In a Jan. 9 statement, the American Postal Workers Union said it had received reports that ICE used at least one postal facility as a staging area in Minnesota and said the practice “places the health and safety of postal workers and our customers at risk.” The union said it would raise the issue with postal management.
The concern moved into public view days later. AP reporting from Jan. 18 said postal workers protested in Minneapolis as federal immigration enforcement expanded in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Federal officials, meanwhile, have defended the operation; in its description of Operation Metro Surge, DHS cast the crackdown as a public-safety effort targeting people with serious criminal records, a characterization Minnesota officials and immigrant-rights advocates have disputed.
Why postal workers say the safety issue is widening
A March 5 account in Labor Notes by Minneapolis letter carrier Emmett Bongaarts said Branch 9 of the National Association of Letter Carriers passed an “ICE Makes Delivery Unsafe” motion after members argued that raids and the street conditions around them had turned ordinary delivery work into a hazard. That account reflects the view of rank-and-file carriers rather than a formal Postal Service finding, but it helps explain why the fight has gained traction inside the union: workers are framing it as a safety issue first and a political issue second.
That framing matters because the Postal Service already treats route safety as a daily operational question. In a Feb. 19 Minnesota safety notice, USPS again warned that snow and ice create hazards for carriers and asked customers to clear paths, steps and mailbox approaches. For local carriers, the argument is that enforcement activity that disrupts neighborhoods should be taken as seriously as weather hazards.
At the heart of the complaint is not only whether ICE should use postal property, but also whether letter carriers can keep their public-facing jobs clearly separate from immigration enforcement. Workers say that once that line blurs, everyday delivery becomes harder to do safely.
Older warnings show this did not start in January
The current standoff did not appear out of nowhere. A Dec. 14 Star Tribune report on an earlier Minneapolis rally showed postal workers were already objecting to ICE activity around the Lake Street and Powderhorn post offices and making clear they did not want to be associated with the raids.
Zooming out further, The Washington Post reported in April 2025 that the U.S. Postal Inspection Service had joined a DHS task force seeking undocumented immigrants using mail and package data. That broader history helps explain why local postal workers are treating the Minneapolis dispute as more than a one-off fight over one parking lot or one week of protests.
For now, the demand remains simple: keep ICE off postal property. But the warning from carriers is larger. They are arguing that when delivery routes begin to feel like extensions of an enforcement zone, the damage spreads beyond a single facility and into worker safety and the separation from law enforcement that postal workers say their jobs depend on.
