Greenland and Denmark have formed a united front to face down US President Donald Trump, momentarily setting aside the troubled history between them.The Arctic island, a Danish colony for three centuries, still has a complicated relationship with Denmark, which now rules it as an autonomous territory.Greenland’s main political parties all want independence, but disagree on how exactly to get there. Trump’s designs on the island led them to forge a coalition government in March last year.Greenland’s leaders made clear last week they had no interest in Trump’s bid to take over the vast island — an idea he pushed hard, before backing off on Wednesday after reaching what he called a framework deal on Arctic security with NATO’s secretary-general.”Greenlanders still have a lot of grievances concerning Denmark’s lack of ability to reconsider its colonial past,” said Ulrik Pram Gad, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS).”But Trump’s pressure has prompted the wide majority of the political spectrum that forms (Greenland’s) coalition government to put independence preparations — always a long-term project — aside for now,” he told AFP.”The clear European support has made this easier in the sense that the relation to Denmark feels a lot less claustrophobic when joined by others,” he added.While the main Greenland parties differ on how to achieve independence, the growing US pressure led them in March 2025 to put their differences to one side to form their coalition.Only the Naleraq party, which wants a fast track to independence, stayed in opposition.At the height of the crisis, Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen made it clear that if the government had to choose between the United States and Denmark, it would choose Denmark.- Colonial past -Trump’s talk of a framework deal negotiated with NATO chief Mark Rutte prompted Denmark and Greenland to reiterate that only they can take decisions concerning them.In the last month of diplomatic back-and-forth, Greenland and Denmark have presented a united front, speaking with one voice.On January 14, Greenland’s Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt was in Washington alongside her Danish counterpart Lars Lokke Rasmussen for talks with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.By Monday, she was in Brussels for talks with Rutte, this time with Denmark’s Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen.But that unity conceals the scars of their colonial past.Greenland was a Danish colony from the early 18th century. It became a Danish territory in 1953, a full part of Denmark — before becoming an autonomous territory in 1979, a status that was strengthened in 2009.”It’s a long history. It has gone through different stages,” said Astrid Andersen, a specialist in Danish-Greenlandic relations at the Danish Institute for International Studies.”Any colonial relation is a question of domination and there have been some injustices committed.”- Forced sterilisation -Those injustices include a 1951 social experiment in which 22 Inuit children were forcibly separated from their families and prevented from speaking Greenlandic — part of bid to create a Danish-speaking elite.In 2021, the six still alive were each awarded compensation of 250,000 crowns (33,500 euros).Another dark chapter was Denmark’s efforts from the 1960s and for three decades on to reduce the birth rate in Greenland. Several thousand women and teenagers — at least 4,000 — had IUDs fitted without their consent to prevent them conceiving.Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has presented her apologies to the women concerned — nearly half of whom were unable to have children — and a compensation procedure is underway.Denmark’s social services even used controversial psychological tests to — as they saw it — evaluate if Greenlandic mothers were fit to be parents.A 2022 study showed that in metropolitan Denmark, children born to Greenlandic families were five to seven times more at risk of being placed in children’s homes than those born to Danish families.The use of such tests was only discontinued last year.The recent debate over these issues has, for the moment, been put to one side, said Andersen.”Right now I think there’s a general agreement with a few exceptions that the common opponent right now is Trump and we kind of need to face this together somehow.”

Thousands of people braved icy conditions on Friday to protest the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis and businesses closed their doors amid anger over the detention of a five-year-old migrant boy.Dozens of eateries, attraction sites and other businesses shuttered as part of a day of coordinated action to defy the weeks-long federal immigration operation underway in Minnesota.Images of an apparently terrified pre-schooler, Liam Conejo Ramos, being held by immigration officers who were seeking to arrest the boy’s father have rekindled public outrage at the federal crackdown, during which an agent shot and killed a US citizen.The superintendent of Columbia Heights Public Schools, where Ramos was a preschool student, said the child and his Ecuadoran father, Adrian Conejo Arias — both asylum seekers — were taken from their driveway as they arrived home on Tuesday.Ramos was then used as “bait” by officers to draw out those inside his home, superintendent Zena Stenvik added.One protester, who declined to be named, told AFP he was marching “because if we don’t fight, we don’t win. If we don’t fight, fascism wins.”The local man held a sign reading “five-years-old, dude,” a reference to Ramos.Thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have been deployed to the Democratic-led city, as President Donald Trump presses his campaign to deport undocumented immigrants across the country.On a visit to Minneapolis on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance confirmed Ramos was among those detained. But he argued that agents were protecting him after his father “ran” from officers.”What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death?” he said.UN human rights chief Volker Turk called on US authorities to end the “harmful treatment of migrants and refugees.”Arias, the father of the boy, was at a Texas detention facility, according to an ICE database that does not list the whereabouts of under-18s.- ‘Dealing with children’ -Border Patrol senior official Gregory Bovino defended his officers’ treatment of Ramos, telling reporters Friday: “I will say unequivocally that we are experts in dealing with children.”ICE commander Marcos Charles said Friday “my officers did everything they could to reunite him with his family” and alleged that Ramos’s family refused to open the door to him after his father left him and ran from officers.They would be detained “pending their immigration proceedings,” he added after alleging they entered the United States illegally and were “deportable.”Ramos’s teacher, whose name was given as Ella, called him “a bright young student.” In Minneapolis, where temperatures touched -23C (-9F) on Friday, protesters wrapped in hats, gloves and scarves chanted “ICE out” as part of a broader anti-ICE day of action.Separately, protesters picketed outside Minneapolis-St. Paul airport over the facility’s use for deporting those swept up in immigration raids. Methodist pastor Mariah Furness Tollgaard said in a statement that 100 members of clergy were arrested and charged with trespassing and disobeying a peace officer on Friday, while demonstrating at the airport.”As a faith leader in Minnesota, my tradition teaches that every person bears the image of God and is worthy of dignity and safety, and in this moment, all people of faith and moral conscience must stand up,” she said.- ‘Just a baby’ -Former US vice president Kamala Harris said she was “outraged” by Ramos’s detention and called him “just a baby.”Ramos is one of at least four children detained in the same Minneapolis school district this month, administrators said.Minneapolis has been rocked by increasingly tense protests since federal agents shot and killed US citizen Renee Good on January 7.An autopsy concluded that the killing was a homicide, a classification that does not automatically mean a crime was committed.The officer who fired the shots that killed Good, Jonathan Ross, has neither been suspended nor charged.Marc Prokosch, the lawyer for Ramos and his father, said they followed the law in applying for asylum in Minneapolis, a sanctuary city where police do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities.Children have been caught up in immigration enforcement under both Republican and Democratic administrations.Minnesota has sought a temporary restraining order for the ICE operation in the state which, if granted by a federal judge, would pause the sweeps. There will be a hearing on the application Monday.