Mass Deportations Are an Attack on All Workers

An updated foreword for the rapidly evolving situation:
President Trump has openly declared intentions to increase repression against legal immigrants, some of which are on college visas, green card holders or were in the process of naturalization. The highest profile cases have been centered around immigrant students which participated or were leading figures during the college encampment demonstrations against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Mohammed Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, both grad students and green card holders, were detained by the state department on March 8, 2025 and by ICE on March 28,2025 following a barrage of harassment from Zionist groups concealing themselves under the banner of anti- defamation organizations. Secretary of state Marco Rubio gleamingly publicized that the US has the right to revoke any student visa or green card and has stated that there's 300 more students that they're planning on detaining. The laws used come from the 18th century alien and sedition act, but also the immigration and nationality Act of 1952. This can only show that behind the democratic and liberal mask, class oppression is actually hidden, and that Marx so rightly affirmed that the synonym of “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” is “infantry, cavalry, artillery.” The language used is the same as before and can be found in many western countries that this is necessary because they're subversive, even dangerous criminal elements and are a threat to democracy. Trump's approach has so far not outpaced his predecessors, Biden’s presidency revoked asylum and protected status and deported a record of immigrants all with greater state and local cooperation, but it's only been a few months into his presidency. Whether Trump's more crass approach of shirking state procedure while breaking things and moving fast becomes the preferred approach versus the polished legalistic approach is to be determined. It's becoming clear to see increased reactionary sentiment with US progressives such as Senator Bernie Sanders in his anti- oligarch speeches condemning illegal immigrants as inappropriate; or the universities giving no protection to their students even going as far as threatening to retroactively revoke diplomas. One thing is for certain, the state is running out of options besides the certainty of wars which increasingly becomes the last avenue to settle capitalist crises. Increased repression and forced discipline on parts of the working class and pushing for greater social reaction as decadent capitalism spins more crises are guaranteed in preparing the working class for generalized wars. (Internationalist Workers’ Group, April 4, 2025)

On January 29th, the Laken Riley Act was signed into law by President Trump. The act is designed to enable the state to indefinitely detain and summarily deport immigrants no matter their legal status. Immigrants can now be simply accused of committing a crime, including non violent misdemeanors, and be deported without ever being convicted of any offense against the state. This act was clearly bipartisan; 50 House Democrats voted for it and it's a continuation of Biden's brutal anti-immigration policies for expediting mass deportations. The act is a part of the growing social reaction put forward by politicians as economic crises exacerbate the already precarious situation for the near pauperized working class. The growth of social reactionary sentiment is driven by the fears of working class’s enemies including the small capitalists in their anxiety over ruination as capitalism’s crisis deepens. These small capitalists, or petty bourgeoisie, will always tend to side against the working class in the hopes that they may avoid the fate of joining the ranks of the working class. The capitalist class is operating under increasingly narrow constraints leading to more desperate acts as profit rates remain ever anemic, opening new chapters of brutality to piece together the decaying social system.

The act also allows states to sue the federal government to prevent local governments from ever letting immigrants out of detention, or to pressure sanctuary cities, which will enable the indefinite detention of immigrants under the fear of lawsuits or federal interventions, and several states have followed the federal-level lead in attacking undocumented immigrants. Although the bill failed to pass, Mississippi proposed using bounty hunters to track down immigrants.⁽¹⁾ Texas’s SB 4 has acted as a model law for states that seek to compel sanctuary cities to aid ICE in enforcement.⁽²⁾ Idaho has passed a new law that compels deportation of anyone in the state that is undocumented and has committed at least a misdemeanor, a statewide version of the Laken Riley Act that also places pressure on local law enforcement to facilitate ICE round-ups.⁽³⁾ Additionally the administration has resurrected the Alien Registry Act of 1940 & the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952; these laws requires undocumented persons to provide fingerprints and an address to the Federal Government or face fines, immediate imprisonment and or deportation .⁽⁴⁾ The surge in attention on undocumented immigrants at both the federal and state level is likely to increase the pressure on sanctuary cities to comply with federal border enforcement. Threats from the Trump administration on local and state officials that refuse to cooperate with ICE place further pressure on these jurisdictions.

The reason for the coordination and intensity of these assaults on undocumented workers is that the Trump administration has promised to deport all undocumented people in the United States, which is approximately ten million people. To deport this many people, the administration will require increased capacity for detention to handle the processing and removal to a country that will accept them. President Trump has ordered the infamous Guantánamo Bay to become the US’s Devil's Island for around 30,000 immigrant detainees. The base can only hold 800 now and it's unlikely that “adequate” facilities can even be constructed due to rugged terrain, leading to mass suffering and fatalities. Guantánamo Bay has already received its first batch of 10 prisoners that were transferred there from US army base Fort Bliss on the US - Mexico border. This memorandum is a part of the ongoing military operation on the US - Mexico border, with all the familiar language heard in imperialist geopolitics. The USA is calling the situation an invasion of criminal gangs and a threat to national sovereignty as a way to justify interning these “dangerous subversive elements.” The justification is reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson’s Palmer Raids, where communists and syndicalists were deemed subversive and were exiled, or when the liberal conciliator FDR interned the Japanese. In both of those past cases, anti-immigrant sentiment was inexorably connected to increased militarism as an aspect of the crisis of imperialist capitalism. Increased xenophobia is an antecedent for the drive towards generalized wars that appears to rear its ugly head once again as the threat of war is once again top of mind.

In alignment with the recent administration’s decision to detain migrants in Guantanamo Bay, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has negotiated a legally dubious and financially lucrative agreement with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to ship undocumented migrants and US citizens convicted of violent crimes to the newly constructed Terrorist Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador.⁽⁵⁾ After Bukele instituted martial law in 2022 with the political cover of cracking down on gang violence, El Salvador’s prisons have seen an increase of over 83,000 occupants as of December 2024, roughly 28 times the average yearly growth of the Salvadoran prison population in the last 20 years. The prison system is rampant with instances of torture, abuse, and overcrowding, with prisons reaching over 300% capacity.⁽⁶⁾ Those jailed since Bukele’s imposition of martial law have been targeted along race and class lines in mass arrests with little to no due process, while daily quotas and anonymous tips incentivize military officials and police to detain men living in impoverished areas wracked by gang violence. Those imprisoned in the CECOT, now the largest prison in Latin America with a holding capacity of 40,000 inmates, are held indefinitely, restrained in cells of roughly 80 inmates, and kept from ever going outside.⁽⁷⁾ If a deal is formally reached, we can expect undocumented migrants and US citizens alike to vanish into the unrestricted expansion of the Salvadoran prison system, as even innocent civilians of El Salvador accused of gang affiliations have been forcibly disappeared under the auspices of the Bukele regime.

The administration has also tied its immigration policy to its other favored policy of tariffs, and the administration has been gung-ho in their statements promising tariffs on Canada and Mexico—in addition to continuing Trump’s traditional rhetoric of tariffing China. Giving pretext for the new hostile approach to the former trading partners of past administrations, the Trump Administration has cited an “extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs.” Citing a belief that Chinese officials allow the flow of precursor chemicals to drug manufacturers, a supposed “alliance with the government of Mexico” held by traffickers south of the border, and drug labs owned by cartels in Canada, Trump’s reversal of America’s neoliberal course has been a trumpet’s herald proclaiming a revived manufacturing base to the nationalists. This has been a cause for celebration for some sections of the American bourgeoisie— and those who fight for them—under the assumption that industry and the jobs it entails will return to America and American workers. Thus, unions such as the UAW representing workers in many manufacturing industries have supported the news, even if it means dividing the working class along national boundaries and weakening working-class power.

In the course of the ongoing crisis, there is the inevitable sinking of the small capitalist (i.e. the small business owner, the farmer, etc.) into the working class as capital becomes more concentrated into the hands of the large capitalists. American mythology venerates this class as the beating heart of the country, but this middle-class idealization cannot conquer the laws of capitalism. At this precipice, they now flail and scapegoat any group that appears to them to be taking their “American Dream” away. In their reactionary evaluation, if there are social services provided by the federal government, not only should immigrants be kept from them by means of deportation, but that allocated money should be used instead as a capital investment in their businesses, a sentiment that is refrained often as “taking care of Americans here at home.” Moreover, these small capitalists endeavor to “roll back the wheel of history”⁽⁸⁾ by expelling immigrants in a bid to save themselves as capitalists, and to justify this they rely on racism: immigrants are not racially acceptable to receive the American dream. In Donald J. Trump, the small capitalists find their chief: a celebrity, but not a particularly successful business man in the grand scheme, and not someone of particularly high net worth. Perhaps not a small capitalist, but significantly smaller than the Forbes 400. His use of racism and various other bigotry to justify his failings are particularly attractive to the reactionary middle classes.

But what of the large capitalists, and why do they allow this hysteria? In general these kinds of isolationist policies are not good for business. In the short term we might expect to see labor shortage and a pressure to increase wages, but with the working class disorganized and in retreat, it is almost trivial for the capitalists to suppress wages with their reign of terror in workplaces, and so it is no major detriment to lose some less than 5% of the total workforce.⁽⁹⁾ Here and around the world we have a capitalist class preparing for imperialist war. National self-sufficiency is critical to avoiding supply chain disruption and reliance on international partners, or even enemies, such is the case with China, for resources needed for national defense and the manufacture of weapons and military equipment. On top of this, it is always beneficial for the capitalists to isolate its national working class from those of other nations to prevent solidarity and organization across national borders. Ultimately the larger capitalist has little to lose by supporting the reactionary whims of the small capitalist, where ultimately on the aggregate the capital owned by the middle classes will be appropriated one way or another by the large capitalist.

But we do not call for solidarity with a crumbling middle class, we call for solidarity with the working class across borders. We call for unity and internationalism with those who are already under the yoke of exploitation and the cooperation towards a party of the working class that can end this mode of exploitation, racism, and bigotry. We call for no war but the class war, and we call on those workers who would be the first conscripts to hold together with your working class comrades and fight back against the capitalists who would make you cannon fodder in the name of their profit.

Internationalist Workers’ Group