By COCO SMYTH

Starting on Dec. 16, 2025, ICE initiated its largest attack on Ohio’s immigrant community under the title “Operation Buckeye.” Between the 16th and the 21st, ICE arrested 280 people, including two U.S. citizens, according to the Ohio Immigrant Alliance.

This attack came on the heels of another escalation of anti-Somali racism by Trump. Just as happened earlier when Trump pushed racist lies about the Haitians, profoundly impacting the large Haitian community in Springfield, the chauvinism against Somalis created a climate of fear particularly in Columbus, which has the second largest Somali community in the United States behind Minneapolis. Somali community leaders planned a series of public meetings in an attempt to organize and defend themselves in the face of racist targeting.

This unprecedented attack on immigrants also triggered unprecedented resistance for immigrants’ rights in Ohio. In the period of the second Trump presidency, the immigrants’ rights movement in the state had been sporadic, with small rapid response networks in a number of cities, occasional protests, and campaigns for individual ICE detainees such as Ayman Soliman, an imam in Cincinnati who was detained for 73 days before his release under activist pressure. Soliman, who faced the threat of deportation back to Egypt, where he was imprisoned and tortured due to his journalistic efforts during the Arab Spring, won his freedom due to an organized struggle, marking a rare victory for the movement in Ohio.

The sight of ICE on the streets and the announcement of the “operation” triggered a flood of resistance throughout the state. The first form this took was through spontaneous resistance. ICE agents had camped outside Whetstone High School in Columbus waiting for students to come out and for parents to pick up their children in the hope of scooping up immigrants. Teachers and staff quickly organized to accompany the students as they exited the building to protect them from ICE kidnappings.

There were many such examples of spontaneous community solidarity against ICE. But quickly, this resistance also became organized. Ohio’s cities, from Columbus to Cincinnati and Cleveland, had near daily protests and rallies of hundreds planned by a variety of organizations. Unions such as the Columbus Education Association and the Hilliard Education Association condemned ICE activities near schools and vowed to protect students against ICE.

Beyond that, thousands of Ohioans flocked to immigrants’ rights organizing. In Columbus, an organizing meeting called by the Party for Socialism and Liberation and 50501 saw 600 line up to attend, most of whom had to be turned away due to lack of space in the venue. In the course of several days, we saw the proliferation and growth of rapid-response networks across the state and the adoption of new tactics like using whistles to notify neighborhoods about ICE activity.

Right before the holidays, on Dec. 21, the acute period of the first phase of Operation Buckeye ended. But we should expect that escalated ICE operations in Ohio will continue in the near future, and we must be prepared to resist them. There is already a rumor, as of Jan. 14, that ICE activities are beginning again in Ohio.

This operation demonstrated that there is a mass base in Ohio prepared to fight to defend immigrant communities and that thousands are seeking methods to resist. The explosion of mobilizations and organizing efforts in the state is an extremely promising development for the movement. It is vital that organizers seek to deepen roots in local immigrant communities and build open, democratic, and mass-oriented organizations to harness the energies unleashed by ICE attacks.

The spontaneous mass resistance we have seen in Ohio is a precondition for an effective movement to beat back ICE and kick them out of our community. But spontaneous activity isn’t sufficient. We need a well-organized movement that can mobilize thousands against ICE raids and solidify our communities against attack. This will require open organizing that welcomes hundreds into the ranks of the movement and creates democratic space for debating the tactics and strategy for the fightback. Furthermore, we need to bring the working class to the forefront of the struggle. We need to connect the labor movement with the immigrants’ rights movement and bring our unions into active defense of immigrant communities.

We will need a mass movement to protect our community from these unprecedented attacks. Let Operation Buckeye be a call to action to workers in Ohio to do what it takes to win a world free from the persecution of our immigrant family, friends, and neighbors.

Photo: Protesters outside the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus on Jan. 10. (Jared Clayton Brown / WOSU)