The Communist Party USA denounces the cynical and inhumane Laken Riley Act, a fascist measure which requires the indefinite detention without trial of any noncitizen, adult or child, who is accused of even a minor infraction, like shoplifting. It treats immigrants in this country like enemy combatants, opening them up to the same abuses as those who were sent to Guantanamo on unsubstantiated charges of terrorism, and grants to racist vigilantes the power to initiate a deportation process with a mere pointing of the finger.

The bill also authorizes any state government to sue the federal government for things like releasing a noncitizen from jail, admitting asylum seekers, issuing visas to people from certain countries, granting parole to immigrants, or not deporting someone.

Twelve Democrats in the Senate and 46 Democrats in the House voted along with all the Republicans in favor of the bill.

The bill’s passage followed Trump’s day-one executive orders: to end birthright citizenship — an attack on the 14th Amendment, established during the post–Civil War Reconstruction period; to allow ICE to enter schools, medical facilities, places of worship, social service agencies, disaster relief sites, and public demonstrations, stripping them of their prior sanctuary status; to block asylum seekers and refugees from entering the U.S.; and to further militarize the border.

One day after the legislation passed through Congress, ICE raids broke out all across the country.

Trump, the MAGA right, and their billionaire backers want to cast immigrants of color as violent criminals threatening other people living here, and as a drain on the economy. There is no truth to these claims. Statistics show that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than those born in the U.S. Undocumented workers represented 4.5% of the U.S. workforce in 2022. Undocumented immigrants injected more than $250 billion into the economy through their own spending, and paid nearly $100 billion in federal, state, and local taxes — often without being able to receive tax credits or claim their refunds. More than a third of these tax contributions went to Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance, programs they were barred from accessing. Many undocumented people abstain from accessing other programs as well, fearing that their information will be shared with other agencies.

The truth is, these attacks are designed to rip a giant tear through the fabric of society in general, and the working class in particular.

The MAGA right aims to create a two-tier system of wages and legal rights for workers, which will allow the ruling class to slash wages for all workers and weaken on-the-job protections across the board. By eliminating basic Constitutional rights for non-naturalized immigrants, the Laken Riley Act opens up the door to eliminating those same protections for all people living in the United States.

By ramping up detentions, it also opens up the door to massive profits for private prisons like CoreCivic and GEO Group.

Continuing historical attacks

The use of the word “illegal,” like the use of the word “terrorist,” is a catch-all label to delegitimatize individuals and movements, continuing the tactics of the earlier Palmer Raids of 1919–20 or the McCarthy period of the 1950’s. It is worth noting here that ICE was an invention of the Bush administration to build support for the criminal Iraq War. Its purpose was to cast all Arab Americans and Muslim Americans as suspects in the “Global War on Terror.” Its creation was accompanied by the Patriot Act, which attacked the right to privacy for all people living in the U.S. Today, ICE is also directed with particular force against people from Latin America and the Caribbean and against many of their ancestral homelands, including Mexico. And once again, it is being used to attack basic democratic and Constitutional rights.

History suggests that the Act will be used to profile people of color and those speaking Spanish and other languages besides English, violating the Constitutional rights of many citizens. ICE has already demonstrated disregard for the rights of citizens, for example in the recent raid of a worksite in Newark, N.J., where the Puerto Rican manager, a veteran, was arrested without a warrant, even after showing their military ID.

“It looked to me like they were specifically going after certain kinds of people,” the store owner said, “because they did not ask me for documentation for [the] American workers, Portuguese workers, or white workers.”

Together, we can stop deportations!

Multiracial, multinational, multigender, young and old, gay and straight, abled and disabled, native and immigrant working-class unity is needed to successfully fight the Laken Riley Act and Trump’s broader attacks on immigrant communities. Only by joining together can working people win the necessary struggles for dignity, rights, and power for migrant workers and all workers.

The Trump administration’s anti-immigrant attacks are not helpful to U.S.-born working people. They simultaneously attack fundamental democratic principles, including citizenship rights, union rights, and the U.S. Constitution. Their purpose is to disorient, fracture, frighten, and confuse the working class as a whole.

While migrants are the focus of this most recent volley in MAGA’s billionaire-backed unconstitutional and inhumane onslaught, it is the whole class, along with small businesses and people’s movements around the environment, systemic racism, public education, women’s autonomy, LGBTQ+ rights, peace, and much more that are under attack. Stopping the attack on migrants is important in its own right, and necessary also for the whole of the working class and all people’s movements.

The Communist Party USA calls on everyone to join our migrant sisters, brothers, and siblings in resistance now to prevent, limit, or roll back the Trump administration’s implemented and planned hate-filled, life-unravelling, actions. United, we can protect and expand the policies and programs that are vital to the everyday lives of migrants, women and children, the entire working class, and its allies. Together we can protect and fight for our migrant neighbors and family members, the children in our schools, the workers in U.S. hotels, meat processing plants, fields, and so many other places that contribute to the historic tapestry of the U.S. working class.

U.S. history began with genocide against Native Americans and European immigration, the forced migration of Africans as commodities for chattel slavery, and the theft of Mexican lands. We demand respect for the many immigrants and workers, including historically and currently enslaved and imprisoned workers, who continue to contribute positively to U.S. history. The reality is that migrants are crossing a border for work, and have every right to exist and thrive within U.S. national borders.

We say “No!” to attacks on migrants, and “Yes!” to joining together to stop the anti-democratic and self-serving agenda of the MAGA right and their billionaire backers.

RESIST!

Images: CPUSA at the Jan. 18 People’s March in D.C. (CPUSA); ICE Raid Vigil in Los Angeles, CA in 2010 by SEIU (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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