We condemn the murder of Joan Durán at the hands of ICE!

Trump and De la Espriella are responsible!

The Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (Colombia) and Workers’ Voice (U.S.) forcefully denounce the murder of Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian worker, at the hands of ICE agents. This crime was neither a “mistake” nor an accident: it is the direct result of the racist and repressive immigration policy of the Donald Trump administration, carried out with the endorsement and complicity of Colombian President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella.

Joan had a work permit, a Social Security number, and was on his way to his job as a DoorDash delivery driver. He was the father of a young daughter. Even if he had mistakenly voted for De la Espriella, he was an exploited worker who did not deserve to die. An ICE agent pulled the trigger and took his life in front of his three-year-old daughter. Now they want to spin the same old story—claiming that Joan tried to run over a federal agent—but we know this is false and that he was not even the person the agents were looking for; he simply bore a physical resemblance to him.

In the last week alone, ICE has been responsible for the deaths of at least four people: On July 7, ICE killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a documented Mexican immigrant, as he was on his way to work that morning in Texas. On July 13, they killed Joan Durán. That same day, Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, from Venezuela, died at the hands of ICE in a detention center. The following day, an as-yet-unidentified person was struck by a truck while trying to escape from ICE agents who were pursuing him. These deaths come on top of those of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, U.S. citizens who were killed by ICE in January, along with the eight others who were shot and killed by ICE, and the 21 other people who have died in ICE detention centers this year.

These are not isolated cases; they are the predictable consequence of the pressure exerted by the Trump administration to increase arrests and deportations at any cost. Agents act under the pressure of quotas and political orders, turning every operation into a manhunt in which the lives of immigrant workers are worth less than nothing. This is similar to the Colombian military’s so-called “false positives”; whoever pulls the trigger is at fault, but the politicians who promote this “results-oriented” policy bear the primary responsibility.

In every incident in which ICE has killed unarmed people in cold blood, the government has tried to blame the victims, even though all the evidence points to the opposite conclusion. The government is waging a campaign of terror against the immigrant community—an effort that effectively amounts to a campaign of terror against anyone who is not white—and which equally threatens anyone who opposes anti-immigrant policies or MAGA ideology in general.

ICE’s violence also extends inside detention centers, where nearly 70,000 immigrants are currently held in the United States. They face overcrowding, spoiled food, substandard medical care, isolation, and restrictions on contact with their families—they are truly concentration camps for immigrants.

In centers such as Adelanto and Delaney Hall, detainees have responded with hunger strikes and work strikes to denounce these degrading conditions, demand basic rights, and demonstrate that they will not silently endure the cruel treatment they are suffering. These immigration prisons are another facet of the same policy of persecution, punishment, and terror against the immigrant population.

Alliances that kill

This immigration bloodbath has found a direct collaborator in Colombia: Abelardo de la Espriella. His pact with U.S. imperialism is clear and explicit. U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno, of Colombian origin, publicly acknowledged having spoken with De la Espriella and agreeing on the mass deportation of Colombians seeking asylum. Marco Rubio has already signed a memorandum to deport activist Beto Coral for criticizing De la Espriella’s regime.

De la Espriella hands Colombians over to imperialism—even those who voted for him—in exchange for photos with Trump, handshakes with Rubio, favors from Moreno, and surely economic deals from which he will personally reap huge profits. Meanwhile, Colombian workers in the United States face mortal danger—not only from ICE’s bullets, but also from their “own” government, which singles them out and sends them back like merchandise.

Like most of the people murdered, abused, and arrested by ICE, Joan Sebastián was not a “criminal.” He was a worker. His murder reveals the true nature of imperialist capitalism and its local partners; we workers are cheap labor when it suits them and “criminals” when we “get in the way.”

How to defeat this threat in the U.S.

In this confrontation between ICE and the people, the Democratic Party has not defended us. In Los Angeles as well as in Minneapolis, vague talk of resistance quickly gave way to plans for collaboration with ICE forces and curfews. What has actually curbed the campaign of terror has been the mass mobilization of entire communities—unions alongside churches, synagogues, mosques, and grassroots community organizations—threatening to disrupt the economy of everyday capitalist life and directly rejecting the notion that the people support Trump’s bloodthirsty policies. Faced with the possibility of losing control over the population, they withdrew their plans for militarized occupations and mass raids.

It is not possible to reform or negotiate with ICE. Moreover, the problem is not just ICE; it involves the entire apparatus of state repression, which includes the involvement of the FBI, and the local police, among other agencies, as well as the legal machinery in the courts that is used to fabricate false criminal charges that send both activists and bystanders to prison. Although the law promises justice, it is structured and enforced unfairly. It is consistently deployed to protect the rich and the workings of the state itself. Deaths at the hands of ICE and the persecution of activists are also accompanied by a pattern of young Black people found hanged in public places, whose deaths have been dismissed as “suicides” by the authorities. The families and communities of the deceased are demanding independent investigations into the deaths.

The state and its laws are unjust, but they are not all-powerful. The rage and the instinctive self-defense of communal freedoms that these injustices inspire can be used to organize the broad and sustained mobilization of working people, which would force the ruling class to decide either to withdraw its unjust policies or lose control over the economy.

In the face of this reactionary alliance between Trump and De la Espriella, we call on workers in the United States and Colombia to:

• Unequivocally condemn the murders of Joan Durán and Lorenzo Salgado

• Reject the De la Espriella-Trump pact

• Demand independent investigations of the deaths and punishment for those responsible

• Demand prison for the murderers of Joan, Lorenzo, and all ICE criminals

• Organize solidarity between local workers and immigrants

• Demand the dismantling of the repressive ICE apparatus and an end to mass deportations

• Fight for the international unity of the working class against imperialism and its local lackeys

— Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (Colombia)

— Workers’ Voice (U.S.)

Photo: Tributes for Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine. (Robert F. Bukaty / AP)