For Mass Worker/Student Action to Stop Raids and Deportations

Ramping up U.S. capitalism’s deportation machine, the Trump administration is building on and seeking to outdo even the record of its Democratic predecessors. Top: U.S. Border Patrol attacks Haitians in September 2021. Bottom: July 2025, federal agents on horseback in Macarthur Park in Los Angeles.
(Top: Paul Ratje / Agence France-Presse, Bottom: Renae A. Hernandez)

If you’re reading this paper, it’s likely we agree on at least one thing: the society we live in is in a terrible crisis. “What fresh hell is this?” could sum up the questions millions ask themselves each day, when scanning the latest ways our basic rights are under attack. Raids, kidnappings and deportations by masked agents of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement); federal troops sent to one city after another; mass firings and union-busting; the trampling of academic freedom, trans rights, public health … All this and more, on top of two years of unbearable images of mass murder and devastation in Gaza, “Made in USA” under “Genocide Joe” Biden and then Donald Trump – after the Democrats paved the way for him coming to power, yet again.

So yes, it seems like a new hell each day – but it didn’t come from nowhere. When Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, we revolutionary Marxists were not alone in highlighting the “horror show of governmental arbitrariness, wanton cruelty and chaos” of his administration’s anti-immigrant onslaught, which it uses as a battering ram against the fundamental rights of all working people.¹ What we say about where this all comes from and what to do about it, however, is radically different from the illusions promoted by backers of U.S. imperialism’s Democratic Party, including those on the reformist left.

What is the origin of the accelerating drive toward authoritarian rule, backed by some of the world’s wealthiest profiteers and ideologues of “free-market” dictatorship? It’s not some random aberration. The concentration of vast power and wealth in the hands of this crew is the result of the spiraling decay of the capitalist system of inequality, exploitation, racism and war. Today’s White House rule by decree further intensifies the ongoing bipartisan drive for a “strong state” and to shore up the power of U.S. imperialism, which has lost the global hegemony it had since World War II. And the apparatus of anti-immigrant repression that Trump wields today was built up by his Democratic predecessor Barack “Deporter-in-Chief” Obama and the Biden/Harris administration.

Crucial here is the basic Marxist point that voting for or otherwise supporting Democrats (or Republicans or any other capitalist politicians) is not a “lesser evil” – it is counterposed to what is urgently needed, as it means perpetuating the subordination of the workers and oppressed to the government parties that administer the repressive apparatus of capitalist rule. In other words, it means class collaboration, when what we desperately need is mass, militant class struggle in defense of the rights of us all. The political fight to unchain working-class power is crucial to building worker/student action to stop the raids and deportations.

Many students and young workers are trying to figure out the burning issues of how to fight back in a situation where big threats and dangers keep mounting every day. Yet the “answers” they hear from the media, and from the leadership of social movements, labor leadership and the “left,” are usually worthless, or worse. In contrast, advancing the struggle to build a revolution­ary workers party on the program of international socialist revolution is the purpose of this newspaper, published by the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth (youth section of the Interna­tionalist Group) together with the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York.

Part of the crowd at the September 4 Student/Labor Speak-Out in solidarity with immigrants, outside NYC’s Hunter College, demanding “ICE Out of New York! Stop the Deportations!” (Photo: NY1)

The groundwork for Trump & Co.’s current onslaught was prepared in large part by the bipartisan campaign over the past two years to demonize, censor and repress protest against the genocidal U.S./Israel war on Gaza. This was a central topic in our previous issue, Revolution No. 21 (September 2024), which covered the violent repression of Gaza solidarity encampments from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to Columbia University and CUNY. It also covered anti-censorship struggles at CUNY’s Hunter College, in which the Internationalists played a big role, including student/faculty protests that beat back a McCarthyite film ban against Israelism (a documentary critical of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people).

Facing the November 2024 elections, in articles on many topics Revolution highlighted the fight against the endless class collaboration tying the exploited and oppressed to their exploiters and oppressors. Putting the class-struggle program of revolutionary Marxism (Trotskyism) front and center, its front-page headline read: “All-Purpose Bigot Trump or Genocide Joe’s VP Harris? The Only Choice: Build a Revolutionary Workers Party!”

ICE Terror’s Toll

Federal agents seize a man in an elevator near immigration courtrooms in the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in New York City, July 2. (Photo: Victor J. Blue)

With White House “border czar” Tom Homan repeatedly vowing to “flood the zone” with raids and deportations, keeping track of ICE terror’s daily toll can seem nearly impossible. Here are just some of the many outrages that have occurred in recent months:

● Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist prominent in Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia University, was seized on March 8 as he entered his apartment building with his wife, who was eight months pregnant. His case served as a trial run for the Trump administration seeing how far it could go in revoking a permanent resident’s status. Shipped to a detention center in Louisiana, he was released three months later and, as of October 2025, is fighting a deportation order from a Louisiana judge on the baseless charge of green card fraud.

● Kilmar Abrego García, a SMART Local 100 union member in Maryland, was taken by ICE on March 12 and sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT “mega-prison.” Officials later called it an “administrative error,” then accused him of supposed gang affiliations. In June he was brought back to the U.S. but sent to jail on trumped-up charges. Released in August, he was detained days later at his ICE check-in and now faces deportation – to Uganda.

● Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student, was kidnapped off the street by masked ICE agents on March 25 and shuttled to the same Louisiana detention center that held Mahmoud Khalil. Her alleged crime? Contributing to an op-ed in a student newspaper, on the university’s response to the genocide in Gaza. Released in May, she still faces the threat of deportation.

● Mohsen Mahdawi, co-founder of the Palestinian Student Union at Columbia, was seized by ICE on April 14 during what he thought was a naturalization interview but was actually a sting operation by federal agents. Released on April 30, he declared, “I am saying it clear and loud. To President Trump and his cabinet: I am not afraid of you.”

● Three young children who are U.S. citizens, one of them a 4-year-old with cancer, were deported to Honduras together with their mothers on April 25.

● Dylan López Contreras and Mamadou Diallo are NYC high school students seized in May and August respectively by ICE after routine appearances in immigration court. This fall, ICE’s notorious kidnappings in the Lower Manhattan immigration courts have escalated; agents have also attacked and manhandled court observers and journalists.

● Jaime Alanís, a 57-year-old farm worker from Mexico, fell to his death from a greenhouse roof while trying to hide during an ICE raid in Camarillo, California on July 15.

● Carlos Montoya, a 52-year-old day laborer from Guatemala, was struck and killed by a car while fleeing an ICE raid at a Home Depot in Monrovia, California on August 14.

● Pastor David Black was shot in the head by masked DHS agents with “non-lethal” munitions outside the Broadview ICE facility in Chicago on September 19, leaving him severely injured.

● Monica Moreta-Galarza was with her two children at the 26 Federal Plaza NYC immigration court when she was pushed to the ground by an ICE agent on September 25. This was shortly after federal agents detained her husband during his asylum hearing.

● Mario Guevara, an Emmy award-winning journalist from El Salvador who documented ICE raids, was deported on October 3, having been detained while covering a protest against Trump in Atlanta. His wife and three children remain in the U.S.

● Marimar Martínez, an immigrant rights protester in Chicago, was shot and seized by ICE agents on October 4 after authorities claimed she rammed a DHS vehicle. Body-camera footage shows an agent taunting her, saying “Do something [expletive]” moments before firing. Charged with assaulting and obstructing federal officers, Martínez was later released pending trial.

● Untold tens and hundreds of thousands of our fellow members of the international working class seized, held in ICE dungeons and deported… Set them free, let them stay – full citizenship rights for all immigrants! Mass worker/student action to stop the raids and deportations!

Asian, Latin, Black and White: Workers of the World, Unite!

Why We Say “You Can’t Fight Trump with the Democrats”

What led to Trump’s victory in the 2024 elections and return to the White House for a second term on steroids? Centrally, the Democrats’ open indifference to, and attacks on, the working class (for example, using strikebreaking legislation to block a looming rail strike in November 2022); their mass deportations and build-up of the repressive apparatus; and the long bloody trail of U.S. imperialist wars from Iraq and Afghanistan to the U.S./NATO war in Ukraine, the U.S./Israel war on Gaza and the imperialist drive toward a third world war against China.²

Why do we put so much emphasis on unmasking the role of the Democratic Party? Because understanding this is crucial to waging effective struggle against today’s many-sided attacks. For example: if federal troops are sent to New York, workers and students should shut the city down. But illusions in Democratic politicians, and those who push such illusions – the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) being a prime example – reinforce the obstacles faced by those (an increasing number) who want to help organize mass struggle to stop the raids, deportations and other escalating attacks on basic rights. The first step toward overcoming those obstacles is to forthrightly tell the truth about them.

Photos of immigrants detained by ICE, attached to fence outside courthouses in Lower Manhattan during September 25 “New Yorkers Against ICE” march initiated by PSC-CUNY faculty/staff union. (Revolution photo)

Ever since the Democrats lost last November, bemoaning their “paralysis” has been a major theme for liberal/left commentators.³ In our article on Zohran Mamdani’s NYC mayoral campaign (see article on the back page of Revolution No. 22), we address the latest efforts to rejuvenate the Democrats. The candidacy of DSA member Mamdani has been endorsed by New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul (a major witch-hunter against pro-Palestinian protest, who also sent the National Guard into the New York subways), as well as Genocide Joe’s former vice president Kamala Harris. During a recent NYC visit, Harris said she told Mamdani: “One of the reasons I am excited about your candidacy is you are bringing people in” (CNN.com, 24 September). Youth who really do want to be socialists need to think through what all of this means politically.

Reformist leftists seek to refasten the chains of bourgeois politics. Against this, the Interna­tion­alists stand for freeing workers’ power from those chains, so that power can be brought into the urgent fights facing us today. In January 2025, the Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants (LCDI) was founded by activists from NYC-area labor and immigrant rights groups, among them five Teamsters locals (including the Amazon Labor Union), hospital workers unions, the CUNY faculty/staff union (PSC), United Federation of Teachers, United Auto Workers, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Trabajadores Internacion­ales Clasistas, Laundry Workers Center, Class Struggle Education Workers and others. The call to join the LCDI states:

“With the new administration building on the deportation record and structures ramped up by its predecessors, we can’t look to the government, police, courts or politicians of any capital­ist party to protect immigrants. It is crucial to bring to bear the organized power of labor, and the principles of working-class solidarity, in defense of immigrant workers and their families.”

Another of the groups helping to establish the LCDI was the Hunter College Committee to Defend Immigrants, whose activities are also discussed in this issue. These include working with the CUNY Internationalist Clubs to build student/labor protests that caused the Cus­toms and Border Protection agency (which works together with ICE) to cancel a special recruit­ment session it had planned at CUNY’s John Jay College last February. The Hunter committee also organized an important rally against deportations outside the Hunter campus and joined with the CUNY Internationalists to bring students out to immigrant rights events that spring and summer.

This year’s May Day marches were, for many new activists, their first time participating in International Workers Day. In the San Francisco Bay Area, members of the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth local built a contingent together with the Berkeley City College Committee to Defend Immigrants, which they had recently helped establish. They marched behind the contingent of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10, which brought a banner calling “For Workers Action to Stop Mass Deportations and Mass Firings!”

Bay Area comrades also traveled to Los Angeles to join with Internationalist supporters in local unions, bringing the call for labor action against the deportations to protests against the ICE raids in June that targeted garment workers, day laborers and immigrant communities. When Trump sent 4,000 members of the National Guard and 700 Marines to the city, our comrades joined the front lines of protesters and helped lead chants against the detentions and deportations, such as “Set Them Free, Let Them Stay, ICE Out of L.A.!”

Painters Union Local 10 banner
at Portland Labor Against the Fascists
mobilization, June 2017, initiated by
Class Struggle Workers – Portland, fraternally allied with the Internationalist Group. (Revolution photo)

Further up the Pacific coast, RIY comrades are part of our work in Tacoma, Washington and in Portland, Oregon, where Internationalist and Class Struggle Workers – Portland (CSWP) supporters have important roots in the labor movement and a history of mobilizing area unionists in crucial struggles. These include Portland Labor Against the Fascists (2017), immigrant and abortion rights struggles, “Hard Hats for Gay Rights” and participation in key fights to build and defend union power in the Pacific Northwest.⁴ In 2017, the Portland-area Painters union passed a resolution to reject the Democratic and Republican parties and to “call on the labor movement to break from the Democratic Party, and build a class-struggle workers party.” Portland now has a very active Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants, which is winning support from workers from a range of unions, notably in the construction trades.

In New York on September 4, at the beginning of the fall semester, the Hunter College Committee to Defend Immigrants, the campus chapter of the PSC and the Internationalist Club cosponsored a Student/Labor Speak-Out for solidarity with immigrants that demanded “ICE Out of New York! Stop the Deportations!” The protest included a contingent of doctors, social workers, nurses and other health care workers mobilized by the LCDI’s working group for this sector. A high point was the participation of several prominent black trade unionists, including speeches by Charles Jenkins of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and the Transport Workers Union, and by Teamsters Local 808 Secretary-Treasurer Chris Silvera.

PSC-CUNY union banner at the 1,000-strong September 25 march demanding “ICE Out of NY!” At the protest beginning at Federal Plaza, the joint contingent built by CUNY Internationalists and the Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants drew 60 workers and students. (Photo: Paul Frangipane)

In his speech, brother Silvera emphasized the need for working-class solidarity in defense of immigrant rights and how these are inseparable from labor rights.  He ended with the statement: “We have to build our own workers party,” calling on students to join the struggle. The crowd responded with the chant, “Not Democrats or Republicans – Build a Workers Party!”

The power of workers solidarity is the core for organizing genuine and effective resistance to attempts to intimidate and silence opposition to the mounting police-state measures. As ICE arrests people showing up for routine immigration court hearings, journalists are attacked for the “crime” of reporting on its raids. Meanwhile Trump declared “we have to beat the hell out of” opponents that he calls “radical left lunatics” and told the top military officers who assembled at his command that “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military” (Politico, 11 September; Military Times, 30 September).

At September 4 Hunter College speak-out, founding members of Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants (from left) Fitz Reid (DC 37), Charles Jenkins (Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and TWU Local 100), Chris Silvera (Teamsters Local 808) and Andrew Hackman (DC 37 and CBTU). (Revolution photo)

But the multiracial working class, which makes everything run in this society, has a potential power far greater than that of the tiny minority that lives off its labor. Democratic rights were not given to the working people by benevolent rulers. They were won through struggle, from the fight against the slave catchers in the 1800s (see review of The Kidnapping Club in Revolution No. 22) to militant mass pickets and sit-down strikes that built the unions; the “free speech fights” waged by Industrial Workers of the World leaders like 19-year-old Elizabeth Gurley Flynn; struggles against Jim Crow, McCarthyism and imperialist war; down to 1969’s Stonewall rebellion and the student strike that won open admissions at CUNY, and so much more.

The words of one of those targeted this spring – for exercising his right to free speech, against the Gaza genocide – are important to recall. When third-generation Palestinian refugee Mohsen Mahdawi, a green card holder, went to a citizenship interview in April, ICE detained him. When he was released from his illegal detention, he declared that the repressive offensive “will not silence me,” and stated: “I am saying it clear and loud. To President Trump and his cabinet: I am not afraid of you.” The Columbia University activist’s political views, which reflect his adherence to Buddhism and pacifism, are far from our own. But for us, like many others, his words struck a chord.

It is our hope that this issue of Revolution will help win new layers of youth to the revolutionary Marxist program, and that it will serve as an organizing tool for mass worker/student action in the difficult and crucial struggles ahead.  ■

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

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