By Martha Grevatt
January 16, 2025

The response to the tragic, unprecedented fires raging in Los Angeles has by and large been one of compassion. This is true even from a poor country such as Mexico, which has dispatched its own firefighters to offer assistance.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum explained: “We’re going to help, not just because the people and government of Mexico have always been generous, but also because there are a lot of Mexicans in this part of the United States.” (mexiconewsdaily.com, Jan. 10)

Meanwhile undocumented migrants in the Los Angeles area have voluntarily, without pay, assisted in putting out fires — with garden hoses and buckets in a city inadequately supplied with water and equipment to deal with the crisis professionally.

Maria Garcia, an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant, said: “Our values and our principles come first, that’s what our parents taught us. They always used to say, help others without concern for who they are or why they need help.” Garcia and her team of volunteers drove to Altadena, an area in Los Angeles County that needed their assistance. (npr.org, Jan. 10)

None of these heroic acts of solidarity have moved President-elect Donald Trump. Since winning the November election, he continues to employ the most vile,  bigoted, chauvinistic rhetoric against migrants and against Mexico. He has promised to conduct mass deportations and to instigate a trade war by imposing tariffs on imports from Mexico.

And it’s not just Trump by himself attacking migrants. What are the Democrats and the so-called “anti-Trump” Republicans doing to block deportations of undocumented immigrants? Nothing helpful!

The assistance being offered by immigrants and Mexican firefighters is indeed laudable. But it will not turn around the racist, xenophobic backlash about to be ushered in on Jan. 20. That will take a classwide movement of undocumented and documented migrants and U.S.-born workers united in solidarity.