War on Immigrants: Flashpoint Los Angeles

Labor Must Act:
Drive I.C.E. Out of L.A.!

Bring Out Workers’ Power to Stop Mass Deportations,
Police-State Occupation

The following Internationalist Group leaflet was distributed at protests in Los Angeles on June 14.

JUNE 13 – Pounding on doors in pre-dawn raids. Masked police looking like terrorists grabbing people on the street. Unmarked vans hauling them off to be sent to concentration camps. People arrested when they show up in court for routine hearings. High school students seized and held incommunicado as parents are unable to locate them. Sound like Chile or Argentina under military dictatorships in the 1970s? This is what a police state looks like – and immigrants across the United States are living in it right now.

This is where the crisis of capitalism has brought us.

Since Donald Trump began his second term on January 20, pressure has been mounting on immigrant communities across the country. On June 6, the pressure cooker exploded in Los Angeles. The start of militarized workplace raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) police predictably set off angry protests. The next day Trump federalized and deployed 2,000 National Guard troops, inciting more protests. Two days later, some 700 Marines and 2,000 more Guardsmen were activated. Make no mistake, this was a long-planned provocation.

As the rabid immigrant-bashing president revs up federal forces to carry out his campaign threat to unleash the biggest mass deportations in U.S. history, he has focused on high-profile, made-for-TV actions to spread terror among millions of immigrants. At the same time, as he rules by decree in a drive toward a beefed-up “strong state” regime, he is seeking to get the population used to seeing the military repressing civilian protesters in U.S. streets, in blatant violation of U.S. laws. Trump’s war on immigrants is an assault on the democratic rights of all.

Break with Democrats and Republicans: Imperialist Parties of Mass Deportations and Genocidal War – Build a Class Struggle Workers Party

The ongoing protests in Los Angeles against la migra, the hated immigration police, will not stop so long as the raids and deportations continue, ripping up the fabric of society in the region. In fact, the fascistic White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller vows to escalate them, setting a national quota of 3,000 immigrant arrests a day. But spontaneous protests alone will not stop the deportation machine and the paramilitary repression now being showcased in L.A. And this is a foretaste of what the Trump regime intends for the entire country.¹

The arrest of David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California, as he protested the workplace raids was a warning to all of labor. Against Trump’s provocative display of force, it is urgent to mobilize the power of the working class. Organized labor in Los Angeles, throughout California, up and down the West Coast and nationwide must act, now. There should be walkouts, work stoppages and strike action along with mass mobilization in the streets against military occupation. Flood the streets, with unions in the lead, to stop deportations!

Above all, the escalating repression must be fought politically, against both parties that do the dirty work for capital. California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom postures as standing up to Republican Trump. But Democrats are up to their necks in the militarized crackdown. Some 1,000 people have been arrested since June 6 by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Democratic mayor Karen Bass is using clouds of gas, hard munitions and mounted police cossacks to show that city and state authorities have the situation “under control.”

Democratic Party parades like the “No Kings” rallies across the U.S. on June 14, “Flag Day” – when Trump has ordered a Nazi-style Aufmarsch (show of military force) complete with tanks in Washington, D.C. to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army and his birthday – won’t stop this would-be strongman. Built by liberal outfits like 50501.org, Moveon.org and Mobilize.us, these flag-waving events aim to corral protest into the Democratic Party that paved the way for Trump, again, with its policies of genocidal war in Gaza, mass repression² and deportations.³ And now many Democrats are backing Israel’s barbarous assassinations and missile strikes as opening shots in a war against Iran.

“Set Them Free, Let Them Stay, I.C.E. Out of L.A.!”

What set off the showdown in Los Angeles over mass deportations was a pair of workplace raids by I.C.E. agents in combat fatigues on Friday, June 6. First they arrested day laborers waiting for jobs at a Home Depot in Westlake, then moving on to a wholesaler, Ambiance, in the downtown L.A. garment district. I.C.E. said it rounded up 44 undocumented immigrants, while Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents and the LAPD arrested union president Huerta as he and others sat down as an I.C.E. van tried to leave an operations center for this military op. 

Later that evening, hundreds of protesters outside the Federal Building were pepper-sprayed. Altogether more than 100 were arrested. The next day, Saturday, June 7, as I.C.E. and Border Patrol agents prepared to carry out another Home Depot raid in Paramount south of downtown L.A., outraged protesters surrounded them. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department fired tear gas into crowds. That afternoon, President Trump issued his memo federalizing 2,000 troops of the California National Guard, normally under state control, without consulting Governor Newsom.

Significantly, rather than invoking the Insurrection Act, as he has threatened to do, Trump issued a detailed order under 10 U.S. Code § 12406 allowing the president to take over state forces when he is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” Under the terms of the memo he could do the same “where protests against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations.” So the L.A. scenario is pre-authorized to be repeated anywhere there are protests over deportations.

On Sunday, June 8, crowds of hundreds gathered outside the Metropolitan Detention Center. The White House and right-wing media made much of click-bait videos supposedly showing unruly mobs. OMG, a photo showed protesters kicking a Border Patrol vehicle. What they didn’t show is the clouds of tear gas, pepper balls and other munitions fired into the crowds by police and federal agents, including 40 mm hard plastic rounds, beanbag rounds and flash-bang grenades. Another shocker, some Waymo taxis caught fire. Those driverless cars shouldn’t even be allowed on the streets.

Another theme pushed by the xenophobic president and his backers was that demonstrators carried “foreign flags.” Yes, Mexican Americans carried the Mexican flag as a population under siege standing up to their repressors. And by the way, most of the demonstrators are not immigrants, many of whom are understandably afraid to protest, but instead are their children, friends, neighbors and other defenders of democratic rights. Right-wingers, and many Democrats, said the same of demonstrators carrying the Palestinian flag as they protested the U.S./Israel genocide in Gaza.

As Democratic politicians cower, repeatedly contrasting “peaceful protesters” to those who offend the sensibilities of the immigrant-hating reactionaries, demonstrations of solidarity with L.A. protesters have spread to dozens of cities. This has led to talk of a repeat of the mass marches in the summer of 2020 against the racist cop murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But those huge outpourings of outrage by millions did not end, or even diminish, the rampant police killings of civilians which are endemic to the racist capitalist system in the U.S.

The protests in Los Angeles reflect the 100% justified fury of those under the gun of police-state repression in Trump’s America. As top federal officials, from the sociopath “border czar” Tom Homan to the psychopathic cruelty freak Kristi Noem at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), issued blood-curdling threats, those targeted want to fight back. But to defeat the militarized onslaught, and to stop the mass deportations, requires bringing to bear a power greater than that of the gang controlling the White House and both Houses of Congress.

That power lies with the working class, including its vital sector of immigrant workers, who in California make up more than one-third of the entire workforce. Almost 90% of the state’s farm workers, who produce one-third of the nation’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits, were born in Mexico. Over half are “unauthorized,” yet without them the U.S. food supply would collapse. Some 44% of California’s manufacturing workers and 40% of construction workers are immigrants. If foreign-born and U.S.-born workers act together, they pack a mighty wallop.

As workplace sweeps spread across Southland there will be student walkouts, like the Chicano Blowouts of 1968 or the 10,000+ high school students who walked out in the L.A. area to protest the anti-immigrant Prop 187 in 1994. In January, thousands of students walked out against Trump’s threats. Strike action by the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) to join them could galvanize the city. As the United Federation of Teachers delegate assembly in NYC just voted, “these are our students, our fellow workers, our neighborhoods and communities, and we will act to support and protect them in this, their hour of need, and always.”

The UTLA is a mainstay of the Los Angeles labor movement. The SEIU led by David Huerta is another. This is the same union, including many refugees from El Salvador, that braved the blows of the LAPD in Center City in 1990 to organize janitors. SEIU Local 399 also dared to march in 1992 under the guns of the National Guard to protest the acquittal of the racist cops who beat Rodney King. The Los Angeles Federation of Labor should back SEIU in calling a countywide strike to demand that I.C.E., DHS, National Guard get out of L.A. And University of California and California State University unions should organize to strike statewide.

Another, even more powerful, bastion of labor is the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). On June 6, the ILWU fired off a statement denouncing the arrest of Huerta and demanding “an end to destructive ICE raids targeting hard-working members of our community.” On June 9, it issued a second statement denouncing “the deployment of the National Guard in the streets of Los Angeles by the Trump Administration” as “a dangerous provocation by the federal government.” These fine words should be turned into action to shut down all West Coast ports against the deportations and militarized repression.

As ILWU Local 10 called in its May Day 2025 banner: “For Workers Action to Stop Mass Deportations and Mass Firings! No Military Cargo for Israel’s Genocidal War Against Palestinians! Defend the Rights of ALL of Us!” The ILWU shut down the Coast on Juneteenth 2020 to protest the police murder of George Floyd and systemic racism. The attack on Los Angeles immigrants and labor is even bigger. If the White House doesn’t get the message after a one-day port shutdown, the ILWU, with the backing of all labor, should see that nothing moves on the waterfront until federal forces are withdrawn and the raids are stopped!

The targeting of activist, leftist and community groups such as Unión del Barrio, CHIRLA (Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles) and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, is yet another outrageous escalation that must be defeated by mass mobilization.

The more than 10 million undocumented immigrants residing in the United States, a majority of them for more than a decade (and a quarter for more than 20 years) without rights, are living in terror. The Democrats are not going to aid them. Even as Republican Trump has ratcheted up deportations to some 200,000 since taking office, this pace doesn’t come close to Democrat Biden’s total of 700,000 in 2024. Class conscious workers and all defenders of democratic rights must fight for Full citizenship rights for all immigrants! What is urgently needed is to break with the parties of capitalist rule and imperialist domination and to build a class struggle workers party fighting for a workers government and international socialist revolution. ■

To contact the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, send e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com

Return to THE INTERNATIONALIST GROUP Home Page