Trump’s Immigration Crackdown is an Attack on the Entire Working Class

Trump’s Immigration Crackdown is an Attack on the Entire Working Class
https://dailystruggle.org/trumps-immigration-crackdown-attack-on-working-class/

Julian de Gortari, Peter Racioppo
October 30, 2025

Trump’s mass deportations are not just an attack on immigrants—they are an assault on the entire working class. But with union leaders largely on the sidelines, it falls to rank-and-file workers to organize the fightback that can stop it.

When 475 autoworkers were swept up in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid at a Hyundai plantin Alabama on September 4, it was not just an attack on immigrants—it was an attack on the working class. By attacking the most vulnerable workers, the Trump administration aims to divide the working class at the very moment it is escalating a broader assault on labor and democratic rights.

Labor organizers, particularly in the food and agricultural sectors, have been systematically targeted, detained, and deported. Notable cases include:

* Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, a farmworker and organizer in Washington State, was arrested by ICE in March, and detained for four months before “voluntarily” electing to leave the U.S.

* Jeanette Vizguerra, a longtime immigrant rights organizer and former Service Employees International Union (SEIU) member, was abducted from her workplace on March 17, in what was clearly retaliation for her political activism, with an ICE agent reportedly gloating, “We finally got you.” Vizguerra has remained in detention for over six months.

* Mahmoud Khalil, a stateless Palestinian refugee and permanent U.S. resident, was forcibly taken from his New York apartment on March 8, 2025, by unbadged ICE agents in civilian clothes and held in ICE detention for three and a half months. Khalil is a former graduate student worker and UAW member.

* David Huerta, President of the SEIU’s West Coast branch, was assaulted and arrested by ICE while serving as a community observer to prevent abuses during a raid in Los Angeles in June. Huerta was injured during his arrest and hospitalized while in detention. He was released on a charge of conspiracy to impede an officer, which carries a potential sentence of up to six years in federal prison and $50,000 bail.

Countless other workers and labor organizers have been targeted nationwide. ICE raids now occur regularly at schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces. Unaccountable agents, often in masks, routinely abduct people off the street.

Farmworkers have been especially targeted. On August 14, 2025, ICE conducted a second raid at Lynn-Ette & Sons, a farm in Orleans County, New York, during an active unionization effort, arresting seven workers. The United Farm Workers (UFW) union has condemned these actions as targeted retaliation against workers leading unionization efforts and an attempt to intimidate rank-and-file farmworkers. Images and videos available online show ICE agents chasing farmworkers through fields, helicopters overhead, as though they were enemy combatants. Workers are routinely assaulted; at least 16 individuals have died in ICE custody in 2025, including Jaime Alanís, who died after falling from a roof during a July raid. Farmworkers speak of a pervasive atmosphere of fear. As one undocumented farmworker in Ventura County, California, put it, “We really feel like we’re being hunted, we’re being hunted like animals.” Meanwhile, billionaires Lynda and Stewart Resnick have seized on the opportunity to carry out a sweeping union-busting campaign against the United Farm Workers.

This is a campaign to terrorize a section of the working class into submission and send a message to all workers that resistance will be met with repression.

For autoworkers, workplace repression by police and state authorities is nothing new. The police and private security are commonly deployed to picket lines to harass and intimidate striking workers, under the guise of maintaining “law and order,” or sent into plants to surveil workers and union bust. It is clear that the same militarized police and ICE agents being used to round up farmworkers and immigrants today will be used to target picket lines and non-immigrant workers tomorrow, unless the working class takes action to stop it.

Why Mass Deportations Harm All Workers

Some argue that deportations “protect American jobs” by reducing labor market competition. In reality, the opposite is true. Mass deportations act as a mechanism of class repression: by targeting the most precarious workers and suppressing their organizing for better conditions, they sow fear and isolation across the working class. That fear forces the most exploited workers to accept lower wages and harsher conditions, and their artificially depressed pay becomes a benchmark that employers use to undercut and discipline the rest of the workforce.

The attacks on immigrant workers are the spearhead of an attack against the whole labor movement. Trump has stripped collective bargaining rights from federal employees, packed courts and the NLRB with anti-labor appointees, and gutted wage and safety protections — giving employers a green light to attack unions with impunity.

The Trump Administration is siding with SpaceX, Amazon, and other corporations in legal attacks on the NLRB. A recent court ruling against the Board’s constitutionality could, once upheld by the far-right majority on the Supreme Court, strip its enforcement power entirely.

Right-wing politicians and their corporate backers are using a divide-and-conquer strategy, targeting the most vulnerable workers—immigrants, the undocumented, and federal employees—first. Their Project 2025 agenda would legalize union-busting—letting corporations secretly hire consultants, break contracts, and replace real unions with sham company unions—and it openly considers banning public sector unions altogether.

After decades of deindustrialization, corporate elites are scapegoating immigrants to conceal their own role in driving down wages, hollowing out infrastructure, and defunding public services. As their profit rates and global dominance decline, they are pushing to dismantle and privatize what remains of public education, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in order to finance massive tax cuts for the wealthy. The Trump Administration has carried out this agenda with zeal. What “America First” really means is “Profits First.”

From Immigration Raids to Authoritarianism

In early June, the Trump administration launched coordinated ICE raids across Los Angeles, detaining workers without warrants and provoking widespread protests. The administration used the ensuing protests to justify deploying the National Guard and expanding federal power, framing the unrest as an “insurrection.” While local officials issued statements opposing Trump, they aided in suppressing the protests, but resistance spread nationwide, and working-class communities organized to defend themselves against the ongoing raids.

Since the LA raids, Trump has vastly expanded ICE’s powers, authorizing warrantless raids and detention without judicial process. His so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” allocates $45 billion for new detention centers and $30 billion to hire more ICE agents—effectively building a personal paramilitary force. A September 8 Supreme Court ruling has further expanded ICE’s authority, allowing racial profiling—using race and spoken language as criteria for arrests.

ICE has expanded the U.S. immigration detention system, erecting new facilities—including a 5,000-bed tent city at Fort Bliss in El Paso and Florida’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz.” Plans are underway to further expand detention by converting state prisons, including infamous sites like Angola Prison and the so-called “Speedway Slammer.” These facilities—which are known for dangerous, inhumane conditions—establish an infrastructure for secret detention, where detainees can be held out of sight, without due process or court access.

Trump’s military occupation of Washington, D.C., led to nearly 2,000 arrests in just the first 30 days, mostly for low-level offenses, along with a surge in racial profiling and illegal searches, creating a climate of fear that keeps many workers from leaving their homes, going to work, or taking their children to school.

Now, Trump is going after Chicago, Portland, and Memphis, falsely claiming that these cities are gripped by “insurrections,” and sending the military to terrorize citizens and non-citizens alike. On October 2 in Chicago, ICE agents rappelled from Blackhawk helicopters into an apartment building. A resident described the scene: “The kids was crying. People was screaming… they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other,”… One of them [an ICE agent] literally laughed… He said, ‘f*** them kids.’”

This is a coordinated effort to normalize domestic military occupation, dismantle democratic institutions, and terrorize the working class—Trump’s so-called “enemy within.”

Labor’s Response

Across the country, organized labor has mobilized to oppose ICE raids and defend detained workers. The UFW has protested federal actions in Ventura County and called for stronger protections for farmworkers. In Tacoma, the Washington State Labor Council joined hundreds of protesters outside the Northwest ICE Detention Center demanding freedom for detained union activists. SEIU and other unions rallied in Los Angeles and Sacramento against aggressive ICE raids and the detention and injury of SEIU leader David Huerta. SEIU locals also launched nationwide “Workers over Billionaires” Labor Day actions, emphasizing worker power, public investment, and dignity over corporate profit, and organized labor contingents at No Kings Day national protests. When Maximo (Max) Londonio, a forklift driver and member of IAM Local 695, was detained, IAM members rallied for his release.

The UAW has also publicly condemned the recent anti-immigrant raids. UAW Region 9A and Region 6 have put out statementscondemning anti-immigrant attacks since Mahmoud Khalil’s abduction. UAW Local 4811 has incorporated demands for protecting immigrant workers into their bargainingdemands and has organized rallies in defense of international workers. Following the federal raid on Hyundai, the UAW issued a statement denouncing both the dangerous working conditions and the immigration crackdown itself. These statements mark a welcome departure from the nationalism that has often characterized much of the U.S. labor movement, but we need much more than statements. The union leadership has not launched an organized campaign of education, defense, or mobilization that is needed to protect immigrant workers in practice—leaving the initiative largely to rank-and-file efforts and local solidarity networks.

Rather than mobilizing a powerful united front of unions to oppose the far-right attacks, most labor leaders are sitting on the sidelines. The AFL-CIO has done effectively nothing to oppose the mass firings of federal workers or the attacks on immigrant workers. They limit themselves to ineffective legal challenges, toothless statements, and canvassing for the Democrats, who are putting up no real resistance to Trump’s attacks on democratic institutions. In some cases, they actually support Trump’s economic nationalism—Teamsters President Sean O’Brien and International Longshoremen’s Association President Harold Daggett have lined up behind Trump’s trade-war agenda, going out of their way to flatter him and echo his nationalist rhetoric. Shawn Fain, despite militant language about opposing billionaires, has also supported Trump’s trade war and lent credence to the claim that it will “protect American jobs,” when in reality it has already caused hundreds of UAW workers to be laid off, with thousands of Canadian and Mexican autoworkers impacted by the instability.

This capitulation legitimizes Trump’s policies and paves the way for further attacks on workers. If labor remains passive, assaults on rank-and-file workers and union leaders will become increasingly common and dangerous.

“I would love to have [Fain] show us support and call a general strike sooner than later, and tell Trump to keep ICE out of our communities, stop attacking working families, to protect the very people that are part of our union.”

Organizing to Defend Ourselves

In order to defeat Trump’s program of mass deportations and racism against immigrants and defend our basic right to organize, we need to mobilize our trade unions, community organizations, and the unorganized working class.

We should build ties with all unions, day laborer centers, and workers who want to take action, and begin organizing public meetings to discuss the attacks on immigrants and labor, and how to organize a working class response. If union leaders are not willing to lead the fight, we should organize rank-and-file caucuses in the unions that can lead the way in educating and organizing our co-workers, and preparing for strikes to defend ourselves and our immigrant brothers and sisters.

Ultimately, to stop the widespread and escalating attacks against immigrants, the working class has to respond at scale, and labor leaders need to take initiative and organize their members to respond collectively. Militant labor leaders should be organizing to build concrete strike strategies and plans that members are committed to acting on, to shut down entire cities and sectors until the Trump administration backs down.

As Marcie Pedraza, a UAW Local 551 member working at the Ford Chicago Assembly plant, said in a recent interview, “I would love to have [Fain] show us support and call a general strike sooner than later, and tell Trump to keep ICE out of our communities, stop attacking working families, to protect the very people that are part of our union.” If Fain and other UAW leaders believe the UAW membership and Local leadership isn’t prepared to heed that call, then they should be committing resources and attention to that preparation. Until then, militant, rank-and-file leaders on the shop floor can be directly politically educating and organizing our coworkers, and we can use that energy to push Fain and the UAW leadership further.