Attacks On Immigrants—Attacks On All

Apr 14, 2025

The following is excerpted from a presentation given in Chicago on April 6, 2025.

Immigrant workers today are under attack by the U.S. government led by Donald Trump. The undocumented immigrant community lives in constant fear of being stopped and arrested by ICE (Immigration Agents) to be deported.

Since the start of the month of February here in Chicago, after people heard there were some arrests being made by ICE, people stopped going out shopping like they used to do, people were afraid of going to work, or to take their kids to school. Many of these immigrants have been in the country working many years. They have set up their lives here, seen their children grow up.

Tom Homan, the head of ICE, said that they would go after the criminals that are in the neighborhoods. But the tactics they are using are scary. They are not only using the ICE agents, they use the FBI, ATF, U.S. Marshals and they want the local police to help them as well.

Many of us have seen people in chains on TV or social media, being sent to different detention centers including Guantanamo prison, and more recently prisons in El Salvador.

Different immigration lawyers, schools, churches and community groups advise people what to do in case they are stopped by ICE. They tell people not to open their doors in case ICE agents knock on their door, unless agents have a warrant. But who can believe the agents won’t break the doors as has already happened?

They say they’re going after criminals. But who can trust them? For them, anybody who looks Mexican or Venezuelan is a criminal suspect and if stopped, they better have a way to prove that they are legal in the country.

Donald Trump says more than 12 million people are criminals, rapists, the worst type of people who came from mental institutions. During his presidential campaign, he promised that if elected, on day one he would start a mass deportation.

So far though, Trump hasn’t deported more people per day than Biden. And many fewer than Obama. Who knows how many they will actually deport? In fact, the big companies and rich people like Trump himself need immigrant workers. But already, people are scared. And that is really the point because scared workers are less likely to stand up for themselves.

Every president, Democrat or Republican, in recent years has deported many people. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, pretended to be more friendly to immigrants but deported more than two million people. Then, President Biden also deported people.

During the pandemic, the border was basically closed. Then the Democratic politicians promised asylum or temporary protection to some new immigrants from countries like Venezuela, Haiti, Ukraine and some others…. It just so happened that they let all those people in, right when the companies started complaining that they needed more workers in 2021. Then, in January of 2024, Biden ended that program and said no more asylum. Before Trump took office, the border was basically closed.

Immigrants Have Always Been Part of the Working Class

In fact, that’s always what happens. Immigrants have always been a big part of the working class in this country, let in when the bosses needed more workers, and blocked or deported when they didn’t.

For about 100 years the bosses wanted all the immigrants they could get, and during that time mostly anyone who could get here could be a citizen right away….

… Up until the 1920s, the U.S. tried to bring over as many people from Europe as it could get, to form the workforce the companies needed to build industry.

During World War I, few workers were coming from Europe. And the factories needed workers. So finally, they would hire black workers. Millions of black people came to the North from the South looking for work between 1914 and the 1970s. They formed another big part of the workforce.

It was also during World War I that the first big group of workers from Mexico came. But starting in 1929, the Great Depression hit. Companies didn’t need all those workers. So, they deported about a million people to Mexico—including many U.S. citizens who were born here.

In the 1970s, companies started the big attack on workers that is still going on. They wanted another wave of desperate workers. And that’s when millions of people started coming from Mexico. Most were kept undocumented—meaning the companies could take even more advantage of them than the rest of the workers.

Why We Come

I came to the U.S. in the 1980s myself. When I was working in Mexico the pay was very low—less than the Mexican minimum wage. One of my jobs was working for a rich family in Mexico City as a gardener—or really, a servant. I worked six days a week, and my only free time was when I was asleep. I had to wake up at 5:30 to wash my bosses’ cars, and then I was on call the rest of the day. They didn’t pay me nearly enough to have my own place—they gave me a room to sleep in and fed me, beans and eggs every day….

… My first job here, I was working more than 12 hours a day. I was a dishwasher and busboy, supposed to get tips—but the boss took them all. From then on, I’ve worked in one factory after another. At first, I made minimum wage—$3.35. That was much more than I made in Mexico: I felt rich at that time. But then I realized how much it cost to live over here!

If I could have made a decent living in Mexico, I would have stayed in Mexico. So how come I couldn’t make a decent living in Mexico?

Mexico has a lot of resources. It has a lot of factories. It produces cars, medical supplies, and all kinds of other stuff. But there is no Mexican car company. A huge share of the wealth produced by workers in Mexico is taken by the U.S. capitalist class.

For a time, the Mexican government tried to limit how much the country was exploited by U.S. businesses, in the interests of its own rich people. But then, between 1970s and 1990s, the U.S. forced Mexico to completely open itself to U.S. business. Millions of Mexican farms failed as the country was flooded with cheap U.S. food. Small stores were driven out of business by companies like Walmart, the largest retailer in Mexico.

Even as U.S. companies set up thousands of factories in Mexico, the wages are extremely low compared to those in the U.S.

It’s not just Mexico: suppliers of clothing in Central America and Asia have been set against each other to provide ever-cheaper goods to the U.S. Plantations and mining corporations have grabbed land from small farmers all over the world. The U.S. worked with the drug cartels to fund wars in Central America in the 1980s and in the 1990s. For decades, Haitian politicians and the very rich, backed by the U.S., used gangs as their own private armies to impose control over the population. Now all these gangs and cartels have gotten out of control.

U.S. imperialism has made these countries almost unlivable for many people.

And in some countries, it is much worse. The U.S government has carried out wars all over the world in the interest of its corporations….

… The U.S. government has also supported countless repressive regimes and military overthrows in the interest of its corporations….

… The U.S. government has undermined countries that try to take even a small slice of independence from U.S. corporate domination of their economies, like the two U.S.-backed military coup attempts in Venezuela, and the harsh sanctions the U.S. has imposed, that have made it almost impossible for that country to sell its own oil and buy food, medicine and other goods.

All this creates poverty and desperation in the young people, giving them two options: to join the cartels or immigrate to the U.S. So, No! Immigrants are not coming from prisons, mental institutions or insane asylums as Donald Trump says.

People have been coming because they are desperate.

These people crossed jungles on foot, with small children walking from South America to the border or braving the sea on leaky boats, taking a chance to be raped, robbed or killed by different cartels or gangs along their way here….

The Working Class Is International

… Cities like L.A. and Chicago have serious homelessness problems, and offering shelter to these new immigrants created resentment among Black and Hispanic workers already in these various communities.

This resentment creates division among workers. When this happens, the bosses are the only winners.

The capitalist class benefits from immigrant workers. It benefits from keeping them desperate, keeping them scared. When workers are scared, they are more likely to keep quiet. And that benefits the bosses.

The capitalist class also benefits when workers blame each other. When workers in Chicago fight over who will get to stay in the homeless shelter, the rich people laugh all the way to the bank.

Immigration in general is just part of life. Workers have no country. Workers should have the right to go wherever they want, just like rich people can.

The working class is international: wherever we are or come from, we have the same interests. We produce the wealth. We do the services that society needs. We need more people to help us. Just look how companies are working 10 or 12 hours per day, or night, in many cases 6 or 7 days a week. I did many of these jobs. I have worked over 40 years in this country working with Black, Chinese, Indian, Italian and all kinds of people.

We all need to have the same rights, the same benefits. To be treated equal, with dignity. When a group of workers are afraid, they are used and abused by the companies. Companies like to have this kind of worker because they can pay them less money, and these workers are easier to exploit. That hurts all workers—which is why we need to demand that everyone here have the same rights.

We need to stand together. We need to fight against the bosses who make us believe that immigrants need to be deported. The capitalist system and the super-rich are our only enemies. They are the parasites that suck our blood and live off our work. They are the only ones who need to be deported.