Tens of thousands of people took the streets the first week in February to protest Trump’s racist attacks on immigrants. The protests were courageously initiated by the immigrant right’s groups and individuals who are being targeted by Trump. The next step is to plan out how to stop ICE raids and escalate the struggle.

While Obama still holds the record for the most deportations, Trump’s strategy relies on shock and awe. His administration is bragging about deporting a thousand people a day. Only a handful have ever been convicted of a crime.

Trump wants immigrant workers to be terrorized: either “voluntary deporting” themselves or being discouraged from coming in the first place. He is sending immigrants to the notorious prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba—the same place thousands of mostly innocent detainees were tortured in the name of the unwinnable “War on Terror.”

Trump is also attacking the few legal rights immigrants have. He wants to use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, the same law used to justify racist internment camps of Japanese-Americans during World War II, to speed up deportations by removing all legal protections for migrants.

Trump’s administration is ramping up nationalist sentiments in society geared towards the increased imperialist conflict with the China-Russia bloc. To maintain control, he needs a scapegoat; and he’s currently targeting immigrants and trans people. 

Trump can be defeated, but only on the basis of a united, determined, mass movement that is prepared to disrupt business as usual.

Civil Disobedience To Stop Deportation Raids

ICE is focusing on finding undocumented immigrants in workplaces and public spaces, but also schools and hospitals, many of which are unionized.

If ICE does show up, don’t help them do their job. Keep the doors locked until ICE produces a warrant for a specific person, and if they do, tell the agents it could take some time to find them. Immediately notify everyone in the building, the news, and the wider community—encourage them to show up to disrupt the raid. If ICE insists on disrupting a school day, the students should calmly walk out in groups using alternative exits away from danger.

Similar plans should be discussed in every workplace, school, and neighborhood. Unionized workers have the most protections and need to lead the way. Transit workers should refuse to stop at stops where ICE agents are conducting raids, and letter carriers should act as early warning by calling a hotline if they see ICE vans parked in a neighborhood.

Schools, hospitals, and workplaces can form the hubs around which wider community mobilizations can happen. Every neighbor should be signed up for text alerts in the event of confirmed ICE raids. Protestors should use non-violent civil disobedience to disrupt ICE raids like linking arms around ICE vans, blocking surrounding intersections, and picketing entrances and exits.

Mass Protests To Show Support For Immigrant Workers

Effective deportation defense needs to be linked to an offensive strategy to mobilize immigrant and U.S.-born workers into mass protests to show there isn’t public support for Trump’s expensive, divisive, deportations. Mass protests bring people out of isolation and into the streets, build solidarity among people from different backgrounds by uniting around a common cause, and most importantly build the confidence to fight back.

Mass protests take away Trump’s popular mandate to carry out deportations. Trump points to polls showing a surprising number of both Republicans and Democrats support mass deportations. What they actually show is the effect on consciousness from the leaderships of both corporate parties and the corporate media constantly blaming society’s ills on immigrants. The same polls showed that the overwhelming majority in swing states prefer a path to citizenship over mass deportations. Mass movements can reverse the growth of anti-immigrant ideas among working-class people, and put forward real answers to society’s problems. 

Hit Billionaires Where It Hurts

Trump is not the first politician to blame immigrants for capitalism’s crises. In 2006, George W. Bush tried to pass vicious anti-immigrant legislation. On May 1st, immigrant workers organized a general strike called “A Day Without An Immigrant,” shutting down businesses across the country. Millions took the streets, including non-immigrant workers. Under the threat of mass protests and strikes, and facing growing opposition among the formations who profit off immigrant labor, Bush backed down.

It was the retreat of the movement which allowed Obama to break new records of mass deportations.

A similar thing happened twice during Trump’s first term. In 2017, when he signed the infamous “Muslim Ban,” bodega owners and taxi drivers went on strike and occupied the airports. As the protests spread across the country, Trump backed down for a period. In 2019, Trump shut down the government over funding for a racist border wall. TSA agents, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers threatened to go on strike over unpaid wages and beat Trump back.

Class Politics To Cut Across Divide & Rule

The only people benefitting from Trump are billionaires and corporations. The same thing was true under Biden, Trump 1.0, Obama, and every other capitalist politician. People hate the obscene wealth of billionaires and corporations, expressed by popular support for Luigi Magnione’s assassination of a healthcare CEO. The only way billionaires, corporations and their two parties maintain control is by keeping working-class people divided.

The only way to unite the working class into a coherent force that can fight for its own interests is to link the fight against deportations (and every other form of oppression), to a wider program that actually improves life for working class people. Immigrants being afraid to go to the hospital or trans people being denied gender-affirming care won’t make healthcare cheaper for everyone else. An injury to one is an injury to all. The only way forward is a struggle for affordable healthcare as a human right for everyone, including immigrants.

Build A Socialist Alternative

Corporations rely on immigrant exploitation and outsourcing jobs to keep wages low and workers divided. Imperialist countries undermine the development of poorer countries and former colonies. War and climate change have displaced millions of people. These factors have driven global migration to record heights, and anti-immigrant politicians are making gains around the world.

Workers of all countries have more in common with each other than with their bosses. Regardless of what language they speak, they worry about being able to earn a decent wage, stay healthy, raise a family, afford good housing, live in a safe environment, and be able to retire comfortably. This is impossible to attain in a world where a few billionaires have as much money as entire nations. Real solidarity is only possible on the basis of a socialist society, where the global economy is mobilized for the betterment of workers everywhere and the planet. Join Socialist Alternative today!