Crackdown on migrants in the United States: In the face of the raids, our solidarity is class struggle!

Since 6 June, the Trump administration has decided to dramatically intensify the anti-migrant policy of the US bourgeoisie by organising real manhunts against undocumented immigrants, concentrated in particular in California in the region of Los Angeles, the country's second largest city, where many workers of Latin American origin live.

The migrant raids: an attack on the entire working class

As we pointed out in a leaflet written by a sympathiser close to the ICC[1], this provocation, carried out with extreme brutality, is an attack on the entire proletariat. It is our class brothers and sisters, most of the time exploited in difficult conditions, that the police hunt down and suppress. These raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to hunt down, arrest, detain and expel migrants by military force, picking them up at their place of work (building sites, factories, shops, etc.) were very reminiscent of the round-ups of people of Jewish or Gypsy origin in Europe during the Second World War, in order to deport them.

This provoked reactions of solidarity, indignation and disgust in a large part of the population, but more particularly among the exploited who mobilised, including spontaneously, and sometimes succeeded in preventing arrests, as at Paramount in the working class suburbs of Los Angeles.

Mobilising as citizens reduces us to impotence

But these initial reflexes of solidarity were immediately exploited and used by the bourgeoisie, as happened in 2020 after the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd. Then, the bourgeoisie totally hijacked these stirrings of solidarity and funnelled them behind protest marches led by the anti-racist Black Lives Matter movement to demand more justice and equality, or even the abolition of the police... pleas to the capitalist state, spearhead of exploitation and the defence of the bourgeois order!

In the same way today, the ‘defence committees’ (those of the Los Angeles Rapid Response Network, in particular), made up of trade unions and several organisations and associations of the left of capital, were immediately able to channel the attempts to respond on the rotten terrain of ‘defence of the rule of law’, ‘citizen solidarity’, ‘anti-Trumpism’... in other words the same democratic mystifications which inevitably lead to disarming the proletariat, defusing its struggles, by making people believe that it would be possible to make capitalism more just and human. Nowhere were the mobilisations expressed in defence of the interests of the working class, unlike, for example, what happened in 1917 in Russia when the violent repression of demonstrations on International Women's Day had been the starting point for the extension of strike movements which served as the detonator for the revolutionary wave. Similarly, in February 1941, in the middle of the war, when conditions were extremely difficult, workers in Amsterdam went on strike against the deportation of Jews. Between 22 March and 13 May 1968, the ferocious repression of students also mobilised the working class, driven by instinctive impulses of solidarity.

Today, on the other hand, since the proletariat is not yet capable of responding to repression on its class terrain, the bourgeoisie can easily lead it into an impasse and reduce it to impotence. It was not as a class that the proletarians of Los Angeles mobilised, but as indignant individuals, and even as citizens. In this context, it was impossible for the workers involved in these mobilisations to extend the struggle to the proletariat as a whole in order to build up a real class balance of power against the repression.

This can only lead to a climate of terror, exacerbating tensions between communities and fuelling divisions between proletarians by encouraging the emergence of impotent popular riots, like the numerous race riots in the United States in the past, and like those in California in 1992 after the acquittal of the police officers responsible for the violence inflicted on taxi driver Rodney King the previous year. All that ensued were either hopeless clashes and confrontations with the police and totally pointless traffic blockades, or desperate actions, scenes of looting, vandalism or car fires... In short, mosquito bites on the thick leather hide of the bourgeoisie which justified a huge deployment of the repressive apparatus to maintain public order. It is precisely this ‘maintenance of law and order’ that has now been used by the government as a pretext to call in the army, sending in more than 4,000 reservists from the national guard and 700 marines, particularly feared and rightly described in the past as ‘dogs of war’ trained to kill and to cordon off the city.

The trap of democratic campaigns set by the bourgeoisie

This climate has also left the way open for a fraction of the Democratic Party apparatus to distort these elementary reactions of solidarity and drag workers into a vast ideological campaign on the totally rotten terrain of the defence of bourgeois democracy and the rights of ‘citizens’, of respect for the laws and the American Constitution. This is what has been put forward in particular by the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, who is already presenting himself as a potential candidate for the next presidential election by multiple declarations of opposition to Trump's policies, accusing the latter of ‘abuse of power’, of having carried out ‘illegal kidnappings’ without the approval of local authorities, of having ‘taken a turn towards authoritarianism’, of ‘behaving like a tyrant’ in order to ‘realise the crazy fantasy of a dictatorial president’, adding that ‘his behaviour threatens the very foundation of our democracy’[2]. The Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, is not to be outdone in this hypocritical torrent of invective[3]. In addition, the California Attorney General has declared that he has initiated impeachment proceedings against Trump in the courts for ‘violating’ the US Constitution. This anti-Trump campaign has spread very quickly across the country, particularly to other major cities: San Francisco and Santa Ana in California, Dallas and Austin in Texas, but also Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Boston, New York, etc.

At the same time, this high-profile campaign in defence of democracy has given fresh impetus to anti-populist propaganda, a variant on the false opposition between fascism and anti-fascism[4], already put forward by the most ‘radical’ fringes of the Democratic Party behind Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and by the "Hands Off! movement a few months ago. This assimilation is also based on protests against Trump's ‘dictatorial’ methods in the United States, which have been widely relayed by extensive anti-Trump propaganda at international level. In reality, it corresponds to a gigantic ideological intoxication by designating Trump as the person responsible for all the ills, the better to exonerate capitalism and hinder the development of an awareness of the irremediable bankruptcy of an exploitative system in full putrefaction, of which populism and Trump are only a caricatured expression.

However, on the face of it, this ideological campaign has a certain credibility because there is a real mobilisation of certain American bourgeois factions against Trump's policy and they are worried about it for two essential reasons:

- on the one hand, these factions are aware of the dangers of this policy, which only generates more chaos, weakening the credibility and tarnishing the image of the United States internationally and, domestically, accentuating social divisions, even risking in the long term the creation of a climate of civil war;

- on the other hand, they are convinced (and rightly so) that this openly xenophobic policy will have catastrophic repercussions for the American economy by depriving it of a cheap labour force which, until now, has kept many companies and sectors afloat and the national economy growing. Employers in several sectors of the economy have expressed their concern about these raids. Trump himself finally acknowledged that his immigration policies were hurting farmers, hotels and restaurants. Shortly afterwards, he temporarily suspended the raids on these businesses.

Trump has continued to fan the flames of this campaign by going further and further into security overkill, threatening to intervene in other parts of the country, particularly in Chicago with the army, and to use the same means as in Los Angeles. It is also threatening to use the Insurrection Act, i.e. to introduce a state of emergency while going even further in its persecution of migrants.

At the same time, anti-migrant measures are tending to spread to populist-dominated parts of the country. The governor of Texas has declared a curfew. In addition, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court has just legalised the government's request to deport them to third countries. Against this backdrop, an uncontrolled escalation of tensions cannot be ruled out, as the situation is becoming increasingly unpredictable and irrational.

Boundless hypocrisy on the part of the bourgeoisie

The hypocrisy and cynicism of the ruling class can be seen everywhere:

- in the United States, where Trump's anti-migrant policy is simply following in the footsteps of his Democratic predecessors in government: it was under the Obama administration that measures to deport undocumented workers reached record levels and it was the Biden administration that served as a model for the brutality of the methods of repression, particularly in 2021 during the ferocious charges by mounted border guards and police on the approaches to the border with Mexico;

- in the rest of the world, particularly in Europe, which growing masses of refugees are seeking to reach by any means necessary. They are found in distress in the Mediterranean trying desperately to escape poverty and war in both Africa and the Middle East. Once again, it is in the name of respect for the law and the European Union's Schengen area agreements that these abominations are practised, regardless of the government in power: in Italy, Meloni has tightened anti-migrant legislation (increasing the number of detention centres, abolishing protection for asylum seekers, transferring them to Albania, encouraging them to sign contracts to return to their country of origin, etc.). In France, Macron, who is trying to present himself in the international arena as a champion of democratic rights, is at the same time putting his Interior Minister Retailleau in charge of the dirty work with methods that Trump would envy: in mid-June, for example, he mobilised more than 4,000 men (gendarmes, police, customs officers, the armed force known as ‘Sentinelle’) for a vast operation to control ‘illegal immigration’ in the name of ‘zero tolerance’ at the Gare du Nord in Paris and almost simultaneously at 450 other sites, while congratulating himself on having arrested and sent back more than 47,000 ‘illegal immigrants’ since the beginning of 2025. Similar operations have been launched in Germany. In Spain, under the respectable veneer of a ‘regularisation policy’ of Pedro Sanchez's social-democrat government, acts of barbarism are regularly recorded: for example, the bodies of migrants were recently discovered tied hand and foot off the Balearic Islands.

Nor has the bourgeoisie failed to use the fractions of migrants most susceptible to the poison of nationalism. For example, during the protests against Trump's anti-migrant policy, the media complacently and widely broadcast images of Mexican flags being waved by some demonstrators.

All these elements only confirm the trap set everywhere for the working class to lead it away from a response and a struggle on its own terrain by using its weaknesses and illusions to draw it into a false choice between impotent and desperate popular riots or rallying to the bourgeoisie's democratic campaigns.

The proletariat must firmly reject the xenophobic calls to violence by MAGA and others, as well as the appeals of other factions of the bourgeoisie to defend democracy on pain of being subjected to the yoke of the dictatorship of capital, which can only lead to ever greater misery and barbarism.

No illusions! Defending the interests of the working class means categorically refusing to give in to the siren songs of the bourgeoisie and its defence of democracy, which tries to mask the hideous face of the dictatorship of capitalism as well as the stench of its own rotting on its feet!

Despite the obstacles, the future belongs to the class struggle!

Despite all their weaknesses and difficulties, particularly in the United States, and despite all the obstacles and traps laid by their class enemy, the working class has demonstrated in recent years its ability to react to the constant and ever-increasing attacks of the bourgeoisie. It has thus shown that there is another pole in the evolution of the present situation, a pole opposed to the descent into misery, barbaric warfare and annihilation towards which this dying system is inexorably heading. In the bowels of society, the same cry of anger, ‘Enough is enough’, is ripening, and is being expressed openly in the workers' struggles, in a way that is still confused and contradictory, but which is proclaiming everywhere: "We will no longer accept to passively suffer the attacks and the accelerated deterioration in our living and working conditions that are inflicted on us every day!"[5]

This is what happened in the United States in the autumn of 2023 during the almost simultaneous strikes at the three major car manufacturers, and later at Boeing, against redundancy programmes and austerity.[6] But just as significantly, in the midst of the American election campaign at the end of 2024, workers were able to mobilise on their own class terrain, as in the hotel sector or during the strike by almost 50,000 dockers which lasted several days before the Biden administration put an end to it by rushing into negotiations. Over the last few months, in the ‘Trump 2’ era, when attacks and massive budget cuts have intensified, workers have shown their fighting spirit intact, particularly in the health sector: In January, more than 5,000 nurses, midwives and doctors called a 46-day strike in the Providence network in Oregon (the longest ever in the state's health sector); in February, it was the turn of nurses at the University Medical Centre in New Orleans to lead a 48-hour strike, followed by 800 others in Pennsylvania, which lasted 5 days. In March, California became one of the main hotbeds of social unrest: employees of the Santa Clara Valley transport company went on strike for 17 days, interrupted only by a court ruling, and shortly afterwards public hospital workers in the same region went on strike for 4 days. At the end of April, more than 50,000 workers in the Los Angeles district went on strike, covering several sectors (health, social services, cleaning and security staff, laboratory assistants, etc.) to protest against the new employment contract imposed on them.

This clearly shows that the rise in anger and the break with passivity at an international level that we have repeatedly emphasised since 2022, with the underlying change of mindset within the proletariat, are not a flash in the pan and are continuing. These struggles can only develop in the face of the crushing blows of the crisis and the attacks that capitalism has in store everywhere in the future.

It should also be clear from this situation that in the United States, as elsewhere, strikes and struggles against the effects of the crisis are the most favourable terrain for the development of class struggle and class consciousness. In this context and with this perspective of the future, which is still distant, where the class will have further developed its collective strength and recovered its class identity as well as its capacity to politicise its struggles, there is no doubt that it will also be able to respond to the repression of migrants directly on its own class terrain of mobilisation.

Wim, 26 June 2025

[1] Against Trump’s xenophobic assaults on the working class and the cries to “defend democracy” [1], ICConline, June 2025