By JOSE MONTEROJO
Immigrants and their allies are responding to the Trump administration’s attacks on their community with organizing and mobilizations across the country. From California to the East Coast, immigrant organizations and communities are marching in the streets, holding legal training to prepare immigrants for ICE raids, and preparing networks to defend immigrants from deportation.
We are witnessing a revival of a political tradition of immigrant rights organizing that has deep roots among the U.S. working class. This fledgling movement carries the potential to become a mass movement of millions to not only fight the current regimes racist policies, but also to unite with all sectors of workers and social movements to shake the foundation of the government and the imperialist system it defends.
The immigrant rights struggle has generated significant protests in areas as far and wide as Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, and New York City. While not yet a movement of millions, these protests do demonstrate a willingness among a sector of the immigrant rights movement to openly defy the government’s actions.
On and around Feb. 1-3, people in many cities observed a series of pro-immigrant boycotts and demonstrations—precursors and building actions for this year’s “A Day Without Immigrants” activities that are planned nationwide for May 1-5. In Los Angeles, approximately 3000 protesters took to the streets over the course of three days. Students walked out of classes, protesters marched to central Los Angeles and took over a freeway. Latin American flags, in particular the Mexican flag, waved in the wind, as activists called for an end to deportations and a recognition of immigrants’ humanity.
In early February, thousands of protesters mobilized in front of the Colorado State Capitol. They were responding to ICE raids in Denver and Aurora as part of Trump’s “Operation Aurora,” meant to sweep up supposed members of the Venezuelan gang El Tren de Aragua. That same week, approximately 1500 people attended a legal training held by pro-immigrant lawyers on how to respond to ICE raids in their communities.
In Chicago, immigrants and their supporters sprung into action to counter a series of raids in late January. The round-up of immigrants, dubbed “Operation Safeguard,” involved a number of U.S. agencies besides ICE, and was overseen by top Trump officials. Activists leafleted the community and held a number of training sessions in order to inform immigrants of their rights, while taking other steps to hinder federal agents from completing their quotas.
These were a few of the major examples of pro-immigrant mobilizations across the United States. Most protests are small, gathering dozens to hundreds of protesters. The current climate of fear within the immigrant community is undoubtedly contributing to smaller protests, but this may change as immigrants see non-immigrant and non-undocumented workers speaking out against anti-immigrant racism and helping to build political spaces where undocumented workers can mobilize in an environment of collective solidarity and safety.
As in the Palestine solidarity movement in the U.S., youth are playing a leading role in fighting deportations. In the nationwide “Day Without an Immigrant” protest held on Feb. 3, thousands of immigrant youth stayed home from school and took to the streets. In Houston, about a quarter of its student population stayed home. In San Jose, hundreds of students from Latino immigrant neighborhoods staged walkouts on Jan. 30. In Oklahoma, hundreds of students, educators, and community members mobilized against the local Board of Education against policies meant to inquire about students’ and families’ immigration statuses.
These protests do not yet have a clear leadership or structure. Non-profit groups, legal advocates, left-wing organizations, and social media posts are contributing to the mobilizations. While the various activists in the spaces are demonstrating initiative in kickstarting an immigrant rights movement, a national campaign against nationwide attacks on immigrants will require local, regional, and national frameworks to effectively resist the Trump regime.
Such frameworks can take the form of immigrant rights coalitions, uniting all the various pro-immigrant organizations into one powerful struggle around key demands such as “end the deportations,” “close the detention centers,”“free immigrant detainees,” and “citizenship for all.”
One example we can learn from is Papeles para Todos (Papers for All), an immigrant rights coalition based in San Jose, Calif. Most recently, in February, this coalition, along with other immigrant organizations, participated in a protest in San Jose to denounce ICE raids. In addition to this, Papeles Para Todos built a solidarity campaign with immigrant detainees on strike at two ICE detention centers in Southern California. This campaign held virtual meetings with detainees, organized fundraisers, and protests in solidarity with their strike. Papeles Para Todos unified local left-wing, non-profit, and legal aid organizations into one unified coalition.
Such a coalition, on a much larger scale, organized the 2006 “A Day Without Immigrants” mobilization. Student organizations such as the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), human rights organizations like the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of LA (CHIRLA), and labor unions such as the Service International Employees Union (SEIU) and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) collaborated to organize a nationwide mass protest to push back against H.R. 4437, a policy aimed at making living without legal documents in the U.S. a felony and to lengthen the border wall.
There are currently two lawsuits underway on behalf of pro-immigrant legal groups aimed at blocking Trump’s orders to remove Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of refugees from devastated areas such as Haiti, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. While the blocking of these policies is welcome, we must place our faith in our ability to organize in the workplaces and in the streets. Lawsuits are slow, grinding processes that channel our energy toward the courts—where the bosses hold power and write the rules—and away from where we live and work, which is where we can organize the mass actions to beat back the Trump regime’s reactionary attack.
Various labor unions across the United States released statements critical of the right-wing attacks by the new government. The AFL-CIO’s response criticized Trump’s deportation orders. It will be up to union activists across the U.S. to argue for a pro-immigrant campaign in coalition with other immigrant rights organizations, which are now promoting May 1 rallies.
