Between roadwork fencing and the US Consulate, around two hundred people packed onto the frozen sidewalk of Rue Sainte-Catherine at 1 PM on Sunday, February 1, to protest immigration raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This demonstration, dubbed ICE Out MTL, came amidst waves of international condemnation of ICE set off by the January killings of two American citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, by ICE agents in Minneapolis. Advertised as a family-friendly gathering “in solidarity with Minneapolis against fascism everywhere,” ICE Out MTL was organized by Indivisible Québec, the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC-CTI), and Democrats at McGill.
Approached by ICE Out MTL organizers clad in bright orange and neon green vests, protestors and passers-by were offered a slip of paper that asked the question many in Canada have been struggling with as the US seemed to spiral: “What can we do from Canada?” One such person was Jacob Wesoky, president of Democrats at McGill, who The McGill Daily interviewed prior to the protest. As an American abroad, Wesoky cited combatting this sense of hopelessness as a driving force behind helping to organize ICE Out MTL: “There are a lot of Americans here, and it’s easy to feel powerless watching all of this chaos from afar. But in Canada, we’re not powerless. We still have a voice.”
Olivia, a second-year McGill student who braved the -10 degree weather to join the protest, indicated a similar sentiment: “I wish I could participate in all the protests happening in the US right now. It’s really hard to see everything going on from here and feeling kind of helpless.”
In addition to calls for the abolishment of ICE, bluntly referred to by one speaker as the “new American gestapo,” ICE Out MTL was also intended as a wake-up call for Canadians. As such, Wesoky outlined the details behind Indivisible Québec’s demand in their pre-protest press release to end “Canadian firms’ complicity” in financing ICE. His examples range from post-secondary institutions like McGill to firms based in Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia.
“McGill holds over $2.2 million in investments in Palantir, the AI surveillance company that’s behind ICE’s immigration crackdown and the illegal surveillance of millions of Americans. Ontario-based Roshel supplies armoured vehicles to ICE. Montreal-based GardaWorld staffed Florida’s Alligator Alcatraz, which was the site of some of the worst human rights abuses in modern American history. Vancouver-based Hoopsuite provides social media services that amplify ICE’s propaganda.” Exemplified by chants of “Quebec stop funding ICE’s crimes.” Participants of ICE Out MTL made it clear that they would not tolerate Canadian complicity in funding and supplying ICE.
At around 1:30 PM, protestors were led around the corner to Dorchester Square, where they were presented with a QR code to contact their MPs in support of the No More Loopholes Act. The bill, first proposed in 2025, seeks to tighten export restrictions for Canadian arms manufacturers. As the website handed out through that QR code during ICE Out MTL puts it, the hope is that the No More Loopholes Act will stop the Canadian funneling of “unrestricted and unregulated arms to Trump’s illegal wars, ICE’s campaign of terror, and Israel’s ongoing genocide.”
Their breath floating into the cloudless sky, the multigenerational crowd assembled in Dorchester Square cheered and jeered as vested organizers, including Wesoky and Indivisible Québec’s Michael Lipset, delivered passionate speeches against ICE and in support of immigrants and those protesting in Minneapolis. Lipset, a Montreal resident originally from Minnesota, compared Trump’s America to Nazi Germany and declared, “This is not about border security. This is about state power without constraint.”
Wesoky made a direct appeal to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in his speech, referencing Carney’s widely covered Davos address: “Part of taking down the sign from the window, part of no longer living within the lie, is recognizing the reality in the United States right now. […] If Canada is the beacon of hope and freedom that you say it is, then Canada will open its doors and protect the rights and dignity of migrants and asylum seekers.” Wesoky also called for an end to the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) between Canada and the US, which requires refugee claimants to request protection only from the country they arrive in: “[The STCA exists] under the premise that the United States is a safe country for immigrants to seek asylum. […] The United States does not respect immigrant rights.”
At around 2:30 PM, protestors walked back to the cramped sidewalk in front of the US Consulate. Despite a reduced headcount, the crowd resumed loudly chanting, shouting through megaphones, and holding up their signs. Refusing to go unnoticed, one person rattled a green tambourine, while another blew through a harmonica. Half an hour later, just before the scheduled end of the demonstration, ICE Out MTL organizers thanked those still remaining and made a final appeal: “Keep making your voice heard. Keep showing up.”
ICE now has the largest budget of any US law enforcement agency in history. Nevertheless, Wesoky, who began efforts to protest against government-sponsored brutality by organizing a walkout at his middle school following the 2018 Parkland school shooting, seemed undeterred. In organizing ICE Out MTL, he hoped Americans back home could see that “the world is noticing what’s happening in the US, and we’re not going to sit back and just watch it happen.”