As the Trump administration continues to ramp up its regime of mass deportations, grassroots organizers are growing the immigrant rights movement in opposition.
Last week, Trump promised to pause some ICE raids at workplaces over concerns from employers in the farming and hospitality industries. However, this week, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan confirmed that the raids will in fact continue.
“We’re going to continue to do worksite enforcement operations, even on farms and hotels, but based on a prioritized basis. Criminals come first,” Homan told reporters on June 19.
According to a CNN report show, less than 10% of immigrants taken into ICE custody in the last months of the Biden administration and the first months of the Biden administration had serious criminal convictions. A data analysis by The Guardian shows that the Trump administration exponentially increased the detention of immigrants with no criminal history. Since right before Trump took office in January, there has been an 807% increase in ICE arrests of immigrants with no criminal record.
Trump’s mass deportation regime has been met with popular resistance, including mass spontaneous protests in Los Angeles against ICE raids on workplaces, which then expanded to anti-ICE demonstrations across the country.
In the weeks following the first wave of protests in Los Angeles, grassroots organizers have called for a “sickout” on July 1, in which people will call out of work in solidarity with immigrants targeted by ICE.
Organizers of the “sick out” call on participants to:
- Support immigrant street vendors and small businesses.
- Go to a march, community event or meet-up
- Donate to an organization taking action or providing emergency relief for immigrant families
- Join or form an immigrant defense committee
- Post on social media about the day of action
Peoples Dispatch spoke to Karina Garcia, a longtime immigrant rights activist who was a student organizer at Columbia University when millions of people took to the streets in 2006 to protest the anti-immigrant Sensenbrenner Bill. This bill would have classified undocumented immigrants, and anyone who helped them enter or remain in the US, as felons.
The protest movement built over months, reaching its zenith on International Workers’ Day in 2006, on May 1. Protesters dubbed the day “A Day Without An Immigrant,” encouraging immigrants to abstain from work in order to demonstrate the crucial role played by immigrant labor in US society.
“There’s no way you can look at the protests happening in Los Angeles and not think of A Day Without An Immigrant,” Garcia said. “It’s a new generation of young people that are out there in the streets, defending their parents, defending their families.”
According to Garcia, amid Trump’s attacks on immigrant communities, “we need more people to come out together at the same time.”
“The people are kicking ICE out of their neighborhood. It wasn’t a Democratic politician, it the people themselves in Paramount, for example, surrounding ICE,” Garcia said. “The mass movement is the only thing that can make a difference right now.”
