotels housing ICE agents and organizes and encourages late-night “noise demonstrations,” uses whistles, instruments, car alarms/horns, and other noisemakers to express dissent. The goal is to “cause problems for the hotels collaborating with ICE and force them to kick agents out.”
The Free Beacon reported that Sunrise Twin Cities has collaborated with two other local groups to drive anti-ICE demonstrations: Unidos MN and Defend the 612. Most of the organizations and foundations did not respond to request for comment.
“The Open Society Foundations support the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, including the rights to free speech and peaceful protest that are hallmarks of any vibrant democracy,” an Open Society Foundations representative told the Free Beacon.
Born from the strength of the DREAMER movement, Unidos is an “immigrant-led, BIPOC majority, multiracial, state-wide organization” focused on immigration, education and climate justice.
The Minneapolis-based nonprofit organization “denounces the history of anti-immigrant sentiments” and leads a “rapid response” network through its affiliate group, Monarca.
The New York Post reported that more than 1,000 people crammed into a Minnesota church on Saturday, Jan. 10, for Monarca’s anti-ICE training. The radical leftist organizer urged participants to annoy the agents like “mosquitoes.”
The Monarca website, which is private, includes a 24/7 hotline that Twin Cities residents can call to report ICE activity. The group’s trained “responders” then show up and actively harass and disrupt ICE agents to prevent them from making arrests.
Like Sunrise, Unidos receives funding from the Ford Foundation, which sent the group $400,000 in 2024.
The Washington, D.C.-based Sixteen Thirty Fund, another left-wing dark money advocacy organization, sent Unidos $150,000 between 2021 and 2022, tax filings show.
Defend the 612 focuses on block organizing and Neighborhood ICE Watch & Rapid Response teams. The group offers similar “ICE Watch Welcome & Orientation” trainings for those in the Twin Cities interested in “documenting ICE activity.”
The Free Beacon reported the group accepts donations through Cooperation Cannon River, a Minneapolis-based “social and environmental justice” nonprofit that has received funding from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, the left-wing dark money giant Tides Foundation, and the Solutions Project, a grantmaking organization founded by actor Mark Ruffalo.
Defend the 612 has compiled a spreadsheet of known ICE vehicles operating in the Twin Cities, which the group describes as “License Plates of Abductors.”
The group offers public and shareable “Community Response Resources” that provide guidance on “Tracking Federal Agents.” The document links to another article, “In Chicago, We Run Toward Danger Together,” highlighting community resistance efforts in the Windy City.
Copal MN, another group that operates its own ICE sighting hotline, has received $50,000 from the Tides Foundation, according to records from 2020 and 2022, and an additional $185,000 from the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
Meanwhile, Singham, a wealthy Marxist businessman who lives in China, is also being investigated for his ties to the Chinese Communist Party and his influence on various left-wing resistance movements and anti-ICE riots, particularly in Los Angeles last summer.
Singham funnels money to many of the activist groups that organize regular protests in New York City and across the country, including the Marxist revolutionary group known as The People’s Forum, which recruits protestors in New York City, the radical anti-war group Code Pink and the leftist Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition.
The GOP-led House Oversight Committee voted last week to subpoena Singham for information about this increasingly violent and disruptive activist network that spreads socialist, communist ideology.
Singham has ignored a Congressional request for documents related to his funding of various far-left causes and ICE resistance efforts.
