LOS ANGELES — Since June 6, federal immigration cops have descended on communities throughout southern California, arresting immigrant workers and sparking resistance. Crowds of dozens to hundreds gather where raids and arrests take place, and tens of thousands of working people have come to peaceful protests and marches here.
The agents try to conceal who they are, jumping out of vehicles dressed in masks and black or camo, often with no visible sign of which government agency they’re with. They grab people walking or driving to work, target day laborers at Home Depot parking lots, raid garment shops, car washes and in the fields in the Oxnard area. All this gives the lie to the government’s claim they are targeting known “criminals.” Their targets are regular working people.
They do “roving patrols” in majority Latino neighborhoods and in working-class cities like Bell, Pico Rivera and Paramount. Many workers today are hunkering down at home. The grocery stores are emptier, there’s less traffic, streets where vendors set up are empty, and people are skipping work, school or medical appointments. Life is on hold for hundreds of thousands afraid to risk getting caught by “la migra.”
When dozens of workers tried to block the driveway during a raid at a downtown garment shop, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents roughed up and arrested David Huerta, the California state president of the Service Employees International Union.
After the raids started, many people came downtown to protest, as often happens when big world events unfold. Most of the protests were peaceful, drawing U.S. citizens and immigrant workers alike who oppose the crackdown. Many were at their first demonstration.
But without an organized, disciplined leadership, or groups responsible for the protests, as evening came and crowds thinned out, a small but determined layer of anarchists, antifa types and provocateurs sought out confrontations with immigration agents or other cops, mostly around one of the detention centers downtown.
They broke off chunks of concrete to throw, along with firecrackers, water bottles and other debris. They also blocked a major freeway for a brief time, a deeply anti-working-class move since it mainly affected people trying to get to and from work.
On the worst night of these riots, some 23 shops were looted, as thieves took advantage of the chaos to ply their trade. While limited in scope to only a few blocks downtown, and small in numbers, they got most of the front-page press coverage.
They gave the government the opportunity to mobilize 1,700 federalized National Guard troops and later some 700 U.S. Marines, who are still deployed here after the actions are long past.
Union rally
On June 9 the SEIU held a rally in the middle of the day, which drew several thousand people, demanding the release of David Huerta and an end to the raids. It was organized and disciplined, marshaled by clearly visible union members guiding people to the rally and assuring an orderly event. Workers and their families attended, knowing it would be a safe place to protest.
Phil Meza, a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1428, told the Militant he came to demand Huerta be freed, and “for all the others still detained to be released. Our job as a union is to protect workers regardless of immigration status.” His local represents health care and grocery workers. “There is the way to protest,” he said, pointing to the rally.
Ivan Robles joined the action, saying a member of a family where he works at the Latino Theater Company was arrested for standing up against the raids. “No one is illegal,” he said, “All people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.”
After three days in detention Huerta was freed June 9 on $50,000 bond. He faces a felony charge of conspiracy to impede an officer, which could result in a six-year sentence.
Demand amnesty, no deportations!
Speaking with someone who stopped to look at the Militant at a table at the rally, I explained, “The Socialist Workers Party candidates, Norton Sandler for governor and myself for mayor of Los Angeles, are calling for amnesty for all undocumented workers in the U.S. This should be the demand of the labor movement and those fighting the deportations today, because it is a way to remove the burden of fear and tear down the barriers to fighting side by side against the bosses and their government.
“The capitalist rulers have a sharply opposed class standpoint. They’re driven by the market, the workings of capitalism, to intensify competition among workers, to turn us against one another, fostering divisions between workers with and without papers. That’s why this attack is happening now, not because of Donald Trump, but because the capitalist system is in a crisis and they need scapegoats.
“They are testing the limits of how far they can go to use harsher and more repressive measures in anticipation of sharper class conflicts to come, and that’s dangerous for the working class,” I said.
He bought a subscription to the Militant and the book Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes.
I raised the example of the massive rallies that took place across the country on May 1, 2006, when millions of workers around the country marched against a draconian proposed anti-immigrant law, chanting “We’re workers, not criminals, stop the deportations!” Those rallies shut down production at meatpacking plants, garment shops and at the ports of L.A. and Long Beach, showing the power of the working class.
“That’s what’s needed today,” I told people at the rally. “A call by the unions to join in a mass rally to say ‘No to the raids, no to the deportations’ and demand amnesty now! A protest workers know will be serious and disciplined.”
Many bosses who rely heavily on exploited immigrant labor have lodged protests with the Trump administration against raids in their factories and fields. The administration responded by saying they would limit certain workplace raids, especially in agriculture, hotels and meatpacking.
“The fight for amnesty and an end to deportations is a union issue and must be taken up by the labor movement,” Sandler told the Militant. “How can you organize unions if every worker isn’t entitled to join the fight, and how can unions fight effectively if workers have to worry about whether the immigration cops could organize a raid on their union hall or picket lines?”