Utahns will have fewer places to eat, drink and shop for much of Friday, as some small businesses close their doors to protest the Trump Administration’s crackdown on immigrants in Minnesota.
Raelle Zephyr Westwind, who co-owns The Legendarium bookstore and games space in Salt Lake City, started the Utah Small Business Strike Coalition to organize the protest after hearing calls from organizers in Minnesota for more support of their general strike.
Friday’s collective action, she said, is an attempt to show solidarity “however we can,” but it’s also a means to build connections here, some 1,200 miles from Minneapolis, “so that we can protect our own communities.”
“ICE is present and active everywhere in the U.S.,” Westwind said, “and this level of intense focus is something that will come to a lot, if not all, cities around the country eventually.”
The Legendarium is among at least three dozen small businesses across Utah — from the Wasatch Front to Moab — that have announced plans to close, trim hours or donate a portion of sales to Minnesota companies or efforts to support immigrants.
The “National Shutdown” – “no school, no work and no shopping” — is a response to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and the actions of agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Those agencies’ agents killed Silverio Villegas González in a Chicago suburb in September, Keith “Pooter” Porter Jr. in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve, and Renee Good and Alex Pretti less than a month apart in Minneapolis.
The coalition also encouraged people to join planned protests in Salt Lake City and Ogden, write letters to lawmakers, and donate to mutual-aid and bail funds.
Students in Utah already have staged walkouts in protest of the administration’s immigration tactics and some are discussing more for Friday. A multi-school protest is in the works for next week.
The Trump Administration has said that its immigration policies make the country safer.
The operations have “resulted in countless dangerous criminal illegals being removed from the streets – including rapists, murderers, burglars, drunk drivers,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement earlier this week.
She said that “will create an environment in which all businesses can thrive in the long term and their customers can feel safe.”
Some Utah businesses involved in the protest already have spoken out against the administration’s actions. Diabolical Records, which is participating in the strike, is among local shops and restaurants that have hung “No I.C.E. Allowed” signs while offering their stores as temporary places of refuge.
Westwind said up to this point, business owners who have taken a stand have felt “very solo and isolated” and were concerned that their actions were “not extremely useful.”
“One business closing mostly just impacts that business’s bottom line and ability to stay open,” she said.
That’s part of why she, alongside the owners of Sugar House Coffee and Under the Umbrella bookstore, began organizing the coalition. This sort of collective action is “so much more effective,” Westwind said.
The group is tracking businesses in a spreadsheet that notes Friday closures, along with other actions.
Westwind said that her business stands to lose somewhere between $1,500 and $2,000 in revenue, and she added she would compensate employees’ lost wages. But she understands that some businesses may be unable to close because they need or their workers need the revenue.
So the spreadsheet provides space for business owners to explain how they are otherwise supporting the cause, such as donating funds to mutual-aid groups or workers in Minnesota.
The King’s English Bookshop will stay open, for instance, but plans to donate a portion of its sales to Guadalupe School, a west-side school where students are mostly children of Hispanic immigrant families living at or below the federal poverty line.
Scion Cider posted to its Instagram account that it could not afford to participate, but said its employees were given the option to not come to work. The company also invited people to use its space to write letters or make signs to support the cause.
“Small businesses like ours & many employees in hospitality rely on the income in the slowest month of the year for the bar & restaurant industry,” the cidery said.
The bar also will have a moment of silence at 9:01 p.m. to remember Good and Pretti and said it will close early if the night “proves to be dead silent.”
Several other businesses plan to stay open through the strike to host community spaces, including Lovebound Library and The King’s English Bookshop, which posted on Instagram that people are “invited to gather, read, rest, and connect, with absolutely no expectation to spend money.”
The Legendarium, Westwind’s business, will be closed during the day so patrons can participate in a 2 p.m. rally at Washington Square Park. It will reopen Friday evening for its regular Queer Social Club board game night. Westwind said the business will donate 20% of its sales to bookstores in Minneapolis that are on strike.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Kaitlyn Mahoney at the Under the Umbrella bookstore in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. A number of small local businesses are planning to strike in opposition to ICE as part of a national general strike Friday.
Kaitlyn Mahoney, owner of Under the Umbrella, will close her store for most of the day but will reopen in the evening so people can come together to write letters to their representatives, or make kits with whistles that some citizens use to alert residents about ICE operations.
“I’m hoping that more people are seeing us stand up,” she said, “and maybe have the courage to do it themselves.”
Though most comments on Salt Lake City-area businesses’ posts have been supportive, Moab Cyclery has received some pushback, owner David Glover told The Times-Independent. After he announced the closure, Glover said, some residents left comments saying the business has “lost them as a customer.”
Glover said he knows people with personal connections to Pretti, who was a mountain biker in Minneapolis, and added he does not want to “alienate” anyone.
“We just want everybody to treat each other fairly,” Glover said, “and obey the laws and rules. We just want everybody to get along.”