The infamous pale-faced Uncle Sam “I Want You” poster first appeared in Leslie’s Weekly on July 6, 1916, calling on U.S. youth to sacrifice their bodies for an imperialist bloodbath that would send millions of working-class and poor people around the world to the meat grinder — all in the name of their national bourgeoisies.

Now, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is shamelessly reviving Uncle Sam’s sardonic image in an attempt to recruit 10,000 new agents to terrorize immigrant communities as part of Donald Trump’s racist mass deportation agenda.

After Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law on July 4, ICE’s budget will increase by $75 billion over the next four years, putting the agency’s yearly budget above most of the world’s militaries. The funding came from the $170 billion designated to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), led by Kristi Noem, for immigration and border enforcement. Meanwhile, the law extends sweeping tax cuts for the rich and cuts Medicaid for low-income people.

With its pockets stuffed, ICE is undertaking a major recruitment campaign dripping with xenophobia, racism, and desperation. From the military to the police, the United States’ repressive apparatuses have been facing a recruitment crisis in recent years. Among ICE, recent reporting has highlighted low morale among its ranks.

On July 29, the DHS launched an initiative dubbed “Defend the Homeland” to recruit “patriots” to remove the “worst of the worst” from the United States, offering $50,000 signing bonuses, up to $60,000 in student debt forgiveness, enhanced retirement benefits, and more. These incentives are a clear attempt to recruit precarious working-class Americans into a brutal, anti-immigrant project and build up the state’s apparatus of violence.

ICE has even expanded its age range — previously limited to 21 to 40 — so that anyone over 18 can now sign up to terrorize communities. They’ve even marketed this “opportunity” as a kind of fascist father-son bonding experience.

The agency is also reaching out to former federal workers and attempting to poach local police officers, angering some in law enforcement. And some reactionaries are doing the advertising work for them, like former Superman actor Dean Cain who told Fox News that he will sign up as an ICE agent. It’s not hard to imagine this campaign drawing in racist, proto-fascist elements like the Proud Boys.

ICE Serves an Authoritarian Agenda

More than half of immigrants arrested in New York City have no criminal charges or convictions. This is not about “safety” — it’s about spreading fear, dividing workers, scapegoating immigrants to distract from Trump’s failing policies, and building a larger repressive apparatus to carry out an increasingly authoritarian agenda.

The deadly consequences are already here. On August 5, Chaofeng Ge, an immigrant from China, died by suicide in a Pennslyvania detention center. In July, a farmworker named Jaime Alanís Garcia died from serious injuries suffered during an immigration raid at the California cannabis farm where he worked.

With oversight eroding, twelve congressional Democrats are suing the Trump administration to get access to ICE detention centers, in which people are subjected to overcrowded and unsanitary conditions rife with human rights abuses — sometimes indefinitely.

But the solution is not “more oversight” of this fundamentally repressive institution; it needs to be abolished altogether. However, that’s a solution that Democratic politicians are not willing to fight for. Since ICE’s creation in 2003, it has been funded, expanded, and entrenched with bipartisan support. Even when denouncing the agency’s abuses, Democrats have repeatedly approved budgets that maintain or increase its resources, enabling raids, deportations, and surveillance.

Meanwhile, public opinion is shifting: Trump’s immigration approval rating has dropped to a record low and ICE’s popularity is plummeting. Meanwhile, public opinion polls show that since Trump took office, views toward immigrants are changing for the better. The vast majority of U.S. adults consider immigration to be a good thing, and the share of Americans who want immigration decreased has dropped significantly.

ICE Is Terrorizing New York City

ICE’s recruitment blitz is a clear escalation, recruiting people to harass and torment our communities, patients, students, and friends. The campaign comes alongside ramped-up deportation quotas and aggressive new tactics — from workplace and community raids to courthouse arrests. Family separation is back, again inflicting unimaginable trauma on children. Several New York City high school students have been detained by ICE in recent months.

In New York City, immigration arrests are skyrocketing as the Department of Homeland Security pursues a sinister tactic in the mass deportation campaign: arresting immigrants at their mandated immigration court or office appearances. Since May, when Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem ordered ICE to intensify arrests, an average of 33 people a day have been detained at 26 Federal Plaza — with no public notice and out of view.

Conditions are dire. Images from inside show people held in unsanitary rooms with little food. One detainee said they were treated “like dogs.” DHS has barred elected officials from inspecting the facility. In a New York Times video, masked ICE agents violently arrest a man while shouting “back up” at journalists.

Mayor Eric Adams appeared in an interview with Trump’s “border czar” and acting director of ICE Tom Homan, who have undertaken a “partnership” to terrorize immigrants in the city. They have advocated for cooperation between local police and federal immigration officials, flying in the face of sanctuary city policies. Adams, who parrots the fearmongering rhetoric of the Right, told ICE they could open an office on Rikers Island jail complex, which would be central for an immigration crackdown in NYC. In June, a federal judge blocked the plans from moving forward.

This has been part of Adams cozying up to Trump and his brutal war on immigrants in exchange for his influence in getting prosecutors to drop the corruption charges. In April, a federal judge dismissed the case.

Following the shooting of a Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agent in New York City, Homan said he would “flood” the area with ICE and prioritize going after sanctuary cities, which limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Since Trump took office, the city has seen a 400 percent spike in ICE detainers, which are legal requests to state or local law enforcement to hold immigrants in custody and turn them over to immigration authorities — though most have not been honored due to sanctuary policies. Still, DHS is signaling that more aggressive enforcement is coming — and Adams’ rhetoric suggests they won’t face much pushback from City Hall.

“If he’s going to assist us to go after … individuals [who commit crimes], I welcome it. If it’s going to be to go after everyday individuals who are trying to complete the path to be a citizen, then I don’t think we should do that,” Adams said.

Social-democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani has pledged to bar ICE officers from city facilities, and Trump has already threatened to arrest him if he refuses to comply with the agency. This is an attack not just on Mamdani, but on immigrant communities and the movements defending them. We must continue to denounce every attack on Mamdani, every attack on immigrants, every attack on the right to protest the occupation, genocide, and famine in Palestine.

Organized Workers Can Stand Up to ICE

Across the country, we’ve seen resistance to Trump’s agenda — From massivedemonstrations, to communitiesorganizing in support of their detained neighbors, to the brave immigrant-led protests in Los Angeles.

In New York City, groups are organizing around ICE watch and immigration court accompaniment. Some advocates set up a protest camp outside of the city’s immigration offices. Recently, several demonstrators were arrested at protests outside Federal Plaza. Clearly, there is an important sector of people who want to fight back against this anti-immigrant, anti-worker, right-wing agenda.

We can look to California as a glimpse of how some of the power struggles with a potential Mamdani mayorship could play out. When Los Angeles erupted in a pro-immigrant uprising in June, Trump deployed 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines, challenging legal precedent and provoking Democratic California governor Gavin Newsom, who was rhetorically harsh on Trump but said explicitly that he would work with ICE and federal agents to enforce immigration laws. When thousands mobilized for No Kings Day, it was the Democrat-led LAPD who brutally attacked protesters. Last month, the National Guard withdrew 2,000 troops from the city, and Newsom is now taking Trump to court to challenge their deployment. This confrontation between the state and federal level exposed both the weaknesses of the Trump administration as well as the contradictions of the institutional “resistance” to Trump from the part of Newsom. 

In New York, the challenges for the movement could take on different dynamics with Zohran Mamdani as mayor. The establishment politicians and capitalist class have already started their anti-democratic attacks to prevent him from being elected in the first place while they push Trump-friendly Andrew Cuomo. They do not want a mayor that they perceive as a threat to their vast wealth, political influence, and Zionism. 

If Mamdani finds himself in Gracie Mansion in January, the pro-immigrant movement must be prepared for unprecedented attacks from the Trump administration and sectors of the ruling class. Even though Mamdani himself presents a limited program when it comes to immigrant rights, there is little reason to doubt that these sectors would use his progressive mayorship as a reason to increase their authoritarian reach by sending in the National Guard or other authoritarian and repressive measures. Class struggle will determine the territory the Far Right is able to conquer in the months ahead, and we need to be preparing for these attacks now.

In this fight, strategy matters. The future of the fight for immigrants will not take place in the courtrooms — it will take place in the streets. We know that they will try to repress us however they can; that’s why we have to organize a mass movement rooted in the working class — the more we are, the harder it will be to stop us. Our most powerful weapon is our ability as workers to withhold our labor and shut down business as usual. The labor movement needs to be organized to be ready to defend the sanctuary city protections and fight for much more — to kick ICE out of New York City and win full rights for immigrants.

Recently, a group of the city’s labor unions representing over 400,000 members, including 1199SEIU New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), PSC-CUNY, and UAW Region 9A released a statement in response to DHS threats to flood New York City with ICE. The statement says that the city’s labor movement is “united in opposition to attacks on our communities.” The statement ends by calling on “all of our elected leaders to protect and defend working New Yorkers and keep our communities free of fear.”

As was the immigrant solidarity statement from Amazon Labor Union-IBT Local 1, the NYC labor statement is an important example of labor taking a stand in the fight for immigrant rights. 

But we need to go much further — and we have no time to waste. As rank-and-file workers, we need to push our unions to go beyond statements and calling on elected officials to take action. Limiting resistance to lobbying elected officials traps our power within a political system that has fueled ICE from the start. That is why class independence is key. We cannot let the movement against these repressive institutions get funneled back into the party that built, fund, and maintain them.

Rank-and-file workers must push our unions to go further — to organize resistance to ICE from our workplaces, defend immigrant coworkers from raids, and prepare coordinated strike actions that can paralyze the economy. We need to organize spaces that can bring our movements together to debate and decide on how to fight these attacks. It will require broad democratic campaigns that mobilize masses across the country. And it is essential that unions take a stand and use the power of their labor to disrupt business as usual.

Defeating ICE will require a united, multiracial working-class movement capable of mobilizing millions — not just to block deportations, but to win full rights for all immigrants, including the undocumented. That means fighting for open borders, shutting down detention centers, and abolishing ICE altogether. 

The struggle against ICE and for immigrants’ rights is connected to ending the genocide in Palestine, the fight for workers’ rights, the student movement for Palestine, free, universal  healthcare, and more — all with class-independent politics.

Democrats will not lead that fight. They have spent two decades funding, expanding, and legitimizing ICE. But an organized, militant working class can — and must. The fight against ICE is one for the entire working class and we have no time to lose.