“On Day 1, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out. I will rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered, and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail, then kick them the hell out of our country as fast as possible.” – Candidate Trump concluding the speech he gave at Madison Square Garden on October 27, 2024
Since day one, President Donald Trump proudly and gleefully displayed his signature on proclamations designed to fulfil the anti-immigrant promises made during his campaign. It is clear that his approach, drawn up by far right think tanks, the most infamous being Project 2025, has been designed to overwhelm people. Americans are living in a time of huge upheaval, in a country cleaved in two: those who are appalled and angered by Trump’s incessant attacks on quasi every aspect of life, and those who are cheering him on.
Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda is also coalescing with his anti-Palestine agenda. Trump has used the very real threat of detention and deportation, accusing the students of antisemitism because of their opposition to Zionism. Although the courts have argued that these arrests were not given due process, especially in the case of Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who is still held in a Louisiana detention center despite orders from two federal judges to bring his case back to New Jersey.
Sowing fear
ICE boasts that it has arrested over 32,000 immigrants, although independently confirmed numbers are hard to come by. Trump’s promise to deport all 11 million plays more of an ideological than practical role — he is not deporting any faster than Biden before him. The deportations are to send a clear message that no one is safe and anyone can be arrested and sent back at a moment’s notice.
One such deportation has made headlines recently as a couple from Colombia living in California for the past 35 years were detained during a regular check-in with immigration. Handcuffed and shackled, they were swiftly flown to Colombia to the horrified shock of their three grown daughters. Another high profile arrest was that of the Denver area activist Jeanette Vizguerra who sought sanctuary in a church to avoid deportation during Trump’s first term.
Family separation is built into such deportations, especially if the children are born here and therefore US citizens. Tom Homan, the ex-acting director of ICE is now “border czar” and is pursuing the same policy of family separation. Homan now argues that families don’t have to be separated, because they “could be deported together.” The cruelty is unfathomable.
Trump’s strategy of fear seems to be working: crossings at the southern border have dropped drastically, although European and Canadian tourists are now being ensnared by the Border Patrol agents and ICE too. The treatment they are subjected to is giving pause to many would-be tourists who are now seeking friendlier spots, but it gives a small insight into how refugees are treated at the border.
Bipartisan agenda
Life has never been secure for the 11 million people who live here without documents. But now the constant fear of being snatched in the street without leaving a trace has become real. People are afraid to go to work, afraid to send their children to school, afraid to visit health clinics, and having to make provisions for their children if they’re suddenly taken away.
The outrageous lies Trump told about immigrants during the campaign were not challenged by his opponent Kamala Harris. In fact, she asserted that she would be better than him at keeping immigrants out, pointing to her successful role as prosecutor in California. When Trump blatantly lied about Haitians eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio, or Venezuelan gangs terrorizing the people of Aurora, Colorado, during the only televised debate with Harris, she responded with a sneering laugh. Trump doubled down on his false claims during his joint address to Congress when he continued to single out Aurora and Springfield as being “destroyed” by immigration, which he called an “occupation.”
Had Harris presented an alternative to that heinous vision, Trump’s rhetoric might have lost some of its venomous bite. Today, Aurora’s immigrant neighborhoods are being raided by ICE and fear prevails in the town. The big raid on February 7 that boasted the arrests of 100 gang members in the end had caught only one. It is a safe bet that these deportees were on the plane loads headed to El Salvador, which totally ignored the federal judge Boasberg’s order to return the planes to the US to have due process in court.
Unfortunately, the Democrats cannot respond to these dangerous attacks because their position on immigration is not vastly different from Trump’s, as much as they may pretend to give it a humane veneer. Their record speaks for itself. Obama was dubbed the “deporter in chief” for good reason as his administration removed more than three million noncitizens, a million more than under G.W. Bush. Ironically, during Trump’s first term, the number of deportations fell by about a million, but rose again under Biden. What is different is that Trump is happy to publicize his arrests to please his base. After years of a bipartisan anti-immigrant agenda, a slight majority of Americans now tell polls there should be less immigration.
Offshore prisons
Trump had promised to build additional facilities at Guantanamo Bay to send some 30,000 detainees there. After the first few flights totaling some 290 migrants, Trump reversed course and the migrants were sent back to be detained in the US or deported to their home countries, all that at a cost of $16 million. While the official reason given for holding these detainees was that they were “deemed to be dangerous,” most of those whose identity is known do not have criminal records. The Venezuelans held there were accused, with no evidence, to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
Trump has started making arrangements with third party countries to take the deportees. Some countries such as Colombia and Venezuela were strong-armed into doing so, while others such as El Salvador and its notorious president Nayib Bukele — who likes to refer to himself as the world’s “coolest dictator” — welcomed the chance to prove their fealty. Bukele runs one of the most horrific prison systems in the world, with many of the 85,000 Salvadoreans apprehended disappearing without trial.
He was in the news recently when he tweeted a response to the judge who had ordered the three planes of Venezuelan deportees to turn back to the US to be given due process. His “Oopsie… Too late” with a laughing emoji was absolutely unfunny. The Venezuelans caught in this dragnet were accused of being Tren de Aragua members solely based on the claim that they had tattoos (which applies to half the population of this country.) In at least one case, a deportee to El Salvador was picked up solely for his Real Madrid soccer team tattoo.
At the border, asylum seekers are being detained indefinitely, even though the Refugee Act of 1980 states that people fleeing persecution on “account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” can apply for asylum when they reach the US. This status grants them protection from deportation and an eventual pathway to citizenship. It is not only Trump who violates the refugee act. In the last seven months of the Biden administration, immigration officials detained thousands of asylum-seekers.The Trump administration is shutting the door on new refugees, but with one exception. The “Mission South Africa” program has just been set up to help white Afrikaners come to the United States as refugees. This is the Trump administration loudly trumpeting its open racism.
Dividing the working class
Trump needs to show his base that he’s working hard to fulfill his anti-immigrant pledge to them, especially as tariffs, public sector cuts, and other policies start to be felt by ordinary people. Secondly, instilling fear in undocumented workers render them less likely to protest low pay, working conditions and other abuses, and that’s certainly a boon for the bosses.
Sowing racist divisions makes it easier for a conman and charlatan like Trump to use immigrants as a scapegoat while he attacks every aspect of life, with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency slashing the programs that provide much needed help for the millions of people living on the edge. This is done in order to pay for the renewal of the 2017 tax cuts that would add another $4 billion directly into the pockets of the richest few. When people start to feel the impacts of these cuts, the stories about immigrants taking jobs and swindling benefits will have a willing audience.
Anti-immigrant rhetoric serves to drive a wedge between local born and non-local born workers. This “divide and rule” tactic is as old as the ages, pitting those who have everything in common against each other instead of directing their ire at those who exploit them. Politicians can turn immigrants into the problem, but strong movements can turn the tide of racism.
A Gallup poll shows how quickly public opinion can be turned around: In the four years since Biden was elected, the percentage of those who wanted to see a decrease in immigration practically doubled from 28% to 55%, mirrored by almost halving of those who wanted an increase in immigration, dropping from 34% to 16%. In a similar vein, a Pew survey found that when asked about the impact of immigration on crime, 85% of Republicans believe immigrants bring about increased levels of crime (along with 31% of Democrats). This is in spite of all the research proving that immigrants actually make their neighborhoods safer.
However, having outlined the reasons why the right and far right, trailed by the Democrats and liberals, have used immigration as a cudgel, it’s important to point out that pursuing this kind of policy doesn’t make any sense from a purely economic point of view.
Immigrants and the economy
Immigrants provide a huge pool of cheap labor, working in industries such as construction, home health care, farming, restaurants, and more. Removing them in large numbers would literally collapse the economy. There are already signs of labor shortages, such as on the streets of Freehold, New Jersey, on the farms of California’s Central Valley, in nursing homes in Arizona, in Georgia poultry plants and in Chicago restaurants. Florida has just gotten House committee approval for removing restrictions on child labor to fill the void left by immigrants.
Immigrants are also an economic engine that hold a lot of power. Their participation in the workforce have contributed millions in new taxes as well as in new businesses on Main Streets that can spur neighborhood growth. They have also helped to reverse the population decline, which is also a problem for the rich countries of the world which have an ageing population and a low birth rate. This is to say nothing of the economic power immigrants hold as workers, with the capacity to shut the economy down.
To understand why the ruling class pursues such a policy, which seems economically counterproductive on its face, Esme Choonara argues in the International Socialism Journal: Speaking of the Conservative Party in Britain, she says:
“The Tories [Conservative Party in Britain], however, are committed to a more restrictive immigration policy because they are driven not just by questions of profitability but by politics. So racist ideology and structures operate with some degree of independence from the economic base, but they are nevertheless also constrained by it. This explains how the specific institutional forms and focus of racism can change as capitalism evolves.”
Although protests have been slower to build here in the US, we have already seen some impressive marches. Certain actions point the way to future organizing. A shining example is that of the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) which has just negotiated a new contract with the city. Marrying the strength of the union with their fight against the attacks on immigrants, they have been very successful keeping ICE at bay. When two ICE agents showed up at one heavily immigrant school, protocols were already in place to prevent them from entering the school, giving teeth to Chicago’s sanctuary city designation.
Los Angeles also saw an impressive demonstration which took over the freeways and snarled traffic for hours, with further daily protests and student walk-outs following suit. Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez have been traveling the country on their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour and have drawn huge crowds even in some of the reddest towns. The crowds reflect the growing opposition to Trump’s agenda, though their speeches have not focused on building independent activity and protest. We must guard against opposition to Trump being guided back into garnering votes for the Democrats in the midterms, or in four years.
New York City has seen a few smaller actions recently, but nothing on the scale we need to start the push back. A national day of action is called for April 5, taking aim at Trump and Musk and his DOGE team, and it seems like every city will have its day of action.
It is clear that millions are itching for a fightback. It is quite obvious that the Democratic Party will not, and cannot, provide it.
Nationwide protests are planned for May Day, which has historically been celebrated by more radical workers, many of whom are immigrants. May Day of 2006 saw millions absent from work and show up for “A Day Without Immigrants” rallies across the country, including a 1.5 million strong protest in LA. The lessons from this show of force, detailed here by Victor Fernandez of Marx21, can be built on for May Day. Immigrant workers are key to bringing together struggles of the undocumented with the potential power of the larger US working class, who are also in the sights of this regime.
– Rosa Soley
Marx21 US 