As we reported last week, “On May 21, at a meeting at the headquarters of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), Stephen Miller (the main leader of Trump’s mass deportation project) angrily demanded that arrests and detentions of immigrants must rapidly accelerate to 3,000 a day—that is over a million people a year. He was backed by another top figure, [Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE] Kristi Noem. This is effectively policy now.”

This meeting unleashed a wave of immigration raids across the U.S., sweeping up thousands of people. 

• In San Diego, USA Today reports that “heavily armed agents” stormed into a popular restaurant. “Local residents screamed at them and filmed the scene. The agents wore tactical gear, including bulletproof vests emblazoned with the Homeland Security Investigations logo.” Reportedly, all employees were handcuffed, interrogated one by one, IDs checked. At the end, most were released but four were taken away, leading to hundreds of neighborhood people taking to the streets, shouting “Shame, Shame, Shame” at the federal thugs, and some putting their bodies in the path of the vehicles holding the imprisoned immigrants. A witness said “The agents fired sound grenades, flash-bang grenades, at the crowd.” In the next three days, $94,000 was raised to support their families.

• In Minneapolis, The Minnesota Star-Tribune reports that “several dozen federal agents” showed up suddenly in an immigrant area, geared up with “military-style fatigues, face coverings, rifles and armored vehicles.” “[A] crowd of around 200 residents flooded the area” to protest, along with some city council members.

• In Chicago, WGN-TV reports that Pilsen, a historic immigrant neighborhood that is majority Latino, was one of the targeted communities on June 2. Two men, reportedly Mexican, were seized before a crowd drove the agents out. And on Wednesday, June 4, about 20 immigrants going into an ISAP (Intensive Supervision Appearance Program) office just south of the downtown Loop for what they thought were routine check-ins were arrested by ICE. Members of the Latino city aldermen caucus were out there protesting along with 30 to 50 other people, and they tried to surround the vans carrying the immigrants away. Alderman Anthony Quezada described to WGN what happened: “Gestapo fashion, 50 agents or so walked down the street, stood in front of the driveway and aggressively came through, knocked me down, assaulted me and other community members here today, then pulled out weapons and also their sticks, pushing some of us, punching some of us to get through this driveway.”

  Some city officials pointed out that “intermittent raids are having a chilling effect on business and life in predominantly immigrant communities.” They are forcing people “back into the shadows and not be able to go freely to work or send their children to school.” Thus previously vibrant neighborhoods become ghost towns as fear takes over.

The MAGA fascists cynically claim that they only deport “the worst of the worst” violent criminals. 

But here they are in the real world, grabbing hardworking people from their jobs; people pursuing the legalization process, even people just walking down the street who don’t have the proper “papers” on them when stopped. In Denver, a toddler and a 6-year-old child were seized. In L.A., 18-year-old Katia Garcia found out that her father had been taken away from the store he worked at. She said he has lived here for 20 years. “I'm in disbelief … We never thought this would happen to us.” 

Frequently no one is told where people are being taken, or what U.S. agency has them in custody—in other words, they are disappeared. Over and over again, as you watch the videos, you see co-workers, friends and even strangers both crying and screaming in rage at the agents—not activists but “everyday people” who find fascism confronting them.

And on June 5, NBC Channel 8 in Tampa, Florida reported dozens of detainees being held at the Krome Detention Center in Miami came together to spell out “SOS” in the courtyard on Thursday June 5, as a protest against President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

L.A.

But all this was only the start. On Friday, June 6, agents launched multiple major operations in Los Angeles, the second largest city in the country, home to 3.5 million immigrants from Mexico, Central America and other parts of the world. 

Since Friday morning, Los Angeles has become a center of repression—and resistance to Trump's fascist attack on immigrants, and the leap in state violence overall.

See separate article, The Throwdown in Los Angeles: Fascist Attacks on Immigrants, People Stand Up.

Also on Saturday, there were protests at New York City’s Federal Plaza. According to Eyewitness News, "some of the protesters said they will not stand by as their neighbors are scooped up as part of the Trump Administration's aggressive immigration enforcement. The anger towards law enforcement was palpable.” Outrage was sharpened by the brutal arrest the previous day of a Dominican immigrant inside the courthouse. One protester summed up, "Their due process rights are being trampled in this building and they are being held here so we are here to oppose this." 

This protest was also met by violence—at least 20 were handcuffed and put in police vans, apparently for protesting in the street. 

What the Fascist Regime Is Up To…

First, if you thought that Trump’s announced plan for mass deportations—including Trump’s repeated citing of the goal of deporting 11 million people, or about four percent of all U.S. residents—was just campaign bluster…. Or if you thought, “this is America, ‘it can’t happen here’.”… Or if you thought that calling Trump a fascist or comparing him to Hitler was “going too far”… It’s time to confront reality, and to act accordingly. Everyone really does have to decide—is this ok? Do you want to be complicit? Do you want to bet the lives of millions on the hope that the courts will step in and that Trump will be obedient to them (when he calls “conservative” judges “radical left-wing lunatics”) and that you won’t have to do anything?

Or do you want to face reality, now, before it is too late?

Second, it is very important to note that while the immediate target of these fascist operations is immigrants, the fascists are explicitly going after the “sanctuary cities”—cities and other areas that have laws limiting their cooperation with federal immigration operations, and offering some protections to immigrants. These “sanctuary cities” are also one of the only parts of the political structure in the U.S. still controlled by the fascists’ hated ruling class rivals, the Democratic Party. And the fascists are quite consciously aiming to break that power and establish their own fascist authority through these big operations right in the Democratic “heartland.”

Three, along with this, the fascists are using these operations as a way to advance their project of linking the thousands of different “law enforcement” agencies on state, city, county and federal level into a single coordinated force under fascist leadership—a national Gestapo police force led by the likes of Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem, and fanatically loyal to Trump. (See “On The Eve of the Fifth Anniversary of the Police Murder of George Floyd: Trump Issues Executive Order Leaping Further Toward a Fascist State” for more on this.) Or as Aaron Reichlin-Melnick put it (cited by Heather Cox Richardson): “In order to build a mass deportation machine to round up and deport 4% of the entire goddamn population, you must first build the police state.”

Here it is really important to call attention to the reaction of Stephen Miller—a close advisor to Trump and the driving force behind the war on immigrants—in response to the protest and resistance in L.A.; he said it was "an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States." This is all-but-openly raising the specter of Trump invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to call out the U.S. military to be used against civilians, particularly Trump’s political enemies.

What We Need to Be Up To:

As laid out, this is an extremely serious situation with huge stakes. The fact that determined and (largely) nonviolent protest involving hundreds or more broke out in every major city that the fascists attacked is very good.  But it is not enough. This urgently needs to be built on and go much much further, as we have laid out elsewhere in this issue.

As long as this fascist regime holds nearly all the reins of state power (control of the armed forces, the executive branch, Congress, the FBI, DOJ, etc.), it is going to continue driving towards its goal of a complete fascist remaking of society, and the complete shattering of any opposition. The regime is not yet in a position to do this, but it is moving rapidly.  What we have laid out here shows acceleration.

With that in mind it should be clear, nothing less than driving this regime from power is going to prevent further and more horrendous atrocities. And nothing less than millions in the streets, waging determined, nonviolent, dogged and persistent struggle can accomplish this.

That is what we, all the people who yearn for a brighter future need to be fighting for, spreading and acting on.