the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Feb 3, 2025
Just in his first two weeks, Trump ordered an end to birthright citizenship, stripped the legal status of thousands who entered the U.S. legally, ordered the military to send planes of deportees to Colombia and Brazil, promised to lock up 30,000 people in Guantanamo Bay, distributed images of handcuffed immigrants and mug shots of those arrested with criminal records, revoked an order barring ICE from targeting schools and churches, and issued increased “quotas” to ICE officials.
On the ground, this “mass deportation” campaign hasn’t amounted to very much. Trump’s birthright citizenship order has been blocked—so far. And as of this writing, the Trump administration had managed to deport less than half as many people per day as Obama did in his first term. Of course, that could change tomorrow.
But all these threats have terrorized millions of people. Streets in immigrant neighborhoods that are usually crowded are quiet. School attendance is down. A New York city council member summed it up: “People are keeping their kids home from school. They’re afraid to go to work. They’re just scared in general.”
These threats have also served to place blame on immigrants for the problems facing all workers. Trump wants us to believe these immigrants are the cause of crime: his Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, “We’re getting the dirt bags off the streets.” He wants workers to believe that they are the cause of low wages, and that if all the immigrants are removed, there will be more jobs for “real” Americans, and more money for the services we need, from schools to hospitals to housing.
In fact, Trump’s threats are aimed at distracting us from the real criminals, the real cause of our lack of jobs and low pay: the capitalist system that puts profit for the billionaires above the needs of working people.
Almost every job is shorthanded. Would the hospitals be better off if all the current immigrant nurses were deported? No—they need more nurses, and every other worker! The same is true in the factories, construction crews, and everywhere else. The jobs are shorthanded because the bosses have cut the number of workers in order to wring more profits out of those they have left.
Immigrants are part of our class, the working class. Fighting amongst ourselves, blaming each other—that just lets the billionaires get away with their untold crimes against all of us. And that is exactly Trump’s point.