Below is the text of a leaflet handed out by Socialist Alternative members at dozens of protests across the country on the June 14 “No Kings” national day of action.

The protests in Los Angeles have now continued on for a week in response to Trump’s brutal terror campaign against immigrants. Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and the Marines to intimidate and repress the overwhelmingly peaceful protest movement has only added fuel to the fire—with anti-ICE protests reported in 37 cities since June 6. On June 14, ordinary people will hit the streets in over 1,800 different “No Kings” protests across the country, while Trump spends over $100 million on a dictator-like military parade in DC.

Socialist Alternative members have been out in Los Angeles and every corner of the country protesting, mobilizing our supporters, and fighting for a militant, working-class strategy to shut down ICE, free all detained immigrants and arrested protesters, and kick the military off our streets.

For many, these are the first protests they’ve ever been to, moved to take to the streets in the face of an authoritarian crackdown and brutal ICE raids ripping families apart. For others, the rise of this explosive movement and vicious police repression is reminiscent of the protests they attended during the Justice for George Floyd Rebellion this time five years ago.

While young and working people bravely face down tear gas and rubber bullets to defend their neighbors and coworkers, California’s Democratic leaders, LA Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom, have seized the opportunity to pose themselves as champions of the anti-ICE movement. Of course, this is completely disingenuous. Bass had no problem signing a new budget bill last week before the outbreak of protests to bolster the LAPD with 240 new hires, who are now violently suppressing protesters for a cause she claims to support. Newsom just this week bragged in an interview with the New York Times that he has been successful in working with ICE without the assistance of Trump, which he’s done “over 10,500 times since [he’s] been governor.” This is nothing new for the Democratic Party; Barack Obama was known to many in the immigrant community as “Deporter in Chief” for deporting more immigrants than any president in US history.

We can’t rely on the Democrats or the courts to shut down ICE and stop Trump. We urgently need to build a mass working-class movement that builds the kind of worker power capable of pushing back Trump’s onslaught of attacks.

Trump’s Terror Agenda

Trump’s attacks on immigrants are a crucial part of the ruling class’s broader strategy to whip the working class in line in preparation for an era of inter-imperialist conflict, climate catastrophe, and ever-increasing capitalist crisis. What’s more, one of Trump’s most reliable issues with voters has been immigration, amidst widespread concerns about tariffs, inflation, his “Big Beautiful [read: Billionaire] Bill,” and his failure to broker peace in Ukraine. The ramping up of ICE raids is a central part of Trump’s strategy to consolidate his power and rally his base. Now, the newly launched and highly militarized “Operation At Large” is attempting to reach 3,000 arrests per day. Over 300 undocumented immigrants in LA have been detained since the raiding of the Fashion District last week, devastating the multicultural city.

The raids are not just confined to LA. In Omaha, Nebraska, a city where immigrants make up a quarter of the population, chaos erupted when ICE raided a meat packing plant and arrested 70 immigrant workers. ICE’s website also boasts about raids in recent days in Connecticut, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas, amidst deeply disturbing announcements of detainee deaths.

Trump is looking for a fight. ICE raids will continue and the violent repression of protesters will only get worse. Trump seems to be itching to activate the Insurrection Act so that the military can make arrests of protesters, instead of being restricted to protecting federal buildings and officers. Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott eagerly deployed over 5,000 National Guard troops to Texas in anticipation of more protests in Austin. It is urgent that the movement continues to widen and escalate in order to defend against repression and force Trump to back down. There are already reports of low morale among Guardsmen and Marines deployed in LA and this can develop even further. 

On June 12, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and two immigrants’ rights nonprofits in LA received a letter from Senator Josh Hawley on behalf of the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism. The letter accused the organizations of “aiding and abetting criminal conduct,” and ordered them to cease and desist all protest activities and submit all internal communications, financial documents, and donor lists. This outright authoritarian act is an extremely dangerous attack on the entire left and must be fought with the full force of the movement. This initial letter surely only scratches the surface of how far Trump and the far right are willing to go to threaten and intimidate anyone associated with the left—a new “Red Scare” for the 21st century.

Trump’s agenda and his power depend deeply upon divide-and-rule tactics, in other words, pitting sections of the working class against each other to prevent us from uniting against our common enemy: capitalist exploitation and oppression. Our movement must oppose this every step of the way—the only way we’ll be able to defend against Trump’s attacks and go on the offensive against the billionaires to win more is by building a united movement across all sections of the working class. Mass deportations coupled with increased nationalist rhetoric are part of the ruling class’ strategy to crack down on the entire working class to the benefit of the bosses.

What Will it Take?

The protests show that many working class people are absolutely horrified by these attacks on immigrant coworkers and neighbors and looking for any way to oppose it. The main question posed right now is: what will it take to actually stop Trump’s deportation machine? 

Scoring victories against Trump will take sustained mass working-class action, which looks like mass protests but also things like sit-ins and strikes. Beyond the immediate demands of shutting down ICE raids, dropping all charges against SEIU-USWW president David Huerta, the right to protest without military or police repression, we must demand the slashing of 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. We need to show those who have fallen victim to Trump’s divide-and-rule rhetoric that it is not immigrants who cause poverty and hardship for working families, it’s capitalism. Building off of the protests, we need to build mass meetings of union and non-union workers and community members to plan out strategy and next steps.

In addition to mass, nationally coordinated protests, we need coordinated nonviolent civil disobedience. The sit-ins and occupations during the Civil Rights and women’s movements of the 1960s and 70s were powerful and successful tactics. Also, workers everywhere should refuse to cooperate with ICE: hospitality unions can refuse to serve ICE agents and National Guard troops, public transit workers can refuse to transport ICE agents and detained protesters like Socialist Alternative member bus drivers did in Minneapolis during BLM. We also need coordinated strikes and walkouts, with unions that have immigrant members taking the lead. 

In 2019, the Trump administration shut down the government for border wall funding. When Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants Union called for a general strike, the threat alone forced the Trump administration to back down. But with Trump 2.0, threats alone won’t be enough. We need a national one-day strike in solidarity with LA protests and against deportations, and the leadership of the labor movement needs to urgently build for it. That’s why 17 union members across 12 cities and 13 national unions have launched a petition calling on union leaders to step up in the fight against Trump’s deportation machine.

Tactics like this, of course, will not drop out of thin air—they require planning. Mass democratic assemblies held by unions, communities, and left groups are crucial for democratically developing next steps for building the movement. For example, the movement needs space to discuss and vote on demands that give the broadest possible layer of workers something concrete to fight for.

Additionally, workers in union and non-union workplaces should discuss plans for what to do if ICE shows up, which can be a step toward forming deportation defense committees to stop ICE raids from taking a single one of our coworkers.

Defeating Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda is a massive task—one that Trump will pull out all stops to crush. But defeating him is possible. History has proven that working-class movements have the power to topple authoritarians like Trump. We must defeat Trump and the entire capitalist system that spawned him, and which perpetuates oppression and exploitation every single day. That’s where we set our sights. If you agree, join Socialist Alternative today.

Socialist Alternative Says:

• End the raids! Free all detained immigrants and all arrested protesters and drop all charges. Immediate, unconditional legalization and equal rights for all undocumented immigrants, regardless of their job status.
• ICE, National Guard, and Marines off our streets! The right to protest without repression!
• We need mass, democratic assemblies organized by unions and community organizations to plan out next steps for the movement.
• Deportation defense committees in every workplace and mass worker non-cooperation with ICE operations!
• Escalate the protests to a one-day national strike—shut down ICE, shut down Trump!
• No trust in the Democratic Party: we need a new party of, by, and for the entire working class.
• Build a movement against the destructive policies of capitalism and imperialism around the world that drive working class people to flee their home countries. We need an international struggle for socialism to fight for a world that works for us, not the ruling elite.