Which US cities have seen protests at ICE detention centers in 2023 and 2024?
Executive summary
Reporting supplied does not offer a comprehensive, year-by-year catalogue of demonstrations at ICE detention centers for 2023 and 2024, but it does name multiple U.S. cities and sites that have hosted anti‑ICE protests in the period covered by the files and in nationwide actions that spilled across calendar years; the strongest, repeatedly documented epicenter is the Twin Cities (Minneapolis–Saint Paul), while a scattered national network of rallies and pickets is reported in large cities from Los Angeles to Philadelphia and smaller sites from Dilley, Texas to Machias, Maine [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. The available sources, however, primarily document mass mobilizations and coordinated “ICE Out” weekends in 2025–2026 and do not provide a definitive list exclusively limited to protests that occurred only in 2023 and 2024, a gap that must be acknowledged [4] [6].
1. Minneapolis–Saint Paul: the focal point of detention‑center protests
Minneapolis and neighboring Saint Paul are repeatedly identified as the locus of the largest and most sustained protests, including mass marches, airport kneel‑ins by clergy, and pickets outside federal sites after high‑profile ICE operations and the killing of Renee Good, with multiple outlets documenting nightly demonstrations and legal limits placed on federal crowd‑control tactics there [2] [7] [3] [8].
2. Major coastal cities reporting actions: Los Angeles, New York City and Philadelphia
Reporting and mapped tracking show anti‑ICE demonstrations in Los Angeles and New York — including marches up to the Manhattan Detention Center — and explicit actions in Philadelphia where officials even threatened prosecution of ICE agents, indicating protests targeting detention operations or federal facilities in those cities [6] [9].
3. West Coast and Pacific Rim outposts: Portland and Honolulu among national actions
Portland, Oregon is named in accounts of protests and arrests tied to immigration‑enforcement incidents, while organizers mapped nationwide “ICE Out” weekends that included locations as far‑flung as Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, signaling that protests at or near detention facilities were part of a coast‑to‑coast mobilization [4].
4. Smaller or specialized sites: Aurora (CO), Dilley (TX) and Machias (ME)
Coverage cites protests in Aurora, Colorado (home to the state’s ICE detention facility), a detainee protest and outside demonstrations at the Dilley family detention complex in South Texas, and planned actions reaching small towns such as Machias, Maine during nationwide weekend events, showing organizers deliberately targeted both institutional detention sites and symbolic national footprints [6] [5] [4].
5. Nationwide waves and mapped “40 cities” claim — what that does and doesn’t say
A map published by The Independent references 40 U.S. cities where anti‑ICE protests have occurred, and organizer trackers cited by outlets promised more than a thousand planned events nationwide, but those products are snapshot compilations of mobilizations across multiple dates and do not, on their own, parse which protests took place specifically in 2023 versus 2024; they do, however, illustrate the breadth of anti‑ICE activism that reached detention centers and federal facilities in many regions [6] [4].
6. Caveats, counter‑narratives and institutional perspectives
Federal and law‑enforcement sources frame many of these mobilizations as reactions to enforcement actions and public safety operations — and Homeland Security has defended ICE activities even as judges curtailed certain crowd‑control tools in Minneapolis — so accounts vary sharply depending on whether the source emphasizes civil‑liberties protests or the government’s enforcement prerogatives [10] [8]. Crucially, the supplied reporting does not furnish a complete, independently verified roster limited to 2023–2024 detention‑center protests, so any definitive city list for those two years cannot be constructed solely from these documents [4] [6].