Immigration:
Demagogy from Both Parties

Mar 17, 2025

House Republicans called the mayors of New York, Chicago, Boston and Denver to Washington, D.C., in order to grill them about their cities’ so-called “sanctuary policies.” For the Republicans, it was an opportunity to make grandstanding attacks on immigrants—and to beat up on the Democratic mayors.

For example, the Republicans repeated the lie that immigrants are responsible for a “crime wave.” Chicago mayor Johnson pushed back, saying that overall city crime numbers were down during the last two years, when more than 50,000 immigrants were bused to the city from Texas. Immigrants to the United States commit fewer crimes, as defined by the capitalist laws, than do people born in this country.

Anti-immigrant talk from Trump and other Republicans has created widespread fear in immigrant communities. This intimidating rhetoric is itself an attack on the working class. Fear of losing a job makes immigrant workers less likely to push back on their employers; it tends to make people accept worse conditions. And that worsens the situation for all working people—an attack on one is an attack on all.

But we need to remember what the Democrats actually do. People in Chicago remember the frightful conditions faced by the immigrants bused to Chicago. Waiting for weeks or months in the lobbies of police stations, or in a waiting area at the airport. Or the polluted field on the South Side that Mayor Brandon Johnson proposed as the site for a tent camp—they were going to live a Chicago winter in a tent camp!

In fact, Democratic presidents have generally deported more people than Republicans. Barack Obama deported three million immigrants—more than any other president to date.

Trump is setting up Guantanamo Bay to warehouse immigrants. But not so long ago, Bill Clinton sent thousands of Haitian immigrants there.

The Democrats’ talk on immigrants is different. But, in fact, they carry out the same policy as the Republicans.