The aggressiveness of Trump’s anti-immigration policy

Since the beginning of his presidential campaign in 2015, Donald Trump has placed the repressive attack on the migrant population at the center of his political discourse, which he blames on crime, drug trafficking, unemployment and the social decay of the USA. Under the slogan “zero tolerance” and with the construction of a wall on the border with Mexico, his first administration (2017-2021) implemented one of the most inhumane migration policies in the modern history of the United States. Mass deportations, the separation of over 5,000 children from their families, the criminalization of border crossings and the expansion of ICE’s (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “la Migra”) detention and deportation powers set the tone of his first term.

However, these measures led to a significant social response. Since 2017, large demonstrations have spread in cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Washington D.C., under slogans such as “Keep Families Together” and “No human being is illegal”. The mobilization led to the emergence of “protection networks” (santuarios), in which local governments, civil society organizations, neighborhood networks, churches or universities organize protection for migrants persecuted by ICE. And as a result of this resistance, which was able to block some presidential executive orders and, in some cases, policing, the paradox was that “only” 1.1 million deportations were achieved during Trump’s first term. It should be recalled that his predecessor, Democrat Obama (2009-2017), carried out 3 million deportations.

Obama, like Biden, has shamelessly broken his campaign promise to legalize en masse 11-12 million undocumented migrants who are an indispensable element of the North American production system. An example of this significance is illustrated by a national survey of farmworkers by the Department of Labor, which estimates that between 2020 and 2022, 42% of the 1.1 million workers employed in agriculture did not have work permits. Other research shows that the average proportion of undocumented workers is 25% in construction and between 10-17% in service sectors such as hospitality, cleaning, maintenance and horticulture.

Since the first night of his second inauguration on January 20, 2025, Trump has developed a much more aggressive anti-immigration policy than in his first term:

• He has declared a “state of emergency on the southern border” and described the migration pressure as an “invasion”, allowing him to accelerate the construction of the wall and military deployment in border areas. At the same time, he has ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans for the deployment of troops and the National Guard for logistics, support and possible arrest missions.
• He has ordered the “largest deportation operation in U.S. history” and announced the use of the Alien Enemies Act and the possible use of the Insurrection Act to support nationwide raids with immediate deportation. To further reinforce the climate of fear that these raids create, on January 22 he rescinded 2011 guidelines that prohibited immigration arrests in sensitive areas such as courthouses, schools, churches and hospitals, or during funerals and weddings.
• He has frozen asylum applications and declared any undocumented migrant who does not register as such, as well as anyone who has helped them to stay in the US, to be criminals.
• He has signed an executive order that seeks to end the constitutional right to citizenship by birth for children of undocumented immigrants. This executive order is currently being blocked in court.
• He has given ICE the authority to directly deport people without any judicial oversight and called for daily deportation quotas (3,000!). The top deportation official, Tom Homan, the “Border Czar”, put the number of deportations since Trump’s inauguration at nearly 200,000 in early June, including many workers and young activists from unions and political organizations, or those who have simply shown active solidarity with the Palestinian people, who have received special attention from “Migra” (immigration authorities).
• He has revoked protections for immigrants who came to the United States legally under Biden administration programs, about 600,000 people from Haiti and Venezuela. According to the American Immigration Council , this is “the largest illegalization of immigrants in U.S. history “.

The detainees are temporarily “deposited” in one of the 130 migrant detention centers, true prisons, most of which are run by for-profit companies. The degree of overcrowding was aptly described to a CNN journalist by a detained Salvadoran: “In a place for 40 people, there are more than 100, and there are no beds. We sleep on the floor. Sick fellows are here, and they don’t bring any medicine.” After a few days, they are either deported to the CECOT in El Salvador, the largest prison on the continent, or to countries that often have no connection to the person’s country of origin, even to countries at war. For example, there is currently a case in court concerning Cuban and Vietnamese migrants who were originally sent to South Sudan and are now stranded on a military base in Djibouti.

Migrant workers organize themselves and protests break out

The brutality of the current ICE raids and the threat of immediate deportation is a qualitative leap in the already extremely harsh living conditions of this important part of the US working class, which already suffered daily – under all previous presidencies – from the greatest job insecurity, the lowest wages, lack of rights, violence and institutional racism. These are calculated acts of social terror that are part of an overall political program of division and attack on the working class. This program includes reducing Medicaid eligibility and services offered, cutting subsidies to feed needy families (which affects 42 million people!), attacking the pensions of federal employees or abolishing the Department of Education. At the same time, spending is being multiplied to strengthen police apparatuses and powers at all levels, military budgets are skyrocketing for the development of their imperialist wars and historic tax cuts are being planned for the country’s richest ones.

The current mass protests against Trump’s immigration policies first erupted in Los Angeles, California, one of the states with the greatest economic dependence on migrant labor (along with Texas, Florida, New Jersey and New York). Certainly, the fact that the governor of California belongs to the Democratic Party was a great incentive for the Trump administration to increase the number and aggressiveness of ICE actions and to prepare the unusual deployment of National Guard soldiers (a state military unit) and even Marines to further terrorize the protesters, further humiliate the Democratic administration and send a clear warning that their goal is to crush any resistance, any response, any objection to their ultra-reactionary plans.

But wanting is not necessarily being able. The class struggle exists. Since June 4, the massive reaction to the raids, which spread throughout the country in just a few days, has shown great solidarity among workers, with or without papers, migrants or not, as well as students and young people. Thousands of people demonstrating in the streets, confronting the police, demanding the release of those arrested in front of police stations, are using a large network of social organizations, some of them with long experience in resisting ICE and police brutality. Often, they even draw in parts of the workers’ unions, especially in California, where migrant workers influence grassroots organizations and at lower levels their leadership. In southern California, a Community Self-Defense Coalition has formed, uniting 60 organizations, including apparently the “Unión del Barrio” and the “Orange County Rapid Response Network”. These networks had already been able to prevent two ICE-FBI operations in the working-class neighborhoods of Alhambra and the San Fernando Valley on February 23.

With these precedents, on June 7 the demonstrators succeeded in confronting the repressive forces armed to the teeth and driving ICE out of Paramount and Compton. A tremendous victory that led to new and more widespread protests and clashes with police across the country the following week, particularly in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Austin, Texas.

Since June 8, Los Angeles has become a militarized city on Trump’s direct orders and against the wishes of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who denounces “federal interference” because he allegedly has enough police forces to crush the protest. 4,000 National Guard soldiers and 700 Marines are deployed to support the state repressive forces. The entire center is declared an “unlawful assembly” by police authorities, with a warning that gatherings of three or more people are considered a crime and grounds for immediate arrest.

Nevertheless, further demonstrations followed on Sunday the 8th and the following days, during which the demand for the release of those arrested, including David Huerta, the president of SEIU California (International Union of Service Employees), one of the most powerful unions in the state, was included in the list of demands. On June 11, Democratic Mayor Bass also imposed a nighttime curfew, which is still in effect today, June 17, although it has been limited to downtown Los Angeles since the 16^th.

Trump multiplied his inflammatory statements against immigrants throughout the week, calling for an increase in raids and deportations in all major cities governed by the Democratic Party, warning that the federal deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles was “just the first of many” and threatening again to use the Insurrection Act. At the same time, on Friday, June 13, under pressure from agribusiness and restaurant owners, he ordered “all investigations/enforcement operations at agricultural workplaces (including aquaculture and meatpacking plants), restaurants and hotels to be suspended”, only to reactivate them exactly four days later. The already classic Trump line that we also see on tariffs: relentless in his attacks on working people, but unable to maintain the slightest coherence when confronted with conflicting interests within his own capitalist class.

The problem of the subordination of workers’ organizations to the imperialist bourgeoisie by the Democratic Party

On June 14, Trump celebrated his birthday and also the 250th anniversary of the US Army with a unique military parade, which, however, did not turn into the mass spectacle he had dreamed of. Over 2,000 demonstrations against the president were planned for this day in all states under the slogan “No Kings”. The turnout was extraordinarily massive, especially in New York and Los Angeles. There could have been over a million people on the streets. However, protests against deportations across the country had been quieter the week before, in the illusion of centralizing on Saturday for the “No Kings Day.” But the was a fraud. The same fraud that has traditionally prevented the North American working class from having a political existence independent of its class enemy.

The organizers of “No Kings Day”, the same as the big “hands off” demonstrations of April 5, 2025, are a cross-class coalition of over 100 groups, including powerful unions like the American Federation of Teachers, but under the political leadership of Indivisible Action or the 50501 Movement, broad-based organizations directly linked to the Democratic Party – the party responsible for millions of past deportations and the repression of the current protests. It is also a collaborator in the genocide of the Palestinian people and a global imperialist actor that is indistinguishable from the Republican Party. Therefore, the slogan “No King” referred exclusively to the “authoritarian slant” of Trump, “in defense of American democracy”. In the expectation that the Democratic Party will rule again, of course. Therefore, only spontaneous, albeit sometimes very numerous groups, carried banners and slogans against ICE, against the migration policy and the deportations, including the release of Mahmoud Khalil, the young pro-Palestinian activist threatened with deportation,. at the demonstrations

This subordination to the Democratic Party, whose candidates they even finance, is part of the policy enshrined in the leaderships of the two major US trade union confederations (AFL-CIO and SOC). Tying the rope around the neck of the working class are the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the organization of nearly 100,000 militants that is integrated into the Democratic Party and led by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Speaking on behalf of workers and the oppressed, the DSA and its ally Senator Bernie Sanders consistently focus struggles and attention on the parliamentary framework and respect for civil order.

Everything was going well [sic!] until Trump decided to unleash unprovoked violent raids on elementary schools, shopping malls and peaceful public spaces. (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, June 11)

The “leftist” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez openly says: the protests against ICE, against the deportations, against the police violence, against the arrests, it’s all a “mess” and that’s Trump’s problem. No doubt “all went well” for the congresswoman during Biden’s tenure, though not for the migrant labor population…

The struggle against the growing barbarity of migration policies, against all attacks on the already precarious living conditions of the entire working class, against the racist, clerical, macho, homophobic, militarist political reaction that Trump’s administration is unleashing, can only be waged by breaking all political ties with the two major parties of the bourgeoisie, the Republicans and the Democrats. For the immense mobilizations that will undoubtedly develop not for diversions but to bear fruit and produce victories, an effective unity of the oppressed with the entire working class (with or without residence permits) must be created in a united front of struggle that takes up the demands of all and especially those of its most vulnerable fraction.

Against the migration policy of Trump and all previous presidents:

• For the release of all detainees and the return of all deportees.
• For the legalization of all migrant workers, with all civil rights.
• For the disbandment and disarmament of ICE. For the immediate closure of all migrant detention centers, including the Guantánamo base (and its return to Cuba).
• Against the militarization of the domestic population and the borders, down with the wall on the border with Mexico!

For the self-organization and self-defense of the workers and all oppressed, independent of all bourgeois organizations:

• Strengthening, expanding and centralizing migrants’ self-defence organizations.
• Creation and centralization of solidarity and self-defense committees against deportations and police terrorism, calling for strikes in every institution, company, sector of activity that is the target of racist division and police brutality.
• Fight against the subjugation of the trade union bureaucracy and the migrant or Black organizations to the two bourgeois parties, both the one that sends the National Guard and the Marines and the one that sends the police to violently repress the protests .
• For the building of an independent mass workers’ party that fights to unite the entire class and all the oppressed with it. A party that fights to overthrow the North American bourgeoisie with its anti-working class and reactionary domestic and imperialist foreign policies. A party that unites with the entire working class worldwide in the struggle for socialism through a Revolutionary Workers’ International.