That morning, hundreds of ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and National Guard troops, under Operation Midway Blitz (a clear reference to the lethal Nazi blitzkrieg in World War II) descended from Black Hawk helicopters onto buildings in the working-class neighborhood of Southshore, breaking down doors and smashing windows, assaulting residents with tear gas and stun grenades, zip-tying terrified children, and firing rubber bullets indiscriminately. To date, Midway Blitz has detained more than 3,000 immigrants whom the government labels as “criminals” and even several citizens.
Similar scenarios are repeated in urban centers that are “sanctuaries” for immigrants and where there is opposition to Trump’s policies, in addition to “routine” raids throughout the country. According to the DHS (Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE), so far this year, 548,000 people have been deported. Most them had no criminal record and were flown away without any legal process, while another 60,000 people remain in detention centers surviving in inhumane conditions. All of this is possible thanks to the dramatic increase in the budget and recruitment for ICE and CBP; more than $85 billion this year (for comparison, Guatemala’s total annual budget is $19 billion) for more weapons, biometric software, detention centers, and tens of thousands of new agents recruited from the dregs of society.
Immigrant communities have not stood idly by in the face of this brutal escalation. They have generally responded in two ways—by forming Rapid Response Networks (RRNs) and by lobbying for legislation in municipalities and states to prohibit local police and public agencies from collaborating with ICE, using a model such as the Immigrant Trust Acts that are in effect in several states. RRNs offer Know Your Rights workshops in communities, churches, schools, and workplaces, maintain emergency hotlines for when ICE shows up, and dispatch patrols of activists who try to discourage the agents, documenting their behavior and advising those affected.
This RRN model has spread throughout the country thanks to NGOs (non-governmental organizations) such as NDLON (National Day Laborer Organizing Network), Resistencia en Acción NJ, Movimiento Cosecha, Raíces, Mijente, Sagrado Corazón, Amigos de Guadalupe, El Concilio, and many more, which currently lead the immigrant movement. RRNs attract hundreds of activists, natives and immigrants, promoting solidarity and the capacity to fight back. However, the results of these efforts are uneven: Sometimes, RRNs manage to prevent detentions and empower immigrant families by showing them support. But as small, mobile teams with changing compositions, they do not constitute a constant or numerous presence in the neighborhoods, and therefore can hardly contribute to the self-organization and defensive mobilization of these communities.
The second strategy employed by NGOs, which involves lobbying Democratic politicians and pressuring city councils and legislatures to pass measures that protect immigrants by preventing collaboration between local agencies and ICE, has served to rally and mobilize activists, as has RRN. We should celebrate this. At the same time, what good is a law, whatever it may be, that lacks the mechanisms or resources for its enforcement? Who will compel the police and local government agencies to refuse to collaborate with ICE? And, given their shared repressive nature and ideologies, won’t the police and immigration authorities covertly align themselves when the time comes?
But the fundamental problem with this strategy is that it limits itself to asking for “protection,” on the one hand, and on the other hand, it asks for it from politicians and institutions that can never represent our interests because they belong to the parties of the rich, the Democrats and Republicans.
Wouldn’t it be better to redirect those huge efforts to mobilize people to council and legislative meetings, and the time and resources spent lobbying those people for a limited goal of “protection,” toward building a mass movement with our class comrades, the workers born here? Working people in this movement could bring in their unions if they have them; students, as well as Palestine solidarity activists, would also be included. Such a movement could be powerful enough to force the government into granting papers for all, and even obtain the abolition of ICE and the repressive agencies that attack all of us who are fighting for a better world.
To this end, the challenge facing the immigrant movement is the development of its own leaders, capable of proposing a political program, strategies, and tactics to win full rights for all. This is difficult to achieve when the leadership of the immigrant movement, including the RRNs, is in the hands of NGOs. First, because, although these organizations often arise from sincere activists within the communities themselves, many depend on donations and subsidies from agencies and foundations that prevent them from truly confronting the capitalist system that creates the inequality and exploitation in the first place, even while being critical of it.
And second, because in general, NGOs are not internally democratic. They are governed by boards of directors that are not elected by the community, and they transmit this mode of operation to the movement, thus hindering its political development and capacity to lead the formation of united fronts with other social sectors to fight for all our needs.
No matter how well-intentioned their leaders may be, NGOs will never be able to prepare us to face militarized operations involving dozens of heavily armed ICE and other repressive agents who will attack our communities and workplaces more and more as they get more funding for weapons and recruit more personnel. The NGO formula of RRNs and lobbying, and acts of individual heroism in civil disobedience arrests will not only be insufficient, but will prevent us from forming a unified mass movement that, starting with immigrants, also mobilizes unions and other workers’ organizations to democratically decide our political goals and tactics so we can first stop government aggression and then win full rights for all.
So, wouldn’t it be important for us to call for large assemblies in our immigrant communities to discuss in depth and vote democratically what we want, how we want to organize to achieve this, with whom, and who our leaders will be? It is there that we can discuss and vote on whether we are content to ask for “protection” for immigrants or whether we would rather fight together for the right to citizenship for all. We will energetically support anyone who wants to bring this about.
> > The article above was written by Valentina Salgado, and is reprinted from Workers’ Voice.
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