By Benny Schaft
January 15, 2026
As the new year begins, so has the continued repression by the capitalist state. Against the will of the people, the state has once again unleashed ICE [Immigration Customs Enforcement] thugs to kidnap and murder migrants and even their allies. This was on full display with the state-sanctioned murder of pro-migrant activist Renee Good on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis. This heinous act has already sparked countrywide protests leading to further radicalization amongst the working class.
Keith Porter, Jr.
But ICE terror is not limited to Latine people. It has also turned its violence towards the Black community as well — and has done so openly and with glee. This has been made clear in countless urban cities across the country. Of course, there are those who claim that ICE is not targeting Black people and that even raising such claims are “dangerous” for the community.
The argument is easy to dismantle.
The actions of these gestapo-like stormtroopers speak for themselves. Most notably in Chicago, ICE was caught on camera in November when a group of these fascists assaulted a Black resident near Garfield Park. They put him in a chokehold until he passed out while preventing bystanders from intervening on his behalf. One month earlier in October, 19-year-old Warren King suffered a similar fate when he was assaulted and illegally detained by ICE.
This violence escalated further when ICE raided the South Shore Apartments on Chicago’s South Side, beating and harassing residents, including children, and even zip tying them inside their own building. ICE attempted to justify this raid by claiming the building housed illegal “criminal” migrants, a claim that was later fully refuted.
And these crimes do not end there. ICE has also been kidnapping Black immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa, especially Haitians and Jamaicans. This directly contradicts the attempts by reactionaries to sow division within the Black community through xenophobia. They make the false claim that this is not happening to Black people at all.
By deliberately attempting to divide “Black Americans” from Black immigrants, the ruling class seeks to deceive Black people into believing that Black people are safe. However, the Black community in general has not fallen for it.
Any illusion that ICE terror does not affect the Black community was completely shattered when a 43-year-old Black man, Keith Porter Jr., was fatally shot by an off-duty ICE agent in Los Angeles on Dec. 31. This murder ignited even more organizing and radicalization among Black people against ICE across the country.
This brings us to the real question of how we should respond as Black revolutionaries and members of the Black community organize against this ongoing occupation of our neighborhoods and murders of our people?
The answer is clear.
We must resist. We must organize. We must continue building power against these stormtrooping pigs whose sole purpose is to wage war — not just against Black activists but against all workers, including workers of color. Just like the Blackshirts, Gestapo and KKK before them, ICE serves the interests of making profits for the capitalist system built on the suffering and murder of the most oppressed, including the Black community.
The only way to stop these assaults is through organization, mobilization and class unity to help drive these ICE fascists off the backs of the Black and Latine communities, and the working class as a whole. And in doing so, we will move towards dismantling capitalism itself and building a revolutionary workers’ government.
