Just 24 hours after Trump returned to the presidency with a bombardment of executive orders attacking immigration, a flurry of activism and discussion has arisen in cities across the country. Even as a prominent sector of the Democratic Party and the masses in the United States are shifting to the right on immigration, Trump’s most extreme actions are reactivating a vanguard willing to fight for our immigrant neighbors. This surge in energy is important. We cannot waste it.

We need to treat these attacks with urgency, but we also need to understand how we arrived at such a dire state for immigrant rights organizing, and we need to avoid reattempting strategies that have brought us to this point.

At the start of the first Trump presidency, the balance of forces in favor of immigrant rights was much stronger than now. The demand to Abolish ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was everywhere, even being championed by mainstream politicians. Activists spontaneously flooded airports in opposition to Trump’s infamous Muslim Ban. Across the country activists fought against ICE detention, and in some cases even won major concessions.

But those wins eroded under the Biden presidency. As we have consistently covered at Left Voice, Biden continued nearly all of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, from militarization of the border to expansion of policing and detention. Many people became depoliticized, putting their faith in a Democratic administration and believing that Trump leaving office meant that the Far Right had been defeated. 

If we want to push back ICE, stop deportations, and win rights for all immigrants, we can’t keep putting our hopes in Democrats to enact policy changes. 

Shifting the Strategy

While the Biden administration continued carrying out increased border restrictions and raids, the frontal assault of the Trump administration — including on birthright citizenship — has created heightened vigilance and exposure of the fight for immigrant rights. Teachers and school districts are releasing protocols, and some elected officials are getting into the fray and challenging Trump. However, to effectively challenge raids and deportations, and expand immigrant rights, we need an independent strategy centered on the mass activity of the immigrant community and the working class. 

We need a mass movement, clear about the strategy needed to effectively fight for immigrant rights that protects it against demobilization and co-optation. This strategy cannot rely on courts or politicians to safeguard immigrant rights. We have been down this road before, and it has led us to passivity in the face of Biden’s attacks on immigrants followed by the return of Trumpism. 

The fight against deportations cannot be based on “pressure campaigns” that focus on convincing politicians to do things they have so far refused to do, but on a strategy that seeks to impose the will of the movement upon these institutions. For this to occur, we need mass assemblies where the strategy and tactics of the movement is democratically discussed and debated. These assemblies will sometimes be the product of our organizing. More than likely, they will have to be formed by the mass gatherings taking place in response to particular attacks. In other words, we need to utilize spaces of struggle to form the basis for these mass assemblies and insist that the movement must represent itself and rely only on its own strength, not that of the politicians or self-anointed leaders. 

Such a line will bring us into conflict with some of the nonprofits and Democratic officials who point to the election of Democrats and legislation as the only “real” way we can fight. We must resist this, and challenge them, saying that if they really supported immigrant rights, they would support grassroots control of the movement and all the demands that we put forward. 

What could this look like concretely? Say several hundred activists rally outside a school or an ICE detention center. Maybe those activists will be instructed by an organization to sign a petition and join a listserv to stay informed. Maybe politicians will come and tell the crowd they’re ready to fight. But instead, that rally could be a space where every single activist in the crowd of hundreds is able to propose then and there ideas for how to fight back. We could propose ways to reach out to unions and student activists for Palestine and adopt demands that fight against Trump’s attempt to divide the working class with xenophobia and racism. Then those proposals could be voted on by the hundreds in attendance to carry forward. This could serve as the basis of a combative movement that brings in wide support through direct democracy and ensures that everyone committed to fighting for immigrants has an equal say in what that fight looks like. Suddenly a politician who shows up isn’t the center of gravity. The movement is.

A mass movement fighting for immigrant rights does not exist now, but the situation could become dynamic, especially if Trump carry’s out raids at schools or hospitals. Not only do we need mass committees against raids and deportations and other forms of self-organization, but we need to call on the labor movement to join a fight that can unite a working class to defend immigrant workers and their families.

A united front for immigrant rights built by labor, Black Lives Matter, and the movement in solidarity with Palestine can be an important counterweight against Trump and advance the struggle against exploitation and oppression.