Donald Trump and the Republicans are taking aim at immigrants in the first week of Trump’s second term as president, launching an opening salvo of xenophobic attacks to gut immigrants rights and expedite their plan of “mass deportations.”
On the day he was sworn into office, Trump signed ten executive orders related to immigration, including ordering increased militarization of the U.S./Mexico border, ending birthright citizenship, and shutting down asylum and refugee admissions. Thousands of people have already been stranded at the border as a result of Trump’s orders. These actions come alongside threats of ICE raids in immigrant communities, with ICE agents being given carte blanche to target immigrants in churches and schools.
The Far Right’s anti-immigrant offensive is an attempt to both divide the working class and to create the conditions for renewed imperialist aggression in Latin America. The criminalization and demonization of immigrants is a hateful attempt to pin capitalist misery on the most precarious sectors of the working class and must be met with the full-throated repudiation of the working class, students, and social movements.
Left Voice will be updating this page with the most recent news on these attacks. Read our key articles on immigration here.
ICE Given the Green Light to Raid Schools, Hospitals, and Religious Sites
11 a.m. EST
The Trump administration is increasing its initial wave of attacks on immigration at a rapid pace. A new Department of Homeland Security directive allows ICE agents to raid schools, hospitals, and religious sites such as churches and mosques. The administration is also threatening to use the Justice Department to prosecute officials who block the administration’s anti-immigrant attacks.
Afghan refugees are already becoming a target of these attacks. 1,660 Afghan refugees have had their flights to the United States canceled, despite having been previously cleared by the U.S. government to resettle in the country. Many of these refugees fought for the former U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan, which could lead them to face retribution from the Taliban if they are forced to return to Afghanistan.
Trump Returns to Office on a Wave of Anti-immigrant Attacks
January 21, 2025
@leftvoice On the day he took office, Trump signed ten executive orders related to immigration, unleashing his war on immigrants. These attacks on immigrants are an attack on the entire working class, meant to divide workers while creating justifications for imperialist intervention at the border and in Latin America. We must use the combined power of the labor movement and the anti-imperialist youth and workers to defend immigrants from deportation and repression and demand full economic and political rights. Abolish ICE! Open borders now!
♬ original sound – Left Voice
Read more here.
Statement: Stop Trump’s Anti-immigrant Offensive! Down with Imperialism in Latin America and the Caribbean!
January 18, 2025
The new Trump administration is threatening mass deportations and a new imperialist offensive. We call for cross-border unity of the working class and poor people. We publish a joint statement by Left Voice of the United States, the MTS of Mexico, the LTS of Venezuela, and the OSR of Costa Rica — organizations that are part of the Trotskyist Fraction–Fourth International (FT-CI) — as the new government of Donald Trump prepares to take power.
In the United States there are at least 11 million undocumented migrant workers who pay taxes, pay rent, and work in agriculture, services, domestic labor, construction, remodeling of public services, etc. An estimated 5 percent of the U.S. workforce is undocumented. In New York alone, nearly 400,000 Mexicans work every day without papers in activities of high economic and social impact. They cook, provide care, fix bridges, build houses, study, have dreams, wait tables, farm the land, miss their countries, and many of them have not seen their families in decades. These workers are an essential part of the economic, social, and cultural life of the country. The bosses amass huge profits based on migrant labor, as evidenced by the division within the bourgeoisie on the immigration question. Yet they are treated as second-class workers, without rights or job stability, and now with the sword of Damocles is hanging over their heads in the form ofTrump’s mass deportations.
While the capitalists want to continue using immigration to exploit immigrant labor and keep the economy going, we emphasize migrants’ importance as part of the continental multiracial proletariat. We fight for their full rights to unify the ranks of the working class against the bosses and exploiters.
Read more here.
