On Wednesday May 13 at 3 a.m. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) raided the homes and offices of VC Defensa volunteers. Activists of a rapid response network in Ventura County woke up to doors being knocked in and guns drawn by federal agents. No arrests were made but electronic devices and documents were seized. 

VC Defensa is being targeted for mobilizing protests in opposition to the July 10, 2025 ICE raid at Glass House Farms in Camarillo, CA that left a farmworker, Jaime Alanís Garcia, dead. Leo Martinez with VC Defensa has become a particular target of this investigation. Not only was his home and office raided on May 13 but throughout the past few months he's been arrested with no charges filed (October 2025 and March 2026). Martinez himself has alleged that during the March 2026 arrests ICE/DHS rammed their vehicles into his car. 

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO PEOPLE AND GROUPS WHO HAVE BEEN DEFENDING IMMIGRANTS SINCE LAST JUNE?

In September 2025 Trump signed an executive order titled "Designating Antifa As A Domestic Terrorist Organization" and signed the National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7: Countering Terrorism and Organized Political Violence. In reality, NSPM-7 called for the investigation of a wide array of people not for actions, but for beliefs that stood opposed to the Christian-fascist program. Both of these documents combined amounted to a stepped up assault against political opposition to the Trump regime. As part of the execution of NSPM-7 Ventura County Defensa has been under investigation under the pretext of being: “organizations involved in illegal activities during protests” (as cited in HSI court papers). 

Following the murder of Reneé Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis (both for standing up against ICE), Kristi Noem—who labeled Alex Pretti a “domestic terrorist”—had to resign as head of Homeland Security. After their murders, the intensity of the resistance to ICE hit a high point, rocking all of society. 

Since then the regime has at least temporarily recalibrated its tactics to focus on stripping immigrants of temporary protected status and to cutting the issuing of green cards by half. Just this Friday the regime announced that people who apply for green cards will have to leave and apply for status from their home countries—upending half a century of immigration law that will impact 100's of thousands of people.  

At the same time, Trump's big ugly bill has secured $170 billion in funding that includes increasing detention center capacity to an expected 100,000 people. NSPM-7 is being deployed to go after anyone who opposes the ripping up of legal protections for immigrants—and much of this is being deployed against US citizens.  Again, what up to now has been officially conceded to be protected and legal opposition is now cast as “domestic terrorism.” Note: there is no legal category of “domestic terrorism” but the Trump fascist regime is seeking to open up a whole new criminal category just by asserting this. Just this month the White House unveiled a new United States Counterterrorism Strategy which will allow the authorities to spy on and track “...political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist. We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally” before any crime has been committed. In effect, this makes holding a political ideology that is in opposition to the regime a crime of "domestic terrorism." 

All of this is utterly and completely illegitimate and decent people should not stand aside in the face of this fascist repression. NSPM-7 has already legitimized the conviction of nine demonstrators at Prairieland, Texas ICE Detention Center on charges of “terrorism”. We call on people to not let VC Defensa become the next target of this regime in suppressing and criminalizing dissent.

WHY THESE ATTEMPTS AT REPESSION ARE ABOUT CONSOLIDATING FASCISM AND MUST BE MET AND DEFEATED.

It has been right and righteous that a lot of people have stood up in the face of ICE and Border Patrol in neighborhoods, detention centers, and courthouses to defend immigrants under assault by the Trump regime. But it’s important to realize that this is not just another “pendulum swing” in the long history of demonizing immigrants and the periodic horrors of mass removal. This wave of assaults has acted as the battering ram for the regime that is moving relentlessly to dismantle 150 years of the established form of capitalist rule. This is fascism consolidating in the most powerful capitalist-imperialist country in the world as one resolution to managing increasing crisis and challenges to this system's domination of the planet. 

The people of this country have to come to grips with the reality that unless this fascist regime is removed from power it will consolidate and the room for resistance will be closed off. Left on this trajectory the Trump fascist regime will go forward in carrying out their ethnic cleansing of immigrants as a battering ram for their full fascist agenda. And right now it's purposefully going after all political opposition—both individuals and organizations—who stand up against their fascist program of white supremacy, male supremacy, anti-LGBT Christian fascist, American chauvinist, anti-immigrant and xenophobic terror.

This is not the time to fall into acquiescence and accommodation—we have to urgently come together, stand up, and unite in opposition to their illegitimate fascist form of rule and the capitalist-imperialist system that is the root cause and driving force of all this brutality. As the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian put it in his recent work Humanity on the Brink: A Forced March Into the Abyss, or Forging a Way Forward Out of the Madness? in the section “Dealing with repression:”

In relation to all this, there is the importance of confronting and moving to not only oppose but actually defeat the severe repression the Trump regime is threatening, and is moving rapidly to enforce—for example, with its targeting of so-called “antifa” as a dragnet and broad framework in which to go after anybody who is (as they say) “anti-capitalist,” “anti-Christian,” “anti-American,” taking supposedly “extreme positions” against deporting immigrants, and so on and so forth. It is only realistic and scientific to expect this repression to take leaps, and very likely in the near future. So it is necessary to be prepared, actively as well as ideologically in terms of orientation, to meet and defeat this repression, broadly mobilizing people in opposition to it, including people who have political disagreements with those targeted at any given time. 

And through this fight, it is necessary to win more people, building up more organized forces, for the fight against Trump/MAGA fascism, in terms of the immediate situation, and for the fundamental goal of revolution—giving life to what we describe as the R/CR/More R phenomenon (that is, revolution and resistance against the system, met by the counter-revolution of the repression of the regime, and met in turn by calling forth more powerful resistance and building for revolution). This is going to be an extremely acute focus and front of the struggle against the Trump regime and for the possibility of something even more fundamental to change. So it is necessary, as I said, to be prepared both ideologically and practically, and to make this a mass question, and give life to the orientation of uniting all who can be united against this repression, regardless of even significant differences among those so united—but, at the same time, not allowing this, even as serious as it is likely to become, to cause people to panic and to backtrack on struggling against the regime and for more fundamental change.