Deportation Campaigns Update

Over the past few months, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its internal deportation wing, Immigration and Customs enforcement (ICE) have caused quite the stir in the bourgeois press; namely murdering yet more immigrants in their drive to discipline the proletariat and manage the surplus army of labor.

The recent deaths of Lorenzo Salgado, a small construction owner, on July 7th and Joan Sebastian Guerrero on July 13th, a delivery driver, whom were killed back to back by federal agents shows the recent escalation of the immigration efforts headed under the hospices of the conservative wing of the bourgeoisie. These developments occurred right after the recent surge in deportations at the end of June which resulted in 10,000 arrests in a span of 5 days at the request of the Trump administration to ramp up arrests to 2,000 a day- a doubling of last year’s quota.

Instead of the high profile campaigns which hit the urban centers during the previous year and up to the beginning of the current one, the administration has opted for more low profile campaigns. Despite the clamoring of the ‘left’, who made boastful declarations about the apparent success of the so-called ‘general strike’ which occurred in Minneapolis, the terror facing immigrant workers continues for the most part uninhibited.

On the judicial side of this development, the supreme court voted 6 to 3 against Trump’s drive to deny birthright citizenship to children of immigrants while still upholding the end of the Temporary Protection Status (TPS) for the hundreds of thousands of Haitians, Syrians, and other nationalities. This follows the end of the TPS for the hundreds thousands of Venezuelans from last year and shows that the State is continuing to clear the way for further removal of immigrant workers. This trend is likely to continue as legal hurdles to expedite deportations are increasingly established; from the removal of protective statuses, mass deportation hearings, and appointed deportation judges which are but symptoms of capital’s need to streamline the process with which it can shed unneeded workers as the economy begins its downward spiral into another overproduction crisis.

Deaths continue to rise within the ICE detention facilities, to a total of 56 by June, the conditions within these encampments are well documented to be deplorable, with detained immigrants deprived of even the most basic necessities and healthcare, resulting in deaths and permanent damage to their bodies—not to mention the rampant physical and sexual abuse done on detainees by the prison operators. On top of this, the detained immigrants are forced to work under slave wages; in some cases as low as $1/day to get what they need from commissaires which price gouge items.

Hunger and labor strikes on the part of detained immigrants have occurred at detention centers in New Jersey, Washington, and California. The facility in Delaney, New Jersey was the epicenter of a 300 strong hunger and labor strike that began in May and lasted until, in June, it was violently ended by federal agents and GEO group contractors. The response from workers and other elements to protest and support the effort was met with the usual repressive reaction from the State with its police forces. Likewise the local democratic party apparatus played the counterpoint by confronting the situation with its toothless due process in the courts, effectively shrouding the event in a political smokescreen.

What we are witnessing here is the complex of federal, local and private entities acting to coordinate the infrastructure for detaining and holding immigrants destined for deportation. It takes a grotesque form through the relationship between the State and private contractors which profiteer from this arrangement through multi-million dollar contracts based on guaranteed payouts per number of beds, low wage labour, and cutting corners on materials and staffing for maintenance. It is the logic of capital in action. Firms profit from providing carceral services at the lowest price–nothing new in the United States.

In 2025 alone, the biggest private prison contractors like GEO Group and CoreCivic made $2.1 billion and $600 million dollars, respectively. This industry, beyond enriching the firms directly involved, also serves the interests of American capitalism as a whole which is contending with an economic downturn that has forced it to discipline and control the supply of the low ‘skill‘ wage markets–that is the labour power that due to its place of origin is cheaper than the native labour power and which requires less training to put to use in the process of capital accumulation. In short, the proletariat is attacked by the needs of capital and it finds itself for the time being defenseless in spite of the apparent support by its ‘allies’.

False ‘Friends’

The primary ’opposition’ presented by bourgeois ideology to the terror which is inflicted upon immigrant workers is, of course, the Democratic party and its team of tail riders: the activists and pseudo Marxist parties, who propagate the idea that the terror can be ended through immigration reform or, according to the more radical elements, that the State’s immigration enforcement apparatus can be abolished while the State itself is left whole.

Whereas Democrats have rallied under a more humane angle sporting their usual crocodile tears and whose calls amount to restrictions on force, removal of ICE agents masks and implementation of body cameras. Some have even gone far and put signs on public parking lots that bar ICE agents from parking. They have also called for legal pathways to certain sections of immigrants noting their importance to the economy. Their main critique boils down to the State machinery built for the forceful deportation, always a violent endeavor, to be put under control. Like putting a muzzle and leash on a wolf instead of slaughtering it. We need only to look at their track record, which we have covered in detail in previous issues, to see that the Democrats have never shied away from imposing the same terror against the immigrant population when the needs of capital required it. Even when they render some palliative care from time to time, to certain sections of immigrants (DACA, TPS, etc) we should not confuse the matter as an act of charity but as a response by a faction of the bourgeoisie which finds it more useful to integrate certain immigrants for the purpose of stabilizing capitalist relations. In fact, if we observe the political program of the Democrats as it pertains to the immigrant question we will soon find them in good company with their comrades in the Republican party.

During the Biden administration, we saw the ‘New Democrat Coalition’, which is the largest Democratic coalition in the House of Representatives, advocate for "stronger and smarter border security and modernization of the immigration system". For the Democrats, it’s a matter of protecting the border more efficiently with the latest technology and proper staffing at the entry points. By modernizing, they refer to the legal channels that allow certain immigrants (e.g. agriculture, educated) to gain some level of protection and normalization, that is, those who ‘meet the needs of American businesses’ in order to ‘meet labor market demands—because it’s good for business and for consumers.’ Don’t we also see here the same objective by the republicans at controlling immigration? Both attempt to restrict the influx of immigrant workers, one has taken a draconian approach by increasing the intensity and number of removals from the interior, the other has opted to normalize a pathway to allow certain sections in provided they are needed in industries. Despite the approaches and the terror unleashed by the more reactionary faction, both directions of the bourgeois wings ultimately serve their master–capital.

On the other hand we have the ‘leftists’, rallying around the ‘Abolish ICE’ slogan, that is to dismantle this State machinery. Upon first glance this message might seem to merit support, it appears to speak to the immediate needs of the immigrant proletariat but fails under the most basic of scrutiny. What does abolishing ICE entail to these pseudoradicals? ICE or the DHS is a body of the State no different than the military, police, prison or its courts. In short, it is a part of the complex machinery of the State of which historic necessity has imparted the American bourgeoisie to develop. For ones who claim heritage to Marxism, it is quite odd to abolish part of a State and not the whole apparatus which is but a logical conclusion and impossible otherwise. More accurately it is the historic lesson imparted from the great French Commune of 1871. Therefore, to stealthily divert the historic mission of the Proletariat with subpar substitutes is to substitute the Proletariat as the historic subject for revolution with other subjects. To whom these subjects are we will soon see.

These ‘leftists’, can be described not by what they proclaim to be but by their activities, that is, the object of which these organizations conduct their efforts. For these opportunists’ radicalism entails its attachment and its sanctification to the democratic regime and parliamentary methods. In essence, it clings to the belief in the State as a neutral arbiter of society. It is no sheer coincidence that we find no better environment for these putrid ideas than the bastions of the bourgeois ideology, the universities with its declassed students and the petty bourgeoisie. From here we can start to understand why ‘Smash the State’ transmutates to the ‘Abolish ICE’. For the petty bourgeoisie, whose needs align with the Proletariat in relation to the immigration campaign in so far as it seeks to establish stable conditions for its own survival. That is, a stable market and cheap labor power of which the recent campaigns had jeopardized. It is their inter-class alliance that ultimately gets prioritized over working class independence that guides their activity and which puts the petty bourgeoisie at the head of their movements as we can see at their promotion of economic blackout by small businesses affected by their loss of cheap labour. We are not afraid to point out the limitations of this alliance: the small bourgeois having no program of their own vacillating between the bourgeois and proletariat upon the giving economic conditions are a doomed class with no political perspective. For them, their social relationship to the proletariat is no different to the big bourgeoisie despite their monopolistic tendencies for they both depend on extracting surplus value from the proletariat. Even, the small shopkeeper whose only employee are themselves, suffer an ironic faith by exploiting themselves pushed to the brink of economic failure because they, who produce commodities, find themselves in markets that imposed economic realities that push their small capitals to annihilation.

It is not surprising that we do not see demands for workers for higher wages and workplace protections, instead we see worker’s rights which in this day and age mean the rights of the commodity owner of labour-power, for these demands will antagonize or alienate certain sections of the petty bourgeois. Their class position as purchasers of labour power demands that they purchase this surplus producing commodity at the lowest possible price-one which immigrant labour power satifies. Workers gain nothing from sacrificing their political needs to these classes of property owners whose pathetic appearance in relation to the bigger monopolistic capital firms never aims at their liberation but subservience to their own pathetic capitals. While these ‘parties’ pay lip service to understanding the State as a tool of the ruling class, or part of it, it functions as a social dam to channel the tide of proletariat frustration to the democratic regime which is painted as the solution for the brewing crisis.

The Historic Epoch

Let’s draw back briefly on the history of this immigration apparatus our party has undertaken. To reveal to these historical characters their impotence in understanding the situation, beforehand blinded by their class prejudices. How their poles of resistance are nothing but a dead end for the defence of the immigrant workers and to an extension all workers. For our part, we are no better than them for we too are prejudiced but for our class against all others.

American History, and to an extent any nation dealing with importation of labour power, has shown that once a cycle of capitalist production wanes its treatment of these sections of workers is similar to its dealings with an overproduction of commodities- their expulsion or destruction. We can recall othermass episodic immigration expulsions: the 1930s repatriation campaigns during the Great Depression, Operation Wetback after the Korean War, and now the ICE campaigns that started in 2008, peaked in 2012 under the Obama administration and once again are picking back up. However, the American bourgeoisie has found itself needing to extend its control of the influx of immigrants pouring into the United States outside its national borders. Initiatives such as Frontera del Sur in 2014, under the Obama administration, extended immigration operations down at the Mexican and Guatemalan borders, with cooperation of its nation’s bourgeois, to limit the unprecedented number of migrants coming from central and South America. These developments that this recent terror campaign and upsurge in deportations, along with the development of infrastructure both internally and externally in the US, is but the latest chapter of the economic crisis gripping the United States.

This has come to fruition despite the change of heads and tactics. Because what is in front of us is not simply the machinations of one man however it may present themselves to us but rather it is the needs of capital that ultimately are served by controlling and managing the cheap sources of labour. The ‘material’ for the accumulation of capital. As the bourgeoisie grapple with the economic contradictions it will not be the Democrats or the other opportunist parties who cling on its teat, but rather workers who in response to the attacks of capital to living conditions will come to confront the whole complex of capitalist reproduction. We already saw how immigrant workers have begun to move at the JBS strike despite the limitations and sabotage by its union. In fact, this is the thing they fear! The spread of class militancy that might awaken the American proletariat. And in that fight it will be the message and guidance of its party who will bear in concrete language its demands:

Higher wages and better working conditions!

Shorter workday!

Class strike!

End of Wage Labour!