The images of tens of thousands of protesters heroically defying and resisting the brutal repression ordered by Donald Trump's far-right government in Los Angeles have gone around the world.
The unstoppable uprising of the migrant youth and working class of Los Angeles is spreading to dozens more cities and united demonstrations across the country have already been announced for June 14, and they will be massive.
We are facing one of the most powerful outbursts in years, a mass movement against ICE raids and the openly racist policies of the Trump administration that inevitably harks back to the revolts over the assassination of George Floyd, when Trump himself had to hide in the White House bunker.
The courage and bravery of the masses in Los Angeles shows the US working class as a whole the way to defeat the increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic measures of Trumpism. Today, it is the Latin American migrants who are the target of his offensive and who are taking to the streets to oppose this ultra-right government. But Trump's policies are rooted in the deep decadence and internal crisis of US imperialism and represent a declaration of war on all the oppressed.
Trump's racist offensive unleashes exemplary response
Since January, the anti-immigrant crackdown has led to the deportation of 72,179 people, most of them of Latin American origin. The viciousness with which these policies are being implemented has pushed thousands of migrants - including many with papers, second-generation youth and entire families - onto the streets.
Arrests no longer occur only in night raids, but inside the very immigration courts where people come to regularise their status.
In recent weeks, most of those detained have been women, mothers who were arrested while their children were in school. Many migrants, even documented ones, are afraid to leave their homes because of the risk of being detained just because of their skin colour, as ICE agents do not stop to check whether they are legal or not. Hundreds of these migrants (including many who had obtained legal recognition of their status from the US government) have been deported to veritable concentration camps such as Guantánamo or the macro-prison built by Bukele in El Salvador as if they were prisoners of war or dangerous criminals.
The straw that broke the camel's back was a particularly savage raid in front of a Home Depot in the Paramount district: a militarised convoy, armed with machine guns, carried out an eight-hour operation that left dozens of migrants detained. It was a war operation against unarmed workers.
The response was swift. More than 10,000 people took to the streets of Los Angeles to stop this offensive. This mobilisation is linked to the protests of 5 April that swept across the country and turned into a real popular uprising. What began as a rally in front of an immigration detention centre turned into a massive demonstration, with columns marching from different parts of the city.
The hypocrisy of the democrats
Although the Democratic Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, fills his mouth cynically presenting himself as a defender of migrants, the reality is that the California police (LAPD), in coordination with the National Guard and the Highway Patrol, brutally repressed the movement. Tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades were used. At least 70 protesters were arrested and dozens were injured.
Trump, who began by deploying 300 National Guard agents to California without the governor's consent, has now sent more than 2,000. This constitutes a legal violation unprecedented since 1965. He has invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 to justify this deployment of a police-military force like the National Guard. Despite this, it has failed to break up the protest.
The brutal repressive deployment has continued by also sending in troops from a body historically used to invade other countries, such as the Marines, known for their brutality, torture and war crimes.
To justify this savage repression, Trump is resorting to a fascistic discourse labelling the protesters as ‘invaders’, ‘insurrectionists’ and a ‘threat to America’, claiming that if he had not sent in the police and the army Los Angeles would be destroyed, when the violence to break up and attack peaceful demonstrations - as endless recordings and testimonies show - has been unleashed by the state.
The real violence does not come from the protesters, but from the racist and repressive policies of the two parties of the ruling class: the Republicans, of course, but also the Democrats, whose talk of peace hides the application of capitalist and racist policies against migrants that have also paved the way for Trumpism.
The Biden and Obama administrations deported a similar number of migrants as Trump and maintained many of the laws and measures he is now using. The Democratic Biden administration initiated the complicity with the holocaust against the Palestinian people being carried out by Netanyahu's Nazi regime with Trump's enthusiastic support.
The enemy within
During the last few hours Trump has even threatened to imprison the governor of California and the mayor of L.A. because these two Democratic leaders, after initially ordering and justifying the repression, have had to make statements denouncing the government's brutality, pressured by the atmosphere of massive rejection of it and support for the demonstrators that exists among the population. But the true face of the Democrats has once again been shown with the declaration of a curfew by the mayor of Los Angeles.
Trump's threats are not just bluster, they reflect his authoritarian and semi-dictatorial tendencies and the very serious threat that this ultra-right government represents for the US working class, both native and migrant.
This Monday and Tuesday the mobilisations continued. They demanded, among other things, the release of David Huerta, the SEIU leader accused of conspiracy. The struggle is spreading, there are already protests in 19 cities, including Austin, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas (Texas), in the heart of the reaction.
The government needs to escalate the violence. Not just to discipline the migrant population, but to crush any resistance from the working class as a whole.
To date, Trump has deployed 10,000 troops to the southern border, 20,000 National Guard agents in mass deportation operations and established ‘national defence zones’ in border regions of Texas and New Mexico. Today he is attempting to legitimize the occupation of Los Angeles with an additional 4,100 troops and 700 marines.
The aim is to ensure the consolidation of an authoritarian project in the service of the oligarchy that Trump cynically calls the ‘Big Beautiful Law’. The goal is clear: to militarise US society, sow fear and crush any form of social resistance.
This ultra-right agenda represents a brutal attack on the public budget: cuts of up to 56% in science, public health and research, elimination of Title I (state and local supplemental funding for low-performing children, especially in high-poverty schools) and education subsidies, massive public sector layoffs, elimination of rights against the gender-diverse community, and dismantling of Medicare. This is not just an attack on migrants: it is a declaration of war on the entire working class.
As US global hegemony crumbles - from the defeat in the war in Ukraine to the failed tariff confrontation with China - it now intensifies the option of reinforcing domestic exploitation. For economic elites to maintain their privileges, they need to break the social and labour rights of millions. But this desperate offensive may backfire.
The struggle of the migrant working class in the USA leads the way
The only way out to defeat this authoritarian project is to organise the working class in struggle, inside and outside the US.
The Republicans use the classic demagogy of the ultra-right, blaming migration for all the ills of the country. They intend to use migrants to justify militarisation and divert attention from the real enemy, the one responsible for the brutal economic crisis and the deterioration in the living standards and rights of the working class, which is none other than the same class that Trump represents, the speculators and millionaires who have plundered the country for decades.
In the face of these threats the double talk of the Democrats, criticising Trump in words when in practice they have implemented very similar policies is pure hypocrisy. They cry crocodile tears in the face of police brutality when they have benefited for years from the illegality of migrants to keep a captive vote with false promises and facilitate their exploitation by businessmen.
Nor are Latin American governments allies of the masses challenging Trump on the streets. Even the supposedly ‘progressive’ ones who in reality act as Trump's minions. A clear example is the government of Claudia Sheinbaum, who while criticising Trump in words has militarised the northern border with 10,000 National Guard elements and is silent at the T-MEC tables on the regularisation of migrants.
The migrant community is the backbone of the US economy: 90% of the agricultural workforce, 30% of the construction industry. In Los Angeles alone, more Mexicans live there than in any city in the world outside Mexico, there are 65 million Latinos in the US, 38 million of whom are Mexican, of whom only 4 million are undocumented. We have the power to deal a big blow to this reactionary government.
Workers affiliated to the AFL-CIO - with more than 15 million members - must be called upon to join the mobilisations and to force their leaders to support this struggle. The empty talk politics of the trade union bureaucracy linked to the Democratic Party is another factor that has allowed Trumpism to advance.
The mobilisations with their epicentre in Los Angeles are shaking the whole of the United States, showing immense strength and leading the way for the rest of the working class. Only mass struggle on the streets, as the migrant workers are showing, unifying the demands of the working class as a whole, can defeat this declaration of war by Trump and the big corporations that support him against the working class.
The mobilizations against Trump are a challenge and an opportunity for the combative left in the US, Latin America, and the rest of the world. It is urgent to articulate an internationalist campaign of active solidarity with the struggle of the migrant working class, and turn it into a show of strength against the entire global far right and its leader.
This extraordinary uprising of the most oppressed sectors of our class shows the path to revolution. We must understand and learn from this spontaneous reaction, which exposes decades of suffering, exploitation, police violence, and institutional racism. It confirms what we have stated on numerous occasions: the conditions are ready for building a militant organization of the American working class, one that definitively breaks with the Democrats and raises the banner of socialist revolution.
Forward, comrades. Let us win with unity, struggle, and the strength of our class.
