The mobilisations in LA against Ice raids and deportations have the potential to spread nationwide, and provide a real opposition to the Trump agenda, argues John Clarke

Trump’s high-profile immigration raids have come up against mass resistance in Los Angeles, and the activities of his notorious Ice enforcers have been vigorously challenged and seriously disrupted. Not only is the struggle spreading to other cities but it may well be a turning point in terms of serious and active resistance to the reactionary Trump agenda.

As of 9 June, with the city preparing for a fourth day of confrontations with immigration agents and their police protectors, the raids were continuing and Trump had deployed 2,000 members of the National Guard to try to suppress the resistance. This is the first time that presidential power has been used to take control of the Guard since 1992 and the first such deployment without a request from a state governor since 1965.

Astoundingly, it is now reported that some 700 Marines have been mobilised in Los Angeles  and they are being kept at the ready in an act that has been described as ‘an illegal and authoritarian escalation.’

A report in the Economic Times captures the determined and powerful community response to the ‘surprise immigration raids across Los Angeles.’ As people took to the streets, the ‘air outside the Home Depot in Paramount, where the protests first erupted, was thick with tear gas and smoke. Flashbangs echoed through the streets as LA County sheriffs fired round after round in an attempt to clear out demonstrators refusing to leave. Protesters scattered and regrouped, many shielding their faces from the acrid air.’

The Guardian reports that this effort has included the use of ‘teargas and other munitions to disperse crowds.’ Among the multiple arrests that have taken place, police took David Huerta, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in California, into custody. The union leader was injured during the arrest and required hospital treatment.

Widespread confrontations

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) organised another rally in the downtown area on Monday, calling for ‘humane treatment and access to lawyers for all detainees’ and an ‘end to ICE raids that devastate immigrant families and communities.’

There have been ongoing and widespread confrontations throughout the city, as residents try to stop the harm being caused by the raids in their communities. ‘On Sunday thousands of Angelenos had swamped the streets around city hall, the federal courthouse and a detention center where previously arrested protesters are being held. They also brought a freeway to a standstill.’

It is important to appreciate how deeply people in the area resent the incursions of Trump’s enforcers and the racist immigration policies that they are upholding. ‘Los Angeles county [is] home to 3.5 million immigrants, making up a third of the population.’ For this reason, southern California was always a likely flashpoint for resistance to the immigration raids.

It is beyond dispute that Trump’s ‘ramped up immigration enforcement with mass detentions in overcrowded facilities, a new travel ban, a major crackdown on international students and rushed deportations without due process’ has produced enormous fear and anger and the social explosion in Los Angeles is a fully justified and entirely necessary response. The escalation in Los Angeles clearly reflects a determined effort by the Trump administration to intensify its assault on immigrants. On 29 May, the Guardian reported that the ‘Trump administration has set aggressive new goals in its anti-immigration-agenda, demanding that federal agents arrest 3,000 people a day – or more than a million in a year.’

Frustrated by the difficulties encountered in accelerating the arrests and deportations, the administration is looking for new and more aggressive approaches, ‘such as mandating federal law enforcement agents outside Ice to assist in arrests and transports, more deputizing of compliant state and local law enforcement agencies, and arresting people at locations that were once protected, like courthouses.’

Even as this escalation is set in motion, however, public ‘polling is showing decreasing support for Trump’s immigration agenda, as Americans wake up to the reality that mass deportation means arrests of our neighbors and friends, masked agents in our communities and people afraid to go to work and show up to school, in ways that undermine our local economies.’ This view of things is being powerfully confirmed on the streets of Los Angeles.

Though tensions are exceptionally high in Southern California, there is no doubt that the potential for the resistance to the immigration raids to spread throughout the US is enormous. Newsweek reports that new ‘anti-ICE demonstrations are cropping up around the country [and] the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said its members would hold rallies in over a dozen cities across the country, following the arrest of one of its members, David Huerta, during the riots in LA … “Over a dozen cities, including New York City, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Atlanta will see rallies take place in the days ahead”.’

Trump’s reckless course

As working-class people take the streets to challenge the racist immigration raids, there is no doubt that there are also misgivings and divisions within US ruling circles over the reckless course that Trump is following. The Pew Research Center notes that the ‘unauthorized immigrant population in the United States’ was estimated to be around eleven million in 2022. With about 8.3 million in the workforce. The implications of deporting a million of those people a year aren’t to the liking of many US capitalists.

An article published in Newsweek last month showed that a poll conducted by the ‘employment law firm Littler found that a majority of U.S. business executives view immigration policy as a key area of concern. Seventy-five percent of respondents identified the current administration’s immigration policies as one of their top concerns …’.

Employers were worried that the ‘removal of thousands of undocumented workers could disrupt supply chains, exacerbate labor shortages, and result in higher prices for consumers.’ Moreover, agricultural ‘production could fall by $30 billion to $60 billion if Trump’s deportation policy is implemented, according to the American Business Immigration Coalition (ABIC).’

Of course, US employers profit from the vulnerability of undocumented workers and the threat posed by immigration enforcement assists them in this. They want these workers to be insecure and the possibility of deportation is a major part of this. However, the crude racism and excessive zeal that Trump is showing poses a threat to the interests of a section of the capitalist class and, as with his trade-war policies, this is generating major tensions.

Trump’s assault on Los Angeles is also engendering a feud with his Democratic political rivals. CNBC reports that Democratic California Governor Gavin ‘Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta said they would sue Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for deploying National Guard troops.’ For his part, Trump has made clear that ‘he would support arresting … Newsom for purportedly obstructing federal immigration enforcement actions in Los Angeles.’

Though they are at odds with the Trump administration over the immigration raids and his efforts to crush resistance in Los Angeles, the Democratic Party will be a major obstacle when it comes to taking the upsurge in that city forward and building a sustained movement of resistance to Trump’s reactionary agenda.

The Democrats will be only too happy to condemn Trump’s raids and express support for the communities that are impacted but we may also be sure that they will be anxious to distance themselves from militant resistance. They will undoubtedly work to subordinate any protest movement to their own electoral agenda. This is role they have always played and we may fully expect it to be repeated in the present context.

During the last Trump administration, the police killing of George Floyd sparked a Black Lives Matter mobilisation of vast proportions. As David McNally and Charles Post have shown, with Barack Obama playing the leading role, the Democratic establishment worked to demobilise the movement so as to focus on the election of Joe Biden. This episode should serve as a warning at the present moment.

There have already been large-scale protests against Trump throughout the US. On May Day, National Public Radio noted that protesters ‘took to the streets nationwide on Thursday in May Day rallies opposing the Trump administration … to decry what they view as attacks on the working class and immigrants.’

Now, in Los Angeles, one of the most brutal elements of the Trump agenda, his racist immigration raids, is being directly challenged by the very communities that are under attack. It is an inspiring and powerful struggle that can spread across the US, garnering widespread support and making the work of the hated immigration enforcers far more difficult.

The challenge to the raids, moreover, can play a critical role in generating a united movement of workers and communities that can mount a counteroffensive. On the streets and picket lines, this could disrupt the implementation of Trump’s agenda and create a political crisis for his administration. The resistance in Los Angeles is pointing the way forward.