Teachers, Health Care Workers, Teamster Say…
For Workers Action to Stop Deportations

I.C.E. Out Now!

Contingent of the Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants, New York City, May Day 2025. (Internationalist photo)

 

September 2, 2025 

As Donald J. Trump prepared to take office as president of the United States, he made it clear that he would rule by decree. The U.S. Supreme Court had already approved the doctrine of a “unitary executive,” a blueprint for authoritarian rule, in which neither courts nor Congress could stop the “official actions” of the president (like trying to officially overturn an election). So in the first hours and days of his second administration, the would-be strongman unleashed an avalanche of executive orders that set the stage for a wholesale assault on programs and whole departments of the federal government, constitutional guarantees and democratic rights in general. Having been elected on a program for “mass deportations now,” Trump has focused on immigrants in his drive to a Bonapartist “strong state” regime. And we are well on the way. 

Among the first actions by the new administration was to rescind the memo instructing agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) to generally steer clear of schools, hospitals and religious sites. At the same time, the acting director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) moved to eliminate undocumented immigrants’ right to due process (under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution) by expanding the use of “expedited removal” throughout the country instead of only in border areas. In addition, Trump decreed an end to birthright citizenship, also secured in the 14th Amendment establishing the citizenship of former slaves. Children of any non-citizen immigrant could now have their citizenship canceled.

Millions of immigrants were thrown into terror. Soon I.C.E. agents were knocking on doors in pre-dawn raids, immigrants were being bundled onto planes to the U.S. base in Guantánamo (stolen from Cuba) and when that didn’t stop courts from challenging this blatantly illegal move, they were transferred to a notorious “anti-terrorist” prison in El Salvador. In late May, seeing deportation numbers falling short of his goal of a million per year, Trump ordered I.C.E. to grab anyone it could. Days later an army of federal agents was dispatched to Los Angeles to carry out militarized workplace raids. Faced with protests, Trump federalized several thousand California National Guardsmen and sent in the Marines. Now masked federal police in unmarked cars are snatching people off the street. In New York, immigrants are being seized as they leave courts.

Soon after Trump’s election, supporters of Class Struggle Education Workers and its fraternal allies of the Internationalist Group in New York City called a Labor Conference to Defend Immigrants for early December on a program for independent workers action to stop deportations. At the same time, a Committee to Defend Immigrants was launched by the Internationalist Club at Hunter College, while CSEW supporters in NYC public schools initiated school-based immigrant defense committees and a resolution was prepared for the United Federation of Teachers Delegate Assembly calling for forming such committees elsewhere. On the West Coast, Class Struggle Workers – Portland put forward a “Resolution to Defend Immigrants Against Mass Deportations and Racist Violence” that was passed by six local unions. 

Health workers in LCDI contingent at NYC May Day 2025. (Internationalist photo)

There are now Labor Committees to Defend Immigrants both in New York and Portland, which have held “Know Your Rights” sessions for union members, distributed KYR cards and other information to students, made presentations to parents groups and demonstrated in the streets. The New York LCDI has published a 75-page Immigrant Rights Defense Packet. In NYC, the Committee to Defend Immigrants initiated by the UFT chapter at Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School in South Brooklyn held a demonstration on March 6 to underline that faculty and staff “firmly stand by our students” and are organizing to keep I.C.E. “out of our school and our communities.”[1]  On May 1, a contingent of 50 supporters of the LCDI and the Hunter Committee to Defend Immigrants marched in the NYC May Day demonstration.

Then on June 12 the UFT Delegate Assembly finally passed, by an overwhelming 93%, the “Resolution for Union-Led Defense of Immigrant Students, Families and Staff” after attempts to get it on the agenda at monthly meetings since December (see page 6). The resolution notes that “we cannot look to the government, the courts, the police or politicians of either Democratic or Republican parties to protect immigrants from deportation or bigoted attacks,” it encourages UFT local chapters to initiate school-based committees to defend immigrants and calls on “all of labor to initiate such defense committees and mobilize its power in defense of immigrants.” It concludes: “these are our students, our fellow workers, our neighbors, and we will act to support them in this, their hour of need, and always. We will not let them take our students.”

The school-based committees in New York have prepared resource kits for educators, made bulletin boards, held “red card” making sessions and held distributions of KYR materials in English, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Russian, Ukrainian and Bengali at subway and bus stops in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Many unions including AFSCME, SEIU, UFCW, UAW, AFT, NEA and the AFL-CIO have prepared immigration information kits. In New York, supporters and officials of six Teamsters locals are participating in the LCDI, and Joint Council 16 reaffirmed a 2017 resolution declaring itself a “sanctuary union.” The LCDIs seek to cohere a core of worker activists so that when the time comes, they can help spark a labor-led outpouring to make workplaces and immigrant communities “no go” areas for I.C.E.

At the Labor Conferences to Defend Immigrants, reference was made to the response in the North to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, when cities rose up to stop the slave catchers. In Boston in 1854, the federal government brought in troops, making it an occupied city. Now Trump has brought troops into Los Angeles. Today what is needed is a working-class mobilization, independent of the capitalist parties, to uphold the call for full citizenship rights for all immigrants, and to ensure that all those who have made it to the U.S. can stay here. Those fleeing the devastation caused by U.S. imperialism must be defended as working people mobilize against the criminal government that would expel them.■

For more information, write to laborconference@gmail.com, cs_edworkers@hotmail.com or cswp@csw-pdx.org.

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[1] See “FDR Teachers Say, “I.C.E. Won’t Take Our Kids Away” in this issue of Marxism & Education.

Class Struggle Education Workers is an organization, fraternally linked to the Internationalist Group, of union and non-unionized activists in all aspects of education fighting for a revitalization and transformation of the labor movement into an instrument for the emancipation of the working class and the oppressed.  See the CSEW program here. The struggle for students’ and educators’ rights, and mobilization against the genocidal war on the Palestinians continues. If you are interested in joining these efforts, contact the CSEW at cs_edworkers@hotmail.com.  ■