Over the weekend of June 6, Los Angeles was subject to a coordinated series of raids by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE). Militarized federal agents armed with assault rifles and teargas grenade launchers were assisted by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Dozens of officers descended on workplaces in immigrant-dense working-class neighborhoods in downtown and East Los Angeles, arresting at least 44 people.
These sweeps are an escalation of violent and provocative deportation efforts by ICE, focused so far on Chicago, Minneapolis, and Southern California. It is a blatant attempt by Trump to appear tough and effective as he stumbles from one failure to another while attempting to carry out an impossible mandate – enriching his billionaire cronies while simultaneously raising living standards for American workers.
As word of the raids spread, thousands of workers and youth poured onto the streets and spontaneous efforts were made to prevent ICE vehicles from fleeing the scene with their captives. One man was almost run over in a desperate attempt to stop the vehicles, just one example of the explosion of courage seen on the streets as ordinary Angelenos fought the attacks head-on. Five years since the George Floyd uprising sent Trump into hiding in the White House bunker, his provocations risk igniting another mass movement.
In the following days, thousands have demonstrated across Los Angeles, with some protests reaching over 10,000 participants. These have been mainly declared unlawful assemblies and repressed with crowd-control munitions. Social media videos show police officers in riot gear firing teargas, paintballs, and flashbang grenades at demonstrators. ICE and other law enforcement vehicles have been destroyed and set aflame. In the heavily Latino neighbourhood of Paramount, demonstrators heard ICE was targeting migrant day laborers outside a Home Depot, and a tense battle ensued. The LA neighborhood has since become an open battleground.
In response, for the first time since 1965, Trump has federalized the National Guard against the wishes of the state governor. On the recommendation of the “border czar,” Tom Homan, 2,000 troops have been deployed to the city. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has threatened to unleash active-duty Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton.
LA Mayor Karen Bass and members of the LA City Council were quick to cry crocodile tears over ICE’s aggression. They praise the hard work of undocumented Angelenos, which their billionaire donors hyperexploit. They loudly exclaim that Los Angeles is a ‘sanctuary city’ where local officials will never cooperate with deportations. But the truth is plain to see: the LAPD violently facilitated the ICE attacks on the streets under the arrogant guise of “traffic enforcement.” The idea that any city can be a genuine ‘sanctuary’ for super-oppressed workers under the rule of Democrats or Republicans has been cruelly exposed.
Terror is a feature, not a bug, in the immigration policy of both parties. The capitalists and their political parties want to keep immigrant workers as a source of cheap labor to exploit, constantly under threat of deportation to cut across efforts to organize and fight back. As arch-capitalist Milton Friedman once bluntly explained, “Immigration is good only as long as it is illegal.”
Terrorizing the most exploited, hard-working layers of the working class has also become a lucrative business. GEO Group and CoreCivic, two private prison monopolies, have made a fortune via government contracts for their detention camps. Both contributed significantly to the Trump campaign, and the former saw a 50 percent increase in share price after Trump was reelected.
Upon Trump’s return to office, shareholders got what they paid for: a lucrative payout courtesy of the American taxpayer to build facilities for 100,000 more detainees. After decades of rooting for contracts from ever-expanding ICE activities under administrations of both parties, GEO Group has made it to the public trough and is gorging. The company foresees a $1 billion increase in annual revenue this year.
Democrats bemoan the blunt force and “purposefully inflammatory” tactics of the Trump regime, preferring an equally devastating but more surgical approach to cow immigrant workers. No matter which party is in power, an anti-immigrant policy is pursued. Trump fed an angry working class the lie that immigrants were to blame for the crisis of American capitalism to stoke the culture war and divide native-born from immigrant workers. But the Democrats’ cynical public posturing is pure deception. Democratic presidents Obama and Biden each deported more people than Trump did in his first term.
Despite posing as the ‘resistance’ to MAGA, California Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed barring immigrants without legal status from receiving health care through Medi-Cal. Just before the raids, Newsom cut funding for a program providing legal counsel to immigrant children. State Democrats proudly point to toothless bills they claim block ICE from schools and hospitals. In a call with Donald Trump, Governor Gavin Newsom assured the president that he could quell the unrest with his own state’s bodies of armed men. After Trump federalized the National Guard, Newsom demanded the president withdraw it in a strongly worded letter. But he does not challenge the policy of these deportations in the slightest.
As millions of workers across the city, state, and country watch as parents are torn away from their children and anyone who objects is brutalized, it has become clear that neither party is there to serve them. The only defense against these raids will come from the workers themselves.
The labor movement, especially those unions that represent thousands of undocumented workers in LA, must prove in action and not just words that it defends workers’ rights. Already, the state has come down hard on labor with David Huerta, president of the California SEIU and SEIU-USWW, being beaten and detained by police during the protests. Huerta was hospitalized for his head injury before being transferred to the Metropolitan Detention Center, where he is still in custody.
SEIU has 700,000 members in 17 Locals across 58 California counties – 205,000 of them in the Los Angeles area alone. Now is the time to make “an injury to one is an injury to all” a reality! As reported by The New York Times:
“The SEIU planned to hold rallies in Los Angeles and more than a dozen other cities on Monday to demand Mr. Huerta’s release. ‘His arrest has ignited even the more conservative elements of the labor movement,’ [law professor at the University of California, Irvine] Ms. Dubal said. ‘If they can go after him, the head of the largest labor union in the largest economy in a labor friendly state, who is the government not going to go after?’”
A number of unions have released statements demanding the release of David Huerta, including the ILWU and the national AFL-CIO, which represents nearly 15 million workers. Solidarity in words should be turned into solidarity in deeds. The California AFL-CIO has the resources to mobilize its 2.3 million-strong membership and launch a mass movement against Trump’s attacks. Nationally, it could coordinate a coast-to-coast drive to unionize millions more native-born and immigrant workers. The only way such a movement can be organized effectively is if a leadership with class-war perspectives and methods gains the ear of the masses through its actions.
The RCA wholeheartedly supports the courageous show of solidarity in the streets and the effort by ordinary workers to stand up to ICE. However, as the experience of 2020 shows, mass spontaneity is insufficient to mount an effective fight against the armed bodies of the state. What is needed is mass working-class action and organization. These protests should be staging grounds for the coordination of mass assemblies, not only to resist the campaign of state terror, but to discuss how we can overthrow the system that produces it.
Neighborhood defense committees like those seen during the George Floyd uprising should convene across LA and anywhere else threatened by ICE attacks. Democratically elected councils should be formed and linked up to coordinate protests and strikes nationwide. Most of the munitions being used on protesters are produced in California. Delegates from these councils could reach out to munitions factory workers and call on them to lay down their tools and strike.
In Los Angeles – and everywhere else – the workers outnumber ICE and local police forces by a wide margin. This, in part, is why Trump has deployed the National Guard. He calculated that this show of force could score him political points among his hardened anti-immigrant base. By portraying parts of the country as “ungovernable,” he seeks to push the limits of executive power further. However, he is playing with fire. Pitting part-time troops against their own communities is a dangerous game.
In the summer of 2020, National Guard soldiers fraternized with protestors. In live footage broadcast from a BBC correspondent in LA, protesters could be heard appealing to the National Guard, asking: “Is this what you signed up for? I know it can’t be … Wouldn’t you rather be at home with your families? That’s why we’re out here, man. We just want to protect our people.”
A former US Army captain now turned communist, reviewed social media posts made by federalized California National Guard troops and offered the following insight:
“It is similar to conversations that we were having back in 2020 when they sent a brigade of paratroopers from my division to DC during the George Floyd protests. They ended up just sleeping in some massive warehouses and being ‘on call’, but we were having the same debates as to the legality of activating federal troops on US soil, how it would ruin the trust that the public had in the army, and how we didn’t sign up to deploy to quell protests… The conversations are much sharper than the ones we were having five years ago.”
Trump is flailing about as his poll numbers sink. He’s desperate to be seen as strong and decisive, especially against his political enemies. To distract from the serious problems facing American capitalism at home and abroad, he’s pouring fuel on the anti-immigrant fire in an effort to consolidate his base. At the same time, his ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is set to cut Medicaid and other essential services for a significant chunk of his supporters.
It is impossible to say whether the spark of Los Angeles will lead to a more generalized conflagration. But one thing is certain: the militant mood that has erupted in the face of these raids is a sign of things to come. What is missing is not the spontaneous self-sacrifice and heroism of the working class, which has already been clearly demonstrated, but a leadership that can tie all the threads of the crisis of capitalism together, provide an explanation, and point a revolutionary way forward to bring down ICE and the capitalist system which it serves.
Many workers will inevitably try and ‘storm the gates’ out of desperation. But to smash ICE, it’s necessary to build a colossal battering ram – a revolutionary communist party with roots in every city. Through nationally coordinated and strategic action, such a tool can obliterate all barriers preventing the workers from winning political and economic power. Having overthrown the greatest bulwark of reaction in the world, a Socialist Federation of the Americas and an end to all artificial borders would become a reality.
The Revolutionary Communists of America is building such a battering ram. We stand shoulder to shoulder with our class in the fight, not only against this racist and xenophobic administration, but against the rotten capitalist system it serves.
Build a party that can smash ICE and the capitalist system once and for all!
An injury to one is an injury to all!
No faith in the Democrats! Down with both parties of the ruling class!
Set up workers’ self-defense committees in every workplace and neighborhood targeted by ICE!
