On the morning of June 30th at approximately 11am, Detroit activists connected to the People’s Assembly got word of an impending ICE raid on the city’s westside. Approximately 30 to 40 people showed up to support the person being targeted by ICE. What they found when they got there was a neighborhood under siege; Detroit police created a perimeter around the block so that ICE, DEA, FBI, and U.S. Marshals could roll out heavily-armed with a battering ram in a gross and unnecessary show of force. The person they were looking for was Marcos Fabian Arita Bautista, an immigrant from Honduras. The only “crime” he committed was crossing the border and driving without insurance. He came out of his house with his hands up and visibly shaken by the aggressive nature of ICE.
According to activists on the scene, the neighbors were appalled by the whole affair, and commented that the person detained was hard-working and even rehabbing the house they were living in, which was previously abandoned and in disrepair. Some even openly questioned to activists what they thought was Trump’s real agenda in carrying out raids against immigrants. These neighbors -– who had direct experience with the immigrant community — understand that it is not the immigrant communities that are responsible for material struggles that people in Detroit are dealing with.
Many of the neighbors were Black, long-term, working class residents of Detroit. They have first hand experience with the neoliberal offensive against Detroit that led to a series of economic crises that drove tens of thousands from their homes, and many more into a life of precarity. They want their resources to go towards improving social services, creating affordable housing, and providing job training, not carrying out Trump’s reactionary and scapegoating anti-immigrant agenda.
DPD Lies Yet Again About Its Actions
Detroit police have long claimed that they don’t cooperate with ICE, but members of the immigrant community in Detroit have always disputed that claim. In fact, a story by Outlier Media published in March revealed that a Detroit police officer called ICE on someone who tried to report a crime. Detroit Police said the individual officer violated department policy and that the department doesn’t enforce federal immigrant laws. They do “honor valid ICE detainers and will hold an individual already in our custody for ICE to pick up.” With this raid, Detroit police went a few steps further than simply holding someone for ICE to pick up. Nor was it simply a police officer going rogue. Not only did DPD block off the street for ICE, but they even arrested and pepper sprayed protesters, who gathered in the community to support Marcos, video the arrest, and show their opposition to ICE raids and deportations.
Detroit Democratic Mayor Duggan throughout his whole tenure has opposed making Detroit a sanctuary city, but has emphasised the fact that it is a “welcoming city” for immigrants. A real “welcoming city” would end all cooperation with ICE. It is ridiculous that a majority Black city is not already a sanctuary city and is participating in any way with the Trump administration, particularly given the Republican Party’s relationship to Detroit, which has been full of animosity and disdain. The fact that Democrats in Michigan have failed to fight against local governments and agencies working with ICE is more proof of why the working class and oppressed can’t rely on them to represent or fight for us.
To Stop ICE, We Need Self-Organization and the Mobilizing of the Labor Movement
Since the beginning of the year, the People’s Assembly has been a space where groups, long-time activists, and those brand new to politics have been able to gather to organize against Trump’s anti-immigrant offensive. Now, there is a chance to strengthen the movement and unite the struggles between Black and Brown working class communities, especially since these communities will be most affected by Trump’s racist, xenophobic, and anti-working class agenda.
Every time a raid happens in a neighborhood, we should organize assemblies in their aftermath to strengthen community resistance and coordination against ICE. Concretely, the People’s Assembly should host a public assembly meeting in the neighborhood where the raids took place. Not only can it provide an opportunity for the neighbors to share their thoughts about the raids, but discuss their own experiences with the police. After all, many of the police agencies mobilized to assist ICE routinely target and brutalize Black people like Martez Hunter Britt and Sherman Lee Butler.
In order to bring out the full power of Detroit’s working class communities, we need organized labor to get into the fight. The real power of the working class lies in our collective power to cause disruption, and the most powerful way to do that is through mass, collective actions on the streets and strikes that actually shut down the economy. Given the fact that many union members are themselves immigrants or are part of immigrant communities, unions should actively participate in these assemblies to stand up for their members and the whole working class.
Local union halls should host their own assemblies to hear from their members why it is important to unite the struggles, which includes the fight for immigrant rights. In particular, UAW Local 600 has a tradition of fighting for social justice and against racism, so the immigrant rights movement and the People’s Assembly should make a direct call on Local 600 to play the progressive role they have played in the past. We also need rank and file caucuses, like the UAWD and Labor for Palestine to participate in the assemblies and fight for the unions to take up this crucial struggle. We need to demand that Shawn Fain, who said that Mexican workers and immigrant workers are not the enemies of the American working class, put their words into practice and join the growing resistance to ICE and to Trump.
The recent explosive struggles in LA against ICE and federal troops, and the massive “No Kings” rallies make clear that there is growing anger about the state of the world. In Detroit, we have a chance to give independent organization to that anger through the growth of the People’s Assembly, and encourage everyone on the Left, every anti-racist activist and organizer, and every union member to join it.