LOS ANGELES—The president’s response to mostly peaceful protests here against his violent immigration raids was to first send in the National Guard and now to send in the U.S. Marines. The latest troop deployment, Trump says, is needed as back up for the Guard and police forces, supposedly unable to handle the mostly peaceful protests in California’s biggest city.
Spontaneous protests have been erupting from coast to coast ever since Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided an L.A. business Friday as part of its ongoing roundup of people guilty of the crime of working for a living to support their families. The injury and arrest of California SEIU President David Huerta shows the administration clearly understands the link between labor, immigrant rights, and civil rights movements.
Huerta, a U.S. citizen, was thrown to the curb on June 6, injured, knocked nearly unconscious, and then carted off by federal agents while peacefully exercising his constitutional rights to free speech and to observe the ICE raid, SEIU and other unions said. He spent overnight in the hospital under observation, but was released from there and released to attend an arraignment June 9 on a charge of obstructing federal law enforcement.
Protests went viral after his arrest, as thousands gathered nationwide, with unions in the lead. Meanwhile, Trump federalized 2,000 California National Guard troops, over the protests of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Bass said all was peaceful in her city until ICE began raiding and hurting people.
Then Trump called the protesters “insurrectionists,” sent in Marines from Camp Pendleton, and got people even angrier—but still peaceful. Trump’s anti-migrant czar, Tom Homan, threatened to arrest Bass and Newsom. “Bring it on!” the governor replied. Trump views Bass, like other African-American public officials—New York Attorney General Letitia James and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, to name two—as special enemies.
On midday June 9, law enforcement fired rubber bullets and tear gas at peaceful L.A. protesters, wounding an Australian TV reporter in her left leg as she was broadcasting live. Unidentified cops also arrested a CNN cable television crew there, without specific charges.
In Austin, Texas, police warned protesters against “unlawful assembly” outside the federal building, adding they could be “subject to chemical agents” and then fired tear gas, video showed. In Santa Ana, Calif., ICE agents pursued an elderly male protester, body-slammed him to the ground, beat him, then carted him off, video showed.
And in San Diego, ICE agents who raided the Buona Forchetta restaurant had a warrant but presented no evidence in the warrant that any of the workers targeted in the raid had criminal histories.
“It’s clear the federal agents were not actually concerned with labor violations, since only kitchen workers—not the bosses—were targeted in the raid,” said Brigette Browning, president of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council.
In Detroit, demonstrators outside of the Coleman Young Municipal Center demanded an end to ICE raids on workers and protested Trump’s threats of martial law and sending the Marines to Los Angeles.
The Anti-Fascist Organizing Committee brought a resolution to the Detroit City Council urging non-cooperation with the Trump administration and opposing placement of U.S. troops on the streets.
Michael Shane, an organizer with Moratorium NOW, told People’s World that “Detroit police agencies should not cooperate with ICE and the mobilization of military troops on our streets. We want the City Council on record opposing this drive to fascism in America.”
Under the headline, “Take Action: End ICE raids and military escalation against protesters,” the Service Employees led two dozen other organizations, including Workers Circle, in a petition on its website demanding viewers write their lawmakers, challenging them, “Whose side are you on?”
In a statement, the Southern California chapter of the National Writers Union denounced ICE’s masking themselves, thus foiling identification, as “reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan.” The union also urged law enforcement personnel to obey the laws and the Constitution and “refuse to obey orders that violate those laws.”
“Their tactics are those used by militarized terror organizations in the past like the Nazi Gestapo and the SS storm troopers of the German fascist machine,” the Writers Union said. “The Trump administration with its support by the Republicans must be forced to adhere to the historically established rule of law.”
Escalating attacks
The whole sequence of Trump escalation followed protests, called on literally a moment’s notice, in more than a dozen cities nationwide on June 9 after Huerta’s arrest. The D.C. protest alone, led by AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and other union leaders, plus Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., drew more than 300 people.
“Our country suffers when this administration uses weapons of war to produce fear and to further drive us apart,” Shuler told the crowd, as they massed on a street corner across from Trump’s Justice Department.
“One thing this administration should know about this labor movement is that we do not leave anyone behind. We will not stop until every single worker—regardless of your race, gender, country of origin, religion” and more “has the dignity they deserve.”
“David was detained and injured while demonstrating for immigrants and exercising his First Amendment rights” of freedom of speech and assembly, Jaime Contreras, regional vice president of Service Employees’ Local 32BJ, told the D.C. crowd, representing a wide range of unions.
“Where are we headed in this country? What’s going on?” Contreras asked rhetorically. He called the Guard’s actions, at Trump’s orders, “disgusting, disturbing, insulting, and unconstitutional.”
For the crowds in all the cities, the prime objective was Huerta’s release—and the fact that Trump and ICE are furthering his racist agenda and violating the Constitution while doing so.
A common chant in D.C. was “What do we want? Free David! When do we want it? Now!” “Immigrants made America great,” read the front of one woman’s sign. “My grandparents were immigrants,” read the other. Her ancestors hailed from what was then East Prussia.
“Enough is enough! Basta ya!” another chant went.
The union leaders who spoke and led chants in D.C. demanded freedom for Huerta, denounced ICE, and warned the crowd that this suddenly called series of protests from coast to coast would continue. The D.C. crowd also included members of AFSCME, NEA, and Teachers/AFT members, a large contingent from the Service Employees, the president of the D.C. chapter of the labor-backed Alliance for Retired Americans, the AFL-CIO, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 25 and IATSE.
National Education Association President Becky Pringle challenged the crowd to “make a commitment, when you leave here, that when we send out an emergency call like this one, you answer immediately” as they did for these rallies. “Whoever it’s for, stand up!”
Indeed, as the D.C. protest downtown wound down, participants passed out flyers for a follow-up the next day in the heavily Hispanic Mount Pleasant neighborhood uptown.
“We know what this administration is doing,” Pringle, a Philadelphia science teacher who heads the nation’s largest union. “We will not stand by and let you divide this country. Everyone is welcome here,” she lectured the absent Trump.
Sent to attack protesters this time
“It’s hard to imagine that this time, the National Guard was sent out to attack protesters” for civil rights, said Rep, Jayapal, a former House Progressive Caucus co-chair.
SEIU’s Contreras said the last time a president federalized a state National Guard was in 1965. Then, President Lyndon B. Johnson took over the Alabama guard, over the protests of segregationist Dixiecrat Gov. George Wallace, “to protect civil rights marchers, not hurt them.”
“We don’t want ICE in our schools, in our churches, in our hospitals, and in our workplaces,” said AFT/Teachers President Randi Weingarten, a New York City civics teacher with a law degree. “What Donald Trump is doing is to create fear in America. We want to create the promise of America.”
And Weingarten urged the crowds to keep speaking and marching: “Silence equals death.”
“This is supposedly the home of the free. Well, it is not the home of the free when you stop people from fighting for their rights and from making their voices heard,” added AFSCME President Lee Saunders.
“We have to say, ‘Hell, no! It’s not happening here!’”
Part of the bigger MAGA agenda
Jayapal was the sole speaker to link the ICE arrests and the federalization of the guard with a wider issue: The massive Trump-GOP tax cut for corporations and the rich now pending in the Republican-run Congress.
Trump and his allies “want to distract you from their power grab” against the Constitution “and from their $5 billion tax grab” for the rich, she said.
A woman named Rosa, who has lived in the U.S. for 40 years, summed up the whole case against Trump and the troops. At the D.C. rally, The Casa de Maryland member said in Spanish through an interpreter that “this is not a coincidence.
“They’re systemic and racial attacks and an attempt to criminalize all Black and Brown people in this country,” she continued. “They’ve also created a constitutional crisis with their attempts to take away birthright citizenship and their attacks on fundamental freedoms.”
But even amid the protests demanding Huerta’s release, and an end to ICE’s raids, not every Democratic politician is on the same page as the workers, their leaders, and their progressive allies. The Denver Post reported Democratic Gov. Jared Polis reversed course and will turn over data on sponsors of unaccompanied and undocumented children to ICE, in response to a subpoena he received in April.
That angered the Colorado AFL-CIO and WINS, a new union there of 27,000 technical workers for state and local governments. Scott Moss, a director within the state Department of Labor and Employment, filed a suit to try to stop Polis’s move. He says the governor is breaking a state law on information sharing with the federal agencies—a law Polis recently signed. The union and the state federation joined Moss’s suit.
Cameron Harrison contributed to this story.
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