Jesada Jitpraphakhan, Socialist Alternative (ISA in the United States)
Dozens of fully armed federal agents poured out of unmarked SUVs in Los Angeles’ Fashion District on the afternoon of Friday, June 6. They quickly entered Ambiance Apparel, a clothing wholesaler, and sealed off the street with yellow tape. A crowd of about a hundred formed outside as the agents, without warrants, whisked dozens of immigrant workers into white vans and drove away. Similar scenes played out at another Ambiance facility, two Home Depots, a donut shop, and day labor centers across Los Angeles. Sources report the number of detained workers ranging from 44 to 200.
This highly coordinated and militarized city-wide workplace raid is part of a new phase of the Trump administration’s crusade against immigrants. More is coming across the country, but well-organized, mass working-class resistance can stop it.
During one raid on Friday, David Huerta, the California president of SEIU-USWW—a 45,000-strong union with many immigrant members—was injured and arrested by federal agents. Huerta was released from the hospital but remains in custody. That evening, some 500 protesters gathered at a federal detention center building downtown. When a small number of demonstrators attempted to enter the building, they were met with tear gas and flash bang grenades, which quickly thinned out the crowd until a dispersal order and arrests were made later that night. The following day saw several hundred in the streets of Paramount, 15 miles south, where agents were reported to be preparing a raid on a Home Depot. This demonstration also culminated in a confrontation with law enforcement.
Saturday evening, intent on crushing the burgeoning movement, Trump ordered 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles, without the permission of the governor of California—the first time a president has done so since 1965. Trump is invoking Title 10 of the U.S. Code § 12406 which allows mobilization of the Guard where there is “insurrection, or danger of insurrection, against the authority of the United States.” Later that night, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X, confirming the Pentagon was ready to mobilize active-duty Marines to Los Angeles. Trump has made clear that he believes not enough was done to quell the 2020 Justice for George Floyd uprising in Minneapolis, saying, “The next time, I’m not waiting.”
Activating the National Guard to beat down on protesters is a massive escalation by Trump’s increasingly authoritarian regime—it urgently needs to be met with an equally powerful working-class response.
“Operation at large”
Trump campaigned on launching the largest mass deportation effort in history, publicly setting a goal of deporting all 11 million undocumented immigrants. Despite unprecedented draconian measures like attempting to disappear student protesters, revoking green cards and hundreds of student visas, and deporting legal residents to Salvadoran hell-prison CECOT, Trump is nowhere near his goal and even lags Biden’s last year. If this continues, it risks becoming an embarrassment for Trump and a missed opportunity to further consolidate his base.
Frustrated, far-right henchman and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller berated ICE agents last month for failing to keep up with targets and demanded a tripling of daily arrests, to 3,000. A key challenge for Trump is that the scale of his plan exceeds the capacity of the existing deportation machine. “Operation At Large,” an initiative kicking ICE into new gear, is an aggressive step towards overcoming this. The plan allocates 3,000 ICE agents, 2,000 FBI agents, 21,000 National Guard troops, 500 Customs and Border Protection employees, 250 IRS agents, and more towards arresting undocumented immigrants. This is a shift of thousands of personnel from other areas to immigration raids, Trump’s number one law enforcement priority. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” allots $185 billion for the war on immigrants, including detention facilities, ICE agents, and border enforcement.
Workplace raids have been a part of Trump’s first hundred days, but increasingly they will take center stage—both to achieve large numbers of arrests and to instill fear in the immigrant community. ICE is making arrests by any means necessary, using increasingly “creative” tactics and being encouraged to “push the envelope” by making “collateral arrests” without warrants. Fleeing from a workplace raid can be deemed probable cause for arrest. In recent weeks, ICE stake-outs at courtroom hearings and check-ins have become common, and exception is not made for children. Finally, it’s no coincidence that the new edition of Trump’s travel ban banning immigrants from 12 countries comes at the same time as this crackdown.
Why is Trump escalating now?
The world caused by Trump’s first months in office has been unstable to say the least, and his approval ratings have been similarly volatile. Massive uncertainty about the economy, potential for recession, and inflation have only been exacerbated by Trump’s economic policy, which has eroded some of his support. Trump’s net approval rating on jobs and the economy sits at -8%, and -16% on inflation. Meanwhile, net approval of Trump’s handling of immigration is +7%, showing the usefulness of divide-and-rule xenophobia for the administration.
At the same time, the Trump/Musk breakup has unfolded in spectacular fashion on social media, pointing to a damaging fracture in the MAGA coalition. What’s more, Trump’s promises to immediately end the war in Ukraine have flopped completely, with the increasing possibility that Trump pulls out of peace deal negotiations having accomplished nothing.
To rally the confidence of his base amidst these developments unfavorable to him, Trump undoubtedly sees it as crucial to forge ahead and make progress on one of his signature campaign promises: mass deportations. Consolidating his supporters around ramped-up deportations can draw attention away from bumps in the road, help insulate his approval rating from future economic disasters, and further the nationalist propaganda that helps to facilitate his capitalist divide and rule.
The crackdown also comes at a time when it’s become clearer that the anti-Trump struggle has not yet decisively asserted itself. April saw millions in the streets against Trump, but the height of the protests in the spring was not consolidated into lasting momentum and working-class organization, which has surely made Trump feel even more emboldened.
It’s clear that ramping up deportations will spur resistance—possibly mass resistance—from working-class people. While Trump’s immigration policies currently have the support of a majority of US adults in a few polls, it’s a narrow majority that has fluctuated in recent months (in April, 52% said they felt Trump was going too far with deportations). Trump knows this, so he’s reacting in a forceful and disproportionate way in an attempt to crush any protests before they get out of hand for the ruling class. One thing is for certain, Trump is not backing down. But he’s playing with fire.
Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom on Sunday sent Trump a letter “asking” him to withdraw National Guard troops from the state. To be clear, Newsom doesn’t want the troops removed because he’s concerned about protester safety—his own local and state police have been more than happy to shower the crowds with tear gas and flash bang grenades, even sending people to the hospital. The Democratic Party has been completely useless in fighting Trump so far, and they won’t be any different on Operation At Large. Obama deported more immigrants than any president in history, including Trump’s first term, and Democrats in general are embracing more and more xenophobia as part of the wider ruling class’ rightward shift in the new era.
What next?
In Los Angeles, several thousand have come out to protest in the streets in the aftermath of the raids. Socialist Alternative members in LA have been proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our neighbors and coworkers to fight back.
The protests this weekend were an important start, but more will be necessary to decisively push back these attacks. On Sunday, June 8, a crowd of thousands (children among them) descended upon the detention center—many times more than previous days. Still, law enforcement responded swiftly and aggressively, driving protesters north where many proceeded to block the 101 freeway. There is a limit to what can be achieved with spontaneous street protest tactics, especially when staring down thousands of heavily armed, trigger-happy troops and police officers. The movement needs to urgently take up class-struggle tactics which can go further.
A small layer of protesters have engaged in an especially confrontational approach with law enforcement, who then escalate with armed violence. Desperation to have an immediate impact is understandable, but without masses of people and an organized strategy and plan, these tactics can thin out the protest prematurely and undermine the further building of the movement. They also play into Trump’s hand: images of burning cars, for instance, allow him to denounce the protests as “insurrections.” On the other hand, a determined crowd can sometimes take on confrontational tactics while still inspiring the protest as a whole, as happened when a few hundred protesters blocked the freeway, and hundreds more cheered from above.
While building the street protests even bigger, we also need to bring that momentum into the places where Trump is seeking to do the most damage: workplaces. Unions are positioned to fight back against workplace raids the best, because they have the benefit of a pre-existing backbone of organization. But whether a workplace has a union or not, workers in every workplace need to urgently initiate deportation defense committees to discuss and create plans of action in the event of an ICE raid. In non-union workplaces, this can even serve as a jumping-off point for permanent worker organization. The importance of defending immigrant coworkers may not be obvious to everybody, but it’s essential to explain that any and every division weakens our unity against the bosses and increases the likelihood of future attacks on all workers.
Once formed, workplace deportation defense committees can link together across sites, companies, and industries to begin discussing strike action. In April, 50,000 city workers in David Huerta’s SEIU went on a one-day strike as part of a contract fight. SEIU should go out again, this time in all workplaces in LA county, to demand shutting down Operation At Large, ending deportations, freeing Huerta and all arrested protesters, and to kick out the Guard. SEIU nationally is calling actions across the country for Monday, June 9 demanding Huerta be released and an end to ICE raids. 50501 chapters in many cities are calling for emergency protests over the next 48 hours. 50501 has also called a national day of action on June 14, which if explicitly turned into anti-deportation protests with clear demands and a fighting strategy, has the potential to be a mass event of millions that could connect with the labor movement to escalate to strikes and walkouts.
In 2006, in response to a Republican bill which would have immediately classified undocumented immigrants in the U.S. as felons, immigrant workers organized a mass strike along with a boycott and protests in 150 cities across the country. On what became known as “Day Without An Immigrant,” millions of workers—both immigrant and native-born—took to the streets instead of going to work and successfully stopped the bill from passing. The strength of the movement and experience of collective struggle also pushed back on wider anti-immigrant sentiment in society. This is the kind of action we need today, and we need genuine movement leaders who will fight to organize it.
Socialist Alternative says:
- Shut down “Operation At Large” and stop all deportations! ICE off our streets and out of our work!
- Free all immigrants currently in custody! Free SEIU-USWW California President David Huerta and all arrested protesters!
- Kick out the National Guard from LA county! Defend the right to protest without repression everywhere. Slash federal military and border funding and redirect the hundreds of billions of dollars saved toward free universal healthcare, public education, and a massive expansion of high-quality affordable housing.
- The Democrats and the courts won’t save us—we need a new working-class party that fights Trump and offers a genuine left alternative.
- An injury to one is an injury to all! Reject Trump’s capitalist divide-and-rule strategy and fight for a socialist world based on solidarity and peace!
