WASHINGTON — “Labor Demands Justice for Kilmar” is the headline on a flyer for a May 22 rally — postponed at the last minute by forecasted heavy wind and rain, to be rescheduled shortly. It demands the U.S. government bring SMART unionist and sheet metal apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia home. He was seized and deported despite the fact he was protected in the U.S. by a court order. The Donald Trump administration admitted he was deported by mistake.
Michael Coleman, the general president of SMART, will be the featured speaker. He has been campaigning for the return of his fellow union member since he was deported March 15.
The flyer for the rally, co-sponsored by the AFL-CIO and other unions, explains, “Unions know that an injury to one is an injury to all, and an attack on the rights of Kilmar and others will lead to everyone’s rights being stripped next. If due process can be taken from one person, it can be taken from all of us.”
Over 50 supporters packed into the court in Greenbelt, Maryland, May 16 for the most recent hearing in Abrego Garcia’s case. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis pressed government attorneys to explain why they are refusing to make good on her orders to bring him back. The U.S. Supreme Court backed her decision, calling for Abrego Garcia’s return in a unanimous ruling.
He has not been seen or heard from in a month since Chris Van Hollen, a U.S. Senator from Maryland, was permitted to meet with him in El Salvador.
Jonathan David Guynn, the attorney for the U.S. government, claimed the administration is acting in good faith, but cannot say more without exposing state secrets that will damage Washington’s relations with foreign powers. He told Xinis that Abrego Garcia is in good health, adding, “he’s gained weight” in El Centro Penitentiary in Santa Ana.
Xinis said she was skeptical of the government’s arguments, pointing out it has invoked the state secrets privilege 246 times and claimed other privileges at least 1,400 times. Basically, she said, the government’s position is “Judge, take my word for it.”
Two filmset painters, Sarah Hooley and Carolyn Hampton, attended the hearing on a break from work. “We need to keep fighting for due process and in defense of the U.S. Constitution,” Hooley told the Militant. “Immigrants are not just economics, they are members of society. They bring culture.”
The fight to reverse the deportation of Abrego Garcia is far from the only battle taking place today against government moves to deny the rights of workers without papers.
Another worker “mistakenly” deported from Maryland, an immigrant from Venezuela identified in court documents as “Cristian,” was also deported while under a protective order barring his removal and sent to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. Federal Judge Stephanie Gallagher ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return. He first came to this country as a child and was barred from deportation while his asylum case is being considered.
Defense of ‘birthright citizenship’
Some 300 protesters joined a rally outside the Supreme Court May 15 where the justices heard arguments on whether an executive order issued by President Trump eliminating “birthright citizenship” of children born here to immigrant parents is legal.
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says unequivocally, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Supreme Court rulings dating back to 1898 have upheld this.
Arely Rodriguez, 29, from Princeton, New Jersey, is a member of Resistencia en Acción, a group formed in response to an ICE raid there under the Joseph Biden administration. He attended the rally and met this Militant correspondent and SWP campaigner James Harris. We discussed why a working-class movement to fight for amnesty for all immigrant workers in the U.S. needs to be built to unite the working class.
A similar struggle had been waged to overthrow Jim Crow segregation, Harris said. The employers and their government had used racist discrimination against Blacks to superexploit them.
“This is what the capitalists do,” Harris said. “They use divisions between different sections of the working class to lower the value of all workers and worsen the conditions for our entire class, weakening our ability to fight.”
“I never thought about it like that, but it’s true — a lot of times the immigrant issue is posed as a separate question, but it’s not,” Rodriguez said. “People standing up together for their rights is the only way we’ve ever won anything.”