[T]o the degree that things are maintained within the limits of this system, this will actually have the effect of furthering the horrors for humanity that are built into this system, while also reinforcing and giving further impetus to the underlying economic—and the social and political—forces that will strengthen the fascism that has already shown great strength in this country (and a number of others).

—Bob Avakian, Humanity on the Brink: A Forced March Into the Abyss, or Forging a Way Forward Out of the Madness? 

The detainees on hunger strike at Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, New Jersey have just entered their third week, with nearly 40 female detainees joining them recently. There are also recent or active hunger strikes in at least five other detention hellholes around the country: Tacoma, WA; Alvarado, TX; Phillipsburg, PA; Baldwin, MI; Adelanto, CA. Delaney Hall is the largest ICE detention camp on the East Coast. (For background on this hunger strike, see Shockwaves From Delaney Hall Detainees and Sharpening Divides.)

Vicious ICE Retaliation Against Strikers

In response to the shockwaves created by the Delaney detainees on hunger strike, and with different forces acting to oppose what these detainees are revealing about the depraved nature of this ICE concentration camp, ICE has retaliated even more viciously. They have put detainees into isolation, transferred several to other detention camps, severely limited their contact with the outside world, and they have prevented families from seeing their loved ones, and more. 

According to the ACLU: “Amidst this information blackout, detained individuals have said: ‘We feel vulnerable and, in a way, kidnapped—detained without justification—not to mention that we are being tortured physically and psychologically due to the poor food resources provided in these detention centers.’”

A Fascist Program

The detention of 60,000-70,000 human beings in what amounts to 21st century concentration camps is one expression of the complete inhumanity and depravity of the Trump fascist program of dehumanization and ethnic cleansing of immigrants.

And that’s not all of it. A recent report from an investigation by The Marshall Project and MS-NOW noted that over the last year, on an average day ICE has 25 children age three or younger in custody, with at least 500 babies and toddlers detained since the Trump regime took power. The report brings out how crucial the first few years of a child’s life are in shaping their physical and mental health for their entire lives and tells the stories of infants unable to eat, unable to digest, sometimes for weeks and even beating their own bodies because of the detention and family separation in these concentration camps.

The fact that the Democrats who oppose this in words and at times with their bodies have no real answer—or misleading answers—as to why this is happening and what must be done shows the utter bankruptcy of this entire system.

Part of a Larger Program of Ethnic Cleansing

Jonathan Blitzer, in a recent article in The New Yorker describes a systematic approach: “Stephen Miller, Trump’s top domestic-policy adviser, has presided over the most concerted effort in a century to recast citizenship as a tool of systematic exclusion.”

Through executive orders and other means:

** The Trump administration has indefinitely suspended immigrant visa processing for people from 75 countries—that is over a third of the countries in the world.

** There is a complete travel ban on 39 of these countries.

** Permanent residents who had already received approval for their citizenship, had their ceremonies canceled.

** Recently, the regime announced that people within the U.S. who want to apply for permanent residency would have to go back to their countries and apply from there. The regime has backtracked somewhat in the face of tremendous opposition, including from major business interests. 

** The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services now has a specialized division whose purpose is to investigate and find naturalized citizens, permanent residents and any other legal immigrants who they can say lied or committed fraud when applying and therefore can have their legal status including citizenship stripped. They have been ordered to submit 100-200 cases per month. 

And now both the House and the Senate have passed the $70 billion bill that funds ICE and the Border Patrol through 2028. 

This Is Not About the “Billionaires,” This Is About FASCISM

In the face of all this, what have the Democrats done and not done, and why? 

It’s worth taking a look at the positions of Ras Baraka and Andy Kim, both of whom have been vocal opponents of the detentions at Delaney Hall. Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, was arrested at Delaney Hall last year when he tried to visit the detention center. Kim, a New Jersey senator, was pepper sprayed last month when he also was denied entry by ICE after receiving federal approval to visit detainees. Their actions have helped publicize what is happening at the detention center, and that is positive.

But their analyses and solutions distort reality and mentally disarm people. Andy Kim identifies the problem as “Private prison companies are raking in billions off of ICE deportations, all thanks to a revolving door of corruption” in a recent social media post. His argument is that private corporations are in cahoots with ICE and the Trump administration to make billions of dollars through mass arrests and mass deportations. Kim’s explanation cannot account for the all-out travel bans and attacks on naturalization that we have outlined above, for the needless cruelty and intentional torture, and for the crude violence against top Democrats like himself who have protested it. In fact, it leads people away from seeing the depth of the problem. Andy Kim's "explanation" would be like someone explaining Auschwitz by pointing to the money that the big German company IG Farben made from the poison gas used to murder Jews. No, it has not gotten there… yet. But look at where it has gotten, and ask yourself what’s the logic of the logic here?

Ras Baraka has filed lawsuits against The GEO Group that runs Delaney so that it can be shut down permanently, as they are currently violating so many laws. But just shutting down Delaney, as horrendous as Delaney is, without freeing the detainees, would basically force many detained migrants to even more remote locations all over the country and even further limit the already very limited access they have to families and other resources.

This is not a corruption problem. And it is not essentially a problem of greedy corporations, violating laws to make big bank. This is a problem of fascism. Over the past 60 years, millions of people, mainly non-white people, coming from all over the world, have brought their different traditions and different religions and cultures with them. The very workings of this system of capitalism-imperialism, whose interests and objectives both the Democrats and the Republicans represent, have created the situation where today millions and millions of people are forced to flee repressive regimes, death squads, invasions, wars and coups, trade agreements that ruin local subsistence agriculture, and drought, floods, wildfires and other extreme weather events and environmental catastrophes caused by climate change. This “problem” of millions and millions of people, especially non-white people from oppressed nations, flooding to the Western world hoping for a better life or in many cases, just survival, cannot be solved within the confines of the system that continues to create it. 

Neither Side Defending the System Can Deal with a Problem of the System Itself

But the fascists fervently believe that if the U.S. is to meet the challenges to its dominant position atop the imperialist shitpile it can only do so as a white Christian, patriarchal nation. The hatred and grotesque persecution now running rampant are essential to this. Andy Kim and Ras Baraka are either ignorant of or have willfully blinded themselves and those they lead to the real systemic nature of the problem. Or, they are another example of the delusion of the deadly logic of being "part of the system to change it" when the reality is the workings of the system will change you.

Although most Democrats differ with the fascists and see a greater role for immigrants in the U.S. economy, and also have a view that multiculturism plays a role in maintaining stability within the U.S., they too represent a system that has white supremacy baked into its bones, and that doesn’t have a way to incorporate the vast numbers of people looking for a safe and decent way to live. So, again, while they differ significantly on some elements of the fascist program, they have not tried to mount any kind of full-scale resistance or told the truth about what’s involved—for fear it would be too destabilizing for the system as a whole and, again, because there is no answer for it in this system.

There IS a Way Out of This Madness

There is a dynamic at work here that decent people need to begin to grasp: it is the very workings of this system—and not one or another policy of the Democrats or Republifascists—that continue to create global problems that drive mass migration. Wars, trade wars, climate catastrophes, distorted economic development—all of this feeds and furthers the horror that masses of people face. This will only go on and on as long as imperialism determines and dictates the future of humanity.

In an important interview in 2022, Bob Avakian provides a vision of a different solution, flowing from a different system. Referring to the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which he wrote, Avakian made the point that:

The orientation of the New Socialist Republic in North America is to welcome immigrants from all over the world who have a sincere desire to contribute to the goals and objectives of this Republic, as set forth in this Constitution and in laws and policies which are established and enacted in accordance with this Constitution. [Article II, Section 3,H]

BA goes on to say that:

Of course, the severe and increasingly desperate conditions of masses of people who are, and increasingly will be, forced to migrate not only within countries but across the globe, cannot be solved solely by the policies and actions of any particular country, even the liberating society envisioned in this Constitution. This is another important dimension of why the fundamental orientation of the new communism, and of the socialist society it is aiming to bring into being through revolution, is internationalist, and advancing the revolutionary struggle against the rule of capitalist imperialism, and all oppressive forces, throughout the world, must be the most basic orientation of that new society. And this fundamental orientation is not, and must not be, merely proclaimed but actually given life in the practical policies and actions of revolutionary forces and the radically new and emancipating society they are fighting to bring into being. At the same time once again, revolution in this country, through the overthrow of this most powerful capitalist-imperialist ruling class, will strike a tremendous blow and provide inspiration for the billions of bitterly oppressed people in the world and all those, everywhere, who hunger for a world without the rule of exploiters and oppressors and the tremendous suffering they inflict on the masses of humanity and the existential threat their system poses to the future of humanity.

This is a vision, a method, an approach and a program that could really enable humanity to tackle this problem.