EDITORIAL
ICE Attacks Meet with Resistance

Jun 9, 2025

On the morning of Friday, June 6, ICE conducted several sweeps in the city of Los Angeles. Dozens of agents, heavily armed and driving armored vehicles, descended on a clothing wholesaler and a couple Home Depots downtown, among other places. They rounded up between 20 and 30 workers, mostly of Mexican or South Korean heritage, at Ambiance Apparel.

The raids did not go quietly nor smoothly. Hundreds of protestors, brought out by local immigrant rights groups who had prepared in advance, converged on several locations. ICE brandished rifles, threw flash-bang grenades, and had to clear paths through protestors, who tried to block the vans taking the detainees. Protestors later converged on the courthouse downtown. Over a hundred protestors were arrested that day.

A week earlier in downtown San Diego, 20 masked ICE agents in tactical gear raided a restaurant, arresting 19 workers. Dozens of people in the neighborhood immediately responded, surrounding the officers and their vans. Again, ICE resorted to arrests and flash-bang grenades to extricate themselves from the angry crowd.

People, especially working people, have plenty of reason to be angry. Trump’s talk about so-called “criminal migrants” is total bullshit. These were not rapists or murderers. They are workers, doing a job and making a living—moving clothing, taking day labor jobs, cooking and serving in a restaurant. In short, making things run.

These raids are a form of terrorism—yes, that is the correct word. The raids are meant to intimidate immigrant workers. To silence them, to push them into the shadows—and to make them accept lower wages and worse conditions. Lower wages and worse conditions for some workers—that can only pull down on the wages and conditions for everyone else who works.

Ever since Trump entered politics here, he has leaned into attacking immigrants as a wedge to divide the working class. He seeks to blame immigrants for low wages, for the lack of good jobs—real problems, but problems created by the capitalists, not by any of the workers. Trump may seek to purposely provoke a response in places like L.A. and San Diego, in order to feed into that division.

Having armed agents and armored trucks out on the streets in working-class cities like Los Angeles is a way to condition us to accept more repression. These attacks, carried out now on immigrant workers, will be targeted against others next. Trump and his cronies have plenty more people they’d like to bundle off to camps in their unmarked vans.

But not everyone is terrified—and not everyone accepts the repression. The protests in Southern California show that, first of all. Around the country, some have rallied to support immigrants.

In Massachusetts on Saturday, May 31, ICE arrested Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, a Brazilian high school junior, while on his way to volleyball practice. Hundreds of students at Milford High School walked out the following Monday, in support of their fellow student. Marcelo was released on bond on Thursday, after almost a week in detention. He has spoken out about the bad food, lack of translation, and inhumane conditions there, despite the obvious risks he takes doing so.

Some politicians, mostly Democrats, have stepped into the fray. The president of the California SEIU was arrested in L.A., on Friday. The mayor of L.A. and the entire city council wrote a letter denouncing Trump’s actions. All well and good, for them to show up.

But the Democratic Party has no answer for working people. They do not challenge the functioning of capitalism. The Democrats support this capitalist system, a system that requires the super-exploitation of immigrant workers as part of the exploitation of the whole working class. They give lip-service to a struggle against Trump’s thuggery but will not challenge the capitalists behind him.

On Saturday, Trump and the White House upped the ante, calling out 2,000 National Guard troops to L.A. Trump posted “Great job by the National Guard in Los Angeles”—before they had even arrived on the scene! Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened to mobilize active-duty marines. There were additional protests in and around L.A. on Saturday, but smaller than Friday. Trump appears to be making a grandstanding provocation.

The working class is the target of these raids—we have every reason as workers to fight them. Working people, in pushing against these ICE raids, could move toward making a fight against capitalism and the capitalist state. If the working class refuses to be divided by nationality, a fight started by immigrant workers could open the door to a fight by the entire working class. And that could lead to taking on the capitalists, finally prying control over this society out of their grip.