Two developments last week indicate the ever-more repressive direction both Democrats and Republi-fascists are moving in their assaults on immigrants. While they differ in how—and how viciously—to attack and demonize immigrants, they are both criminalizing and attacking people fleeing desperate conditions for the basic ability to survive.

El Paso County, Texas is on the U.S.-Mexico border. Its District Attorney, Bill Hicks, announced that he is taking cases of “misdemeanor riot” against hundreds of immigrants to a Grand Jury for indictments—a legal move that is “unheard of.” The Texas National Guard has set up barbed wire barriers along the border, in defiance of the federal government. In March, they arrested immigrants trying to get past the barriers so they could apply for asylum in the U.S. (which is legal). Charges against the immigrants were dismissed by a judge. Hicks’s outrageous retaliatory move is perfectly in synch with a law (SB4) pushed by Greg Abbott, Texas’s Christian fascist governor, that will enable every cop in the state to detain and arrest anyone they suspect of being in the country “illegally.” Hicks is giving a taste of what SB4 could mean even before it has been approved in the court system. 

Meanwhile Trump, the Fascist-in-Chief, has vowed to initiate a “record-setting deportation operation” on “day one” of his presidency if he returns to office. (See the Revolution article “Texas Anti-Immigrant Law Would Enable Every Pig in the State To Demand, ‘Show Me Your Papers’” for a further examination of SB4.)

Right around the time Hicks made his announcement, Joe Biden’s administration announced that it is proposing its own change to asylum policy—enabling the federal government to “fast-track deportations.” Several media reports indicate that Biden is seeking ways to go much further—to “shut down the border,” if migration reaches a certain threshold, and prevent new asylum claims—while maintaining a cover of legality and “playing by the rules.”

The Republi-fascists have made the question of immigration a battering ram for their larger fascist agenda. They use it to whip up vicious anti-immigrant xenophobia (fear and hatred of “foreigners”) and hysteria about the “danger” of America becoming a majority minority country while using it as a wedge among oppressed people, especially by mobilizing some Black people and even native-born Latinos against immigrants on the basis of ugly American chauvinism. They use straight-up nazi language against immigrants promising to “take America back” from the “vermin invading our country.” 

Meanwhile, the Democrats are trying to maintain the lie that America is a “country of immigrants,” where people can come from around the world for “prosperity and a decent life.” They still try to put forward a multicultural model as a way to incorporate “minorities” into the system—all the better to exercise control. But without all the vicious language, their program has the same effect as the fascists. Biden doesn't whip up the same anti-immigrant hysteria, but he has still deported more people than Trump did in the years' previous, he is continuing to build Trump's wall, and he is now shredding the entire asylum process.

The divisions and differences among the rulers of this system are coming to a head—over how to best run and cohere their exploitative and oppressive system of capitalism-imperialism. The revolutionary leader Bob Avakian talks about the opening this provides, and what must—and must not be—done.

Everything will very likely be coming to a head and coming up for grabs this year, 2024, with the presidential election this year a sharp focus of the fight between the dominating ruling class parties—Democrats and Republicans—a fight that is very likely to break all out of the bounds of the “normal way” they exercise power over the people, and keep their whole murderous system going.

This kind of deep division—and especially this bitter antagonism among the powers-that-be—has not been seen in this country since the time of the Civil War way back in the 1860s.

This is not a time to be siding with one group of oppressors or another. This is a rare time—a very rare opening—a chance that may come only once in a lifetime—a chance to take advantage of the deep divisions among the ruling oppressors and go after their whole system, with the aim of bringing the whole thing down, and putting something much better in its place.

This rare time must not be squandered—wasted and thrown away. It must be actively and urgently seized on—to bring about a truly emancipating revolution. (From social media message Revolution Number Eight, @BobAvakianOfficial)

STOP! The Demonization, Criminalization and Deportations of Immigrants and the Militarization of the Border!

We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, a Fundamentally Different System