Republicans and Democrats Declare War on Immigrants

Mobilize Working Class Power to
Stop Deportations

A war is about to be unleashed on the working people of the United States by the government of the United States. Fueled by a hysteria whipped up against “illegal” immigrants, depicted as “the enemy within,” in reality it is an attack on the working class and the democratic rights of all. To carry out his threatened mass deportations, the incoming president, Republican Donald Trump, is planning to declare a national emergency. Constitutional rights, including to due process, will be “suspended” (that is, eliminated) for a huge sector of the population. This assault must be fought tooth and nail, in particular by unleashing the enormous power of the working class, of which immigrants are a key component, that can bring the deportation machine to a screeching halt. And that requires taking on both of the partner parties of U.S. imperialism, Democrat as well as Republican.

In his October 27 Madison Square Garden rally in New York City, the xenophobic president-to-be Trump vowed to carry out “the largest deportation program in history.” He called undocumented immigrants “vicious and bloodthirsty criminals,” a description that would more accurately apply to the U.S. government itself, including outgoing president “Genocide Joe” Biden. The fascistic soon-to-be vice president JD Vance declared, “Our message to illegal aliens [sic] is, pack your bags, because in four months you’re going home.” These vicious threats have caused panic among the more than 10 million residents of the United States who have toiled for years in some of the hardest and lowest-paid jobs, without whose labor whole sections of the U.S economy would collapse.

Trump has said he plans to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 which would make undocumented immigrants “liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured.” They could be detained and deported without trial, or any legal redress whatsoever. Some liberals think that it can’t be done without getting ties up in the courts. Nonsense. The U.S. used this law to intern Italian and German immigrants during both world wars, including Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. And then there were the 120,000 Japanese and U.S. citizens of Japanese heritage who were locked up in concentration camps during WWII by liberal Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Trump has threatened to get rid of birth­right citizenship, established by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, won through the Civil War that ended slavery. He has threatened to get rid of Temporary Protected Status under which many Haitians have legal residence in the U.S. That these are not idle threats is shown by his appointment of Stephen Miller, another fascistic ideologue, as White House deputy chief of staff, who declared that the incoming president would “seal the border shut” with a series of executive orders on Day One of his presidency. Tom Homan, who grooves on channeling his inner J. Edgar Hoover, is slated to be Trump’s “border czar.” (Homan received an award from Democratic president Barack Obama, for his zealousness in deporting record numbers of immigrants, earning Obama the title of “deporter-in-chief.”)

Democrats are posing as defenders of immigrants even as they are finding excuses to go along with Trump’s mass deportation plans. California governor Gavin Newsom tearfully vowed that he would have immigrants’ backs, only to promise, later in the same interview, to deport “violent criminals.” This could include (as it has in the past) anyone listed in the Los Angeles Police Department’s notorious “gang members” roster, including anyone with tattoos or who looked cross-eyed at an LAPD officer. Trump has threatened to withhold federal funds for cities that uphold (very limited) “sanctuary” protections as supposedly being bastions of “migrant crime.” Already, New York City’s Democratic mayor Eric Adams (who has long called for getting rid of NYC’s “sanctuary” laws) is discussing how to cooperate with the deportation cops.

The same liberals who think that Trump will be tied up in the courts say that the U.S. doesn’t have enough detention space to hold the immigrants rounded up for deportation. Yet the incoming president is already making arrangements to rent local and state jail facilities, as was done also under Obama. Even now, 90% of detained immigrants are held in private prisons, a percentage that increased in the Biden administration. And the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) agencies, already has the largest police force of any entity in the U.S. Trump intends to use them as his own private Gestapo.

Meanwhile, spokesmen for the Trump “transition team” have let it be known that a DHS memo limiting I.C.E. detentions at “sensitive locations,” including schools, churches, hospitals and other sites, will be withdrawn as one of the first acts of the new administration (NBC News, 11 December).

The effect on the U.S. economy will be enormous if deportations are carried out on anything even remotely like the threatened scale. Virtually every meatpacking plant in the country depends on an immigrant workforce, many of them undocumented. Likewise for residential construction, dairy production in the Northeast, taxi drivers in many cities, port truckers on both coasts, not to mention agricultural labor. To those who support Trump’s mass deportation program we say: forget your steaks and fresh fruits and vegetables, no more taxis for you, also no new houses, and a lot of those toys imported from abroad may be history as well. But beyond that, in big cities and small towns throughout the country immigrants are neighbors and friends, school mates and fellow workers, mainstays of local communities. The war that Donald Trump has declared, and with which Democrats are cooperating, will have a traumatic impact on the whole of society.

The burning issue today is what to do about this. While the Democrats have gone into a deep depression, many people (including some who voted for Trump) want to resist the mass deportations. The Internationalist Group and fraternally allied organizations have put forward calls to form committees to defend immigrants in schools and workplaces in different parts of the country.

In the Pacific Northwest, Class Struggle Workers – Portland has taken the initiative to put forward a “Resolution to Defend Immigrants Against Mass Deportations and Racist Violence” that has been passed by a number of area unions, including IUPAT (Painters) Local 10, Ironworkers Local 29, IATSE Local 28, AFT Local 111 and Carpenters Local 503 to “repudiate the vile attacks on immigrants” and “call for the rest of labor to mobilize in defense of our fellow workers,” or similar language. In 2016, Portland-area unions, including several construction unions, passed motions to defend immigrants, African Americans and others from racist attacks, and in June 2017 “Portland Labor Against Fascists” mobilized some 300 union members and supporters against a pro-Trump fascist provocation.

In NYC, the Internationalist Club at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York, revived a Committee to Defend Immigrants and Muslims that had been formed in 2017. A first meeting of the new Committee to Defend Immigrants in November drew over 70 participants, and has set up working groups, as well as assembling packets of materials including “know your rights” information and more.

In New York City public schools, supporters of Class Struggle Education Workers (CSEW) in the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) proposed the formation of union-led Committees to Defend Immigrants, which are now functioning in several schools. They are contacting parents groups and preparing to oppose any attempt by I.C.E. or other federal authorities to deport students and their families, and to come to the aid of those targeted by this racist war on immigrants. A motion has been prepared calling on the UFT to sponsor such committees through the NYC school system.

Then on December 16, a preliminary NYC-area Labor Conference to Defend Immigrants was held, bringing together activists and organizers from a range of unions and organizations, including AFSCME Dis­trict Council 37, Teamsters, Transport Workers Union, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Laundry Workers Center, UFT, CSEW, Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas (Class Struggle International Workers), SEIU Local 32BJ, UAW/ALAA, Professional Staff Congress-CUNY and others. Reports about the current situation and ongoing labor-oriented work to defend immigrant rights were followed by a productive discussion including reports with particular interest in  the formation of committees to defend immigrants in some NYC schools. The December 16 gathering unanimously called on its participants to build such committees in their own unions and workplaces, and a second “Labor Conference to Defend Immigrants” was scheduled for January 9.

The committees and labor conference have underlined the need to mobilize the population in mass to counter the mass deportations. Labor has the power to lead such a mobilization, and the class interest to go all-out to defend co-workers, their families and neighbors. Activists have pointed to the lessons of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, when pro-slavery forces were able to get Congress to authorize the capture of escaped slaves in the non-slave states of the North and Northwest. Furious protests filled the streets, and abolitionists in Syracuse, New York spirited a jailed former slave to freedom.

The biggest response was in Boston, in 1854, when a fugitive, 19-year-old Anthony Burns, was captured by a slave catcher. Masses of people came out to rescue Burns. “Over the following days, as a federal marshal was deciding Burns’ fate, federal troops – as well as local and state units mobilized under the 1850 legislation – transformed Boston into an occupied city. Outside the Boston courthouse, artillerymen mounted cannon and ran through the motions of firing on civilians” (“What the Fugitive Slave Act Can Teach Us About Sanctuary Cities,” Time magazine, 7 February 2017).

What is urgently needed today is an independent class mobilization against the mass deportations, to uphold the call for full citizenship rights for all, and to ensure that all those who have made it to the U.S. can stay here. Those fleeing persecution, war and the devastation caused by U.S. imperialism are be welcomed as working people must rise up to stop those who would expel them. ■