June 9, 2025

The International Acton Center  expresses its unequivocal solidarity with the migrant community in Los Angeles and their supporters who have been resisting in the streets against the Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE) federal agency, Department of Homeland Security, LA police and other armed repressive forces since June 6.

Illegal raids have been conducted in workplaces like Home Depot, resulting in the arrests of over 120 migrant workers, documented and undocumented. Los Angeles is the U.S.’s second most populated city and home to more migrants than any other city. It is part of the land stolen from Mexico in 1848.

These random arrests remind one of the days of U.S. enslavement when Black people, whether they were already free or attempting to win freedom, were kidnapped and brought back to their enslavers in chains.

Donald Trump, who has declared a racist and xenophobic war on migrants since day one of his second term, has ordered 2,000 soldiers of California’s National Guard to Los Angeles without the approval of its governor, Gavin Newsom. The National Guard is the only branch of the U.S. military that can be deployed at a moment’s notice by both state governors and the president.

The Pentagon announced plans to send 700 marines to Los Angeles to back up the National Guard.

The Guard is composed of young volunteers who have other jobs, unlike the army or police. Activists can and should be urging Guard members to refuse these illegal orders to repress other workers.

The uprising broke out in the city of Paramount, California, south of Los Angeles, where migrants and their supporters, a number of whom were visibly carrying the Palestinian flag and wearing keffiyehs, battled the police and ICE agents. Many other protesters carried their flags of origin, especially those from Central and South America.

Very reminiscent of the historic Palestinian struggle against the U.S.-backed Israeli occupation, young people are fighting back with rocks and bottles against armed ICE agents and police who use tear gas, pepper spray, flash-bang concussion rounds and smoke canisters against them.

During these arrests, David Huerta, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California and SEIU-United Service Workers West, was assaulted and detained for just being at the protest.  Huerta, whose grandparents migrated from Mexico, is a U.S. citizen.

Tia Orr, executive director of SEIU California, stated: “SEIU California members call for the immediate release of our president, David Huerta, who was injured and detained at the site of one of today’s ICE raids in Los Angeles. He is now receiving medical attention while in custody.

“We are proud of President Huerta’s righteous participation as a community observer, in keeping with his long history of advocating for immigrant workers and with the highest values of our movement: standing up to injustice, regardless of personal risk or the power of those perpetrating it.

“We call for an end to the cruel, destructive and indiscriminate ICE raids that are tearing apart our communities, disrupting our economy and hurting all working people. Immigrant workers are essential to our society: feeding our nation, caring for our elders, cleaning our workplaces and building our homes.” (seiu-usww.org, June 6)

As of this writing, Huerta has been released from the hospital but still remains in police custody. Emergency protests were called in over 30 U.S. cities on June 9 demanding Huerta’s release.  He was released later on the same day on a $50,000 bond.

Thousands of migrants in large and small cities have been detained and sent to prison inside and outside the U.S., including in Guantanamo and El Salvador. They are denied the right to a trial, a hearing of charges and any other legal due process supposedly guaranteed under the Constitution. Trump is attempting to carry out his own version of ethnic cleansing of migrants out of the U.S. — similar to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.

A rich history of fight-back

Los Angeles has a rich history of heroic uprisings against racist police brutality in the 20th century. Most notably were the 1965 Watts rebellion, which will commemorate its 60th anniversary this coming Aug. 11, provoked when the LA police attacked a barbeque party in the predominantly African American South Central community of the city. That rebellion lasted five days.

And 27 years later there was the rebellion in 1992 that again was ignited in South Central Los Angeles following the heinous acquittal of white, racist police officers for the savage beating of Black motorist Rodney King that was caught on videotape. The 1992 rebellion lasted for a week and was even more widespread than the one in Watts.

Protests were held countrywide in solidarity with the 1992 LA rebellion, which was not only against racist police terror but also to demand quality housing, education and health care for the underserved Black and Latine communities. There was a mass campaign to demand full amnesty for an estimated 12,000 people arrested during the rebellion.

What’s behind this war on migrants?

What is happening in Los Angeles reflects a much deeper crisis within the capitalist system as it faces its permanent end, predicted in the Communist Manifesto over 175 years ago: The working class will inevitably become capitalism’s gravedigger. Therefore, the billionaire ruling class has no other option but to depend on a violent, repressive apparatus to keep the billions of workers worldwide under its oppressive rule.

State repression is not a show of strength but a show of fear and weakness by the owners of capital and their unstable system. This repression is a constant reminder that antagonistic differences cannot be resolved peacefully when one class oppresses another.

Political solidarity with migrants is an important step forward in forging broader working-class unity to ultimately defeat the dying system of capitalism that relies on all forms of violence — imperialist war, occupation, racism and cutbacks under the guise of white supremacy — to keep its head afloat in an ocean of social revolution that will inevitably drown it.