In a new demonstration of state brutality, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, in coordination with the FBI and DHS, unleashed raids in Los Angeles loaded with violence and racism. They arrested dozens of immigrants without warrants and brutally repressed them as they worked or walked through working-class neighborhoods and commercial areas. During a spontaneous protest against the raids at a Home Depot on Friday, ICE and federal agents brutally beat and detained David Huerta, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California and SEIU–United Service Workers West. Huerta is now severely injured and in detention at a local hospital, and SEIU has called protests across the country to demand his release and an end to the deportation raids.

The popular resistance responded quickly: in the neighborhoods of Compton and Paramount on Saturday, and across the greater LA area on Sunday, the organized community won a historic victory, confronting the repressive forces and beating them back for three days. Thousands of people mobilized on Sunday in confrontations with police, ICE, DHS, and the National Guard.

The message from the community was clear and powerful: ICE didn’t leave on its own; the people forced it out.

Dozens of residents, activists, and organizations such as Unión del Barrio and the Community Self-Defense Coalition mobilized, and through neighborhood patrols and direct action, prevented a massive raid targeting hundreds of immigrant workers. It is estimated that over 100 people were rescued from arbitrary detention, demonstrating that active solidarity and popular organization are effective tools to stop the state’s repressive machinery.

In the face of these acts of resistance, the Trump administration has intensified its racist and authoritarian offensive, sending 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles in response to the spontaneous protests that arose after the June 6 and 7 raids in the Fashion District, at Home Depot stores, and other areas with a high concentration of immigrant labor. This criminalization of immigration — far from being about “security,” as government officials claim — is nothing more than a strategy to weaken the working class as a whole, using fear, racism, and state violence as weapons. But in defiance of these attempts to divide the working class, hundreds of people took to the streets in open resistance; documented and undocumented alike, workers came out in defense of their neighbors, friends, relatives, students, and fellow immigrants.

These raids are not excesses or mistakes; they are calculated actions of social control in the service of capital. They seek to sow terror in marginalized communities and dismantle class solidarity, using racism as a tool of domination. It is not enough for the state to criminalize immigrants; it represses them with tear gas, stun grenades, and militarization, just as it did in 1992 after the Rodney King verdict and in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. Today, the state is again resorting to military force to contain social protest. This is the true face of imperialism: the brutal use of the state apparatus to defend the privileges of capitalists, who are billionaire businessmen and bankers, repressing those who fight for a dignified life, both people born in the United States and those who have immigrated there.

Racism and Exploitation: Two Sides of the Same Coin

The anti-immigration offensive has been advanced by both Republican and Democratic administrations, from the mass deportation attacks of Operation Wetback in the 1950s, which brutally deported millions of Mexicans, to the creation of ICE in 2003, as well as the LAPD’s history of brutal repression against Black and Latino communities and the current anti-immigrant raids.

Despite the violent criminalization of immigrants, the capitalist system will continue to hire the immigrant workers who sustain the U.S. economy. This repression is not solely based on hatred or ignorance but corresponds to a class logic that divides the working class along racial lines. Systematic violence against immigrants is a functional tool of the capitalist regime that requires immigrants to be vulnerable, without rights, without documents, and under constant threat, in order to keep wages low, prevent union organization, and ensure a flexible and submissive workforce.

But the struggle in the streets and the solidarity of our class was a direct challenge to imperialism: the protests in Compton and Paramount exemplify resistance, class consciousness, and unity. What happened over the course of three days in Los Angeles demonstrates that we can fight back and win; those who defend civil rights are the people, united and organized, because when we arm ourselves with class consciousness, we can act collectively.

These actions were not merely spontaneous; years of building neighborhood networks, political training, self-managed patrols, and sustained organizing made this victory possible. “Only organization and class consciousness can stop this repressive offensive,” said a spokeswoman for Unión del Barrio, emphasizing that popular power — thousands in the streets — is the only effective way to confront anti-immigration policies that deny the legitimate right for everyone to live where they choose and to lead lives not only free of violence but also lives of dignity, lives that deserve to be lived.

Today, once again, this city shows how institutional racism¹Angela Davis, Women, Race, and Class. New York: Random House, 1981. exists not only in immigration laws but also in raids, detention centers, private prisons, the militarized border wall, and ICE, which are part of the repressive structure of the capitalist system that needs borders to divide those of us who produce wealth: the international working class.

In contrast to the lukewarm responses from politicians like LA mayor Karen Bass, who weakly criticized the raids, the organizations from below responded with concrete actions. They sent a message: resistance and organization from below and independent of institutional parties are not only legitimate but also urgent and necessary.

A Global Offensive of Capital against the Working Class

These raids cannot be analyzed in isolation; they are part of a general offensive of capital against broad sectors of workers, both in the United States and in Latin America, as well as across the world in places like Gaza, Ukraine, and the Congo. This offensive is a systematic policy serving the ruling class, which seeks to divide the working class by making us believe that there are first- and second-class workers. This division deepens precariousness, fragments worker organization, and allows for greater exploitation of those who — because of their immigration status, work situation, or age — cannot fully defend their rights.

The current struggle of unionized teachers in Mexico against the infamous neoliberal ISSSTE Law of 2007 illustrates the same global confrontation between capital and labor. They are fighting for the right to a dignified retirement and against the looting of pension funds by banks and insurance companies. The Mexican state, like that of the United States, responds with repression, contempt, criminalization, and militarization toward those who organize and fight for better living conditions.

Despite proclaiming itself “anti-neoliberal” and its assurances that “Mexico does not obey foreign powers,” the government of Claudia Sheinbaum — a direct continuation of AMLO’s regime — has demonstrated its subordination to imperialism. In the face of Trump’s renewed attacks on the immigrant community, Sheinbaum has chosen to further militarize the borders and the rest of the country. She has deployed thousands from the Guardia Nacional to intercept those who immigrate out of necessity, not choice, in addition to accepting Trump’s anti-immigration policies of mass deportation of both Mexican nationals and foreigners.

Thus, while she publicly repudiates Washington’s direct interference, in practice, Sheinbaum reinforces the role of the Mexican state as a de facto division of the U.S. Border Patrol, barring Central American immigrants and those from other countries while submitting to the pressures of transnational capital under the false flag of “national security.”

The logic of this policy is not new. It is part of a historical continuity of the PRI, PAN, and now Morena governments, which, far from breaking with imperialism, ally with it at the expense of the documented and undocumented working class. Instead of guaranteeing the political, economic, and civil rights of immigrants, the Mexican government reinforces their criminalization and facilitates their swift deportation, normalizing violent operations and arbitrary detentions in collusion with ICE and Border Patrol.

There is a similar situation in Argentina, where retirees are facing a fierce onslaught from President Javier Milei’s government. Under the false pretense of “zero deficit” and fiscal adjustment, the state has drastically cut pension benefits, further degrading the living conditions of millions who have worked all their lives and are now condemned to poverty while financial capital continues to grow. In a country with extreme inflation and dollarized rates, retirees are forced to choose between food and medicine while the government transfers resources to the IMF and protects the privileges and profits of big business.

The resistance of retirees in Argentina, who take to the streets every week in defense of their rights, is part of the same global class struggle. From the marches of Mexican teachers to the strikes of migrant workers in the United States to the protests of senior citizens in Plaza de Mayo, all these sectors face a common enemy: a capitalist system in crisis, which seeks to restore its profits through the plundering of rights, state repression, and increased labor and social exploitation.

When teachers demanding decent living conditions are repressed, when immigrants fleeing hunger, violence, environmental collapse, or war fueled by imperialism are criminalized, and when retirees are subjected to systematic impoverishment, the unity of interests between the bourgeoisie on both sides of the border becomes evident; this, in turn, underscores the urgency of an internationalist response from below to confront this offensive.

The Struggle of Immigrants Is the Struggle of the Working Class: No Human Being Is Illegal!

In a world devastated by imperialist plunder, wars, environmental collapse, and capitalist exploitation, millions are forced to immigrate to survive. Far from providing refuge, however, the system persecutes, criminalizes, and uses immigrants as scapegoats to divide and discipline the entire working class. The criminalization of immigrants is not an isolated event but a systematic strategy of social control in the service of capital. The border not only separates countries; it fragments struggles, imposes hierarchies among workers, and reinforces the regime of superexploitation.

La Izquierda Diario México and the International Network of La Izquierda Diario firmly denounce the raids and mass arrests carried out by ICE and the FBI, which are being executed without warrants and with a brutality typical of authoritarian regimes. These are state crimes: they separate families, destroy lives, and reinforce the repressive apparatus of imperialist capitalism, which relies on keeping millions undocumented to sustain its system of exploitation. This is not just racism; it is a class policy mandated by capitalist elites. Immigration is not a crime; it is a necessity imposed by the same system that expels millions from its territories to enrich a handful of capitalists. Those who immigrate are workers who make society run with their hands, their effort, and their dignity — they deserve all social, economic, and political rights, with or without documents.

In the face of this offensive, the response is clear; it is being built from below, with the unity of multiracial youth, students, teachers, workers, and communities that have begun to rise up in defense of full rights regardless of immigration status. They are confronting raids, detentions, and deportations with organization and solidarity, as demonstrated by the resistance in Compton and Paramount that managed to stop ICE. But this is happening in other states and cities across the United States, such as Massachusetts, Texas, and Minneapolis, where high school students and communities have called strikes and protests demanding the abolition of ICE and the closure of detention centers since the beginning of Trump’s term.

This resistance cannot rely on the parties of the system that administer and legitimize the capitalist order. Therefore, only independent, mass organization from below, with an anti-capitalist and internationalist perspective, can defeat the racist and repressive offensive. Unity among immigrants and citizens, teachers in struggle, oppressed peoples, and rebellious youth is key to breaking the fragmentation imposed by the system.

We call on democratic, union, and social organizations; teachers; students; workers; women; LGBTQ+ people; Indigenous peoples; and all oppressed sectors to mobilize permanently for the immediate abolition of ICE, the definitive closure of detention centers, the end of deportations and militarization, and for full political, economic, and social rights for all, regardless of immigration status.

The working class is in the crosshairs, but it is also the first line of resistance: The workers’ struggle is unified and without borders! ICE and the National Guard out of our communities! Military out of our communities! Full rights for all!

Originally published on June 8, 2025 in Spanish in La Izquierda Diario Mexico