Independent coffee shops are speaking up for their neighbours and saying no to ICE in their stores. Some big coffee brands, however, have taken a different approach.
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Independent coffee shops are speaking up for their neighbours and saying no to ICE in their stores. Some big coffee brands, however, have taken a different approach.
For nearly two months, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has deployed thousands of agents to Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. It is the latest, and largest, in a series of so-called “surges” by ICE in Democratic-voting cities and states across the country. The various justifications for this incursion include President Trump’s personal animus towards Minnesotan politicians, allegations of fraud, and racist lies about the Twin Cities’ Somali community.
Minnesota is the 22nd most populous U.S. state, with a comparatively tiny undocumented immigrant population. Even so, it has been “terrorised” by, “in essence, a federal invasion”, as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison put it. Some 3,000 armed and volatile agents have swarmed the state, leaving residents sheltering in their homes in fear of abduction and experiencing violent retaliation to peaceful resistance.
In response, across Minnesota, coffee shops and other businesses have stepped up, gathering donations, handing out whistles, and acting as gathering spots for community responders. Many have attached posters to their doors and windows that say variations of, “Everyone is welcome, except ICE”. Cafes in Chicago and Los Angeles have done the same. Collectively, these are small but powerful statements from independent companies that their neighbours matter, and that they stand in solidarity with them—despite intimidation and the threat of reprisals.
I’ve written more than once about the coffee industry’s focus on the word “community”, and the limits of that objective. The word is often used merely as a marketing tool that hides the industry’s lack of moral clarity. However, the response from small and independent coffee shops in the face of the ongoing ICE onslaught has been an inspiring example of those communal principles in action.
Corporate coffee companies, on the other hand, have not followed suit. Both Starbucks and Caribou Coffee, for instance, lean heavily on a community focus in their marketing, but both also have policies that instruct workers to serve ICE agents, even against their employees' wishes. This has led to unionised Starbucks workers going on strike, and to a customer backlash against Caribou.
Of course, big brands and independent companies have different obligations and objectives, and it’s foolish to expect too much from corporations. But there's something jarring about seeing companies like Starbucks and Caribou—which have long associated their brands with progressive politics—adopt policies that are explicitly in opposition to those values, and which risk harm to both workers and customers.
In contrast to the bravery of the small companies, organisers, and individuals who take the risk of standing up and saying no, it's hard to see these corporations’ passive responses as anything other than complicity with ICE.
ICE’s attacks on various cities and their residents have been deadly. Thirty-two people died in ICE custody in 2025, making it the agency’s deadliest year in two decades. Just in the first month of 2026, agents from ICE and Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) have killed nine people, including protestors Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
Tens of thousands have been detained, with nearly 70,000 people in custody as of mid-December. Many are children. ICE’s tactics, which are often blatantly illegal, have become increasingly violent in recent months. Agents have assaulted, pepper-sprayed, and gassed journalists, legal observers, and community members, and indiscriminately arrested both U.S. immigrants and citizens based on the colour of their skin.
Like other food and beverage sectors, the coffee industry has not been spared from this onslaught, and businesses around the country have been forced to adapt and prepare for the potential of violent ICE raids.
For many, that threat has already arrived. In July 2025, a customer was abducted at a California cafe, burning themselves with hot coffee in the process. In December, ICE lured a cook outside at Crumbs & Coffee in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, before taking them away. The owner of a Jacksonville, Florida, coffee shop was detained in August and faces deportation; the family plans to sell the business. In Hawaii, ICE has conducted raids on coffee farms and arrested workers and their families. These are only a handful examples amidst the agency’s ongoing, nationwide crackdowns.
In response to the violent encroachment on their cities, residents of Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other cities have stepped up. Some have formed ad hoc mutual aid networks to deliver groceries to their neighbours in hiding; others have started community Signal chats to monitor and respond to ICE actions in their areas. Parents have even begun patrolling outside their kids’ schools to protect them from raids. Independent coffee shops have also contributed by becoming donation hubs and gathering spots for their communities.
Ali Hormann is a photographer and creative based in St. Paul, Minnesota. As part of what she calls “my work in the resistance”, Hormann has been doing grocery store runs and school drop-off observations. “Luckily, we haven’t had an incident yet, but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t had any near misses”, she tells me. And that doesn’t mean other schools haven’t been directly impacted. “It’s worse than people think. People are actually hiding”, she says.
In addition to her local mutual aid work, Hormann also, somewhat inadvertently, started a customer backlash against Caribou Coffee over the company’s ICE policies.
Caribou Coffee operates hundreds of locations in its home state of Minnesota (since 2012, the brand has been owned by the German investment firm JAB Holding). Hormann was an occasional customer. “When you’re heading out of the Twin Cities and you don’t have as many local options, it was a place where you could get a decent cup of coffee”, she says.
That changed on January 8, when Hormann posted a video on Instagram and TikTok relaying information given to her by a friend who works for Caribou. In the video, Hormann described a meeting in which, allegedly, the company told its employees that they are not allowed to refuse service to ICE agents, even if they feel personally unsafe.
Additionally, Hormann was given a copy of talking points for managers, in which they are also told how to respond to customers who ask about ICE presence. “In the event ICE agents are at your coffeehouse as a customer, they should be served just like we invite and serve all other guests”, the talking points read. “If other guests ask questions regarding why your coffeehouse team served ICE agents, let them know that we serve all guests and direct them to Guest Relations if they have any further questions”.
That first video went viral on both platforms, and elicited a response from Caribou on Instagram. “We assure you that the safety and well-being of our team members is a top priority”, the comment reads in part. “We have guidelines in place and regularly ensure teams are aware of them to help everyone feel prepared and supported”.
In a follow-up video, Hormann included screenshots of a memo sent by Caribou to managers outlining its policy on what to do before, during, and after what it calls an “ICE immigration visit”. Victor Stefanescu at the Minnesota Star Tribune also reported on the memo, writing that “the letter advised employees to remain calm and serve the officers”.
When I contacted Caribou for comment, a representative pointed me towards the Star Tribune article and a comment given to Stefanescu by “a source familiar with the memo”: “The guidance was provided to support the safety of employees and guests in accordance with applicable legal requirements”.
ICE doesn’t need a warrant to enter public areas of a business, like a coffee shop’s seating area or customer bathrooms. But to enter private areas, such as employee-only break rooms, agents need either the consent of the employer or a judicial warrant signed by a judge. In its memo, Caribou notes this, and warns employees that ICE might try to use an administrative warrant to gain entry to private spaces.
Loan Huynh, a Minneapolis lawyer, told the Star Tribune that businesses and their workers don’t have to obey these warrants, something that Caribou’s memo stated. However, Huynh also said that agents might try to pressure workers into letting them into private areas. The Caribou memo also notes that “being in the public area by itself does NOT give ICE the authority to stop, question, or arrest anyone”.
Hormann says, in the aftermath of her videos, she has been flooded with messages from Caribou workers who told her they disagreed with its policy, as well as comments from customers who said they would not be buying from the company again. “[There was] just a general sense of betrayal that a Minnesota company had bent the knee to this regime”, she says. “People were very vocal in their anger”.
And yet, Caribou’s stance is not unusual among big coffee companies. Margot Stacy, the manager of a Dallas, Texas location of the specialty chain White Rhino Coffee recently quit in protest of what she described as the company’s pro-ICE stance, including the fact that agents receive a first-responder discount. Several other employees also resigned from the chain, which has 15 locations around Dallas-Fort Worth. In a statement posted to Instagram, the company didn’t mention the discount or its policy of serving ICE agents, but wrote that “We love everyone, serve everyone, and genuinely pray for peace in this country”.
“They in their own words want to stay apolitical and invite everyone to the table, and what we were saying was, you can’t invite everybody to the table,” Stacy told KERA News. “You can’t invite people who are trying to destroy the table to the table. They’re not here to build community. They are here to destroy communities”.
Several days after the incident, White Rhino clarified to the Dallas Morning News that federal agents don’t in fact receive a discount, but didn’t say whether or not the company would continue to serve ICE. I reached out to clarify, but have not heard back as of publication.
Starbucks’ policy is also to serve ICE agents, according to Starbucks Workers United. Baristas at six Twin Cities locations staged a one-day strike on January 23 to coincide with the state’s general strike, in part to protest the company’s guidelines. “Amid the clear and present danger of ICE agents across our state, we call on Starbucks to follow hundreds of Minnesota businesses and forbid ICE from entering the premises without a warrant”, Starbucks barista Alex Rivers said in a statement. Starbucks didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In Minnesota, there’s a clear contrast between the actions—or lack thereof—of brands like Starbucks and Caribou and the state’s independent coffee companies. Small cafes are opening up for organisers and protestors, while trying their best to keep ICE out of their communities. Some are inadvertently becoming sites of resistance.
Corey Bracken runs Pilllar Forum, a skate and coffee shop and all-ages music venue in Minneapolis. Bracken tells me that his business has become a community hub for people patrolling the local area to observe and protest ICE. During a recent concert, ICE detained two people at a Latino grocery store next door. “They just grabbed them, whistles were blowing, so maybe half the people that were there to see the music ran outside trying to stop this from happening”, Bracken says.
Audience and band members tried to stop the abduction, to which ICE responded with pepper spray and struck protesters with batons, the Star Tribune reported. Afterwards, Bracken and the bands decided to cancel the show; nobody asked for refunds, so they donated the proceeds to local mutual aid funds.
“There’s a lot of highs and then there’s a lot of lows—it’s just been a roller coaster”, Bracken says. “You see the community coming together. You see the peaceful actions that we’re taking to try to stop this. But then you see Alex Pretti getting murdered. You see Renee Good getting murdered. You see these people getting murdered at the hands of our federal government, with no repercussions”.
Bracken appreciates that the name he chose for his business has become particularly fitting recently. “I never thought any of this would happen. But the name Pilllar Forum, you know, a forum where people can come and gather and talk about this stuff. No one wants this, no one’s asking for this. But we’re here and we can be that place to gather and talk, and it’s been really cool to see people show up and protect the community”.
While Caribou Coffee and Starbucks’ ICE policies are drawing ire and prompting protest, in many ways, they’re nothing new—big corporations have always collaborated with law enforcement. “Maintaining property interests has always been central to the modern American police state”, Violet Nieves and Emily Van Dyne wrote in the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy in 2020. “Corporations fund various police apparatuses to both parties’ benefit, and the state tolerates their implicit targeting of and resulting harm to Black people and members of radical movements via property misdemeanors”.
Corporate coffee companies have long maintained close ties with police. These ties can be as relatively innocuous as offering law enforcement free coffee or hosting Coffee With A Cop events. Other times, companies have used officers to help disrupt unions, as Starbucks has done on multiple occasions in response to its workers organising. Starbucks additionally hosted the Department of Homeland Security’s Corporate Security Symposium at its Seattle headquarters last year, while its Puerto Rico business has been part of ICE’s immigration compliance programme IMAGE.
Like many other corporations, Starbucks has also moved to ingratiate itself with the Trump administration. In February 2025, the Seattle Times reported that the coffee giant was one among a number of big companies that watered down or removed references to diversity, equity, and inclusion programmes on their websites. Also last year, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol met with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to discuss “the company’s plans to further MAHA its menu”, as Kennedy put it in a social media post.
These moves stand in contrast to Starbucks’ stances during Trump’s first term. In response to the administration’s Muslim travel ban, in 2017, Starbucks’ then-CEO Howard Schultz pledged to hire 10,000 refugees worldwide. Schultz said Starbucks would “enthusiastically” support the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and continue to “[build] bridges, not walls, with Mexico”. Schultz also criticised Trump’s first tax cut, and Starbucks passed at least some of the tax savings to its employees in the form of bonuses, although the company also increased dividends and share buybacks in the following years.
Bracken points out that, while hundreds of local businesses closed on January 23 for the “ICE Out of Minnesota” rally and general strike, corporate stores stayed open. “The big national chains obviously don’t support the strikes and are open all day, which drives more customers to them. Which is the antithesis of what we’re trying to support with the strike”.
We should not be surprised when big companies cosy up to authoritarian regimes, or otherwise align themselves with power and against people. Still, these moves are particularly galling when conducted by businesses that have made progressive values and community a cornerstone of their brands.
Starbucks in particular is in the midst of a very expensive reconfiguration back to its welcoming, “third place” coffeehouse roots. As one Starbucks barista put it during a recent workplace action in Minneapolis, “The Back to Starbucks initiative describes our stores as places ‘designed for comfort, connection and community.’ This isn’t possible and isn’t true when our workplace allows ICE agents into our stores”.
Consumers aren’t powerless to respond, however. As Starbucks’ recent struggles have shown, boycotts can have a big impact on even the largest corporations. Companies with ICE contracts, like the charter airline Avelo that ran deportation flights, or hotels that rent rooms to agents, have been successfully pressured to cut ties. Organisers and unions in Minnesota have also demanded that companies like Target, Home Depot, and Hilton, stop collaborating with the agency.
The coffee brands that have taken a deferential stance towards ICE may hope that consumers overlook or forget their policies. However, their actions could well have longer-term repercussions. Administrations come and go, but consumer boycotts can last decades—just ask Nestlé. The upside could be lost revenue for corporations, as well as increased support for the local coffee companies that have stepped up to protect their communities.
Resistance, as Hormann puts it, can take many forms—and sometimes that can mean educating people about where they’re buying their coffee. “I didn’t mean to start a boycott of a giant coffee company”, she says. “We spent a lot of time not really paying attention to where our money was going, and now people are paying so much closer attention”.
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Header image: “Protest against ICE in downtown Minneapolis” by Fibonacci Blue, CC BY 4.0
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