BALTIMORE—Prominent union leaders from two of the most-embattled and invaded cities in the country—Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.—warn the entire nation is at risk from the violence and viciousness of anti-immigrant President Donald Trump’s ICE troops.
That’s why the whole union movement must band together in a nationwide organized fightback against Trump’s totalitarianism, say David Huerta, president of the Service Employees in California, and Samuel Epps, president of the AFL-CIO’s Metropolitan Washington Council.
“It’s a scary moment, but we have to do it because our members are at risk,” said Epps. “He [Trump] could call up troops” at any time “to intimidate Black and brown people” or worse. “They are waiting for one match to invade all our cities. They want us to be fearful going into the 2026 election.”
In plain English, if Trump can impose his anti-migrant sweeps on D.C. and L.A., he can do it to you.
Huerta and Epps brought huge credibility to the discussion of Trump’s anti-immigrant crusade at the Jan. 17 general session of the AFL-CIO’s Martin Luther King conference in Baltimore. Their two cities were the first targets of Trump’s troops and ICE sweeps, followed quickly by Chicago and since then by Memphis, Tenn., New Orleans and—complete with the murder of Renee Michelle Good—the Twin Cities during agents’ “Operation Metro Surge.”
While peacefully observing and speaking out against Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents’ violence in downtown L.A., Huerta was assaulted, beaten, knocked semi-conscious by being thrown head-first against a curb, handcuffed, and stuffed into an ICE van for “processing.” He was also “tackled and pepper-sprayed” by ICE agents, he told moderator Evelyn DeJesus, the Teachers/AFT Executive Vice President.
After that, Huerta spent a night in an area hospital recovering from a concussion. His seizure by ICE became a cause célèbre for the entire labor movement, with marches festooned with “Free David!” signs. The ICE agents who injured Huerta have not been caught or charged. But Trump’s U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles charged Huerta with a misdemeanor of obstructing law enforcement.
The whole sequence gives Huerta even more motivation than ever to speak out. “I would use the platform they gave me to ask the community not to take this lying down,” he said.
Epps described how the nation’s capital is still under a military occupation by ICE agents and National Guards sent by red-state governors ostensibly to protect the agents. Even after court rulings and despite the city’s sanctuary law, they still swarm D.C.’s downtown streets and its subway system. Pro-corporate Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), claiming her hands are tied due to D.C.’s unique status of being under ultimate federal control, has been genuflecting to Trump, trying to placate him.
It hasn’t worked. And blowback from residents led Bowser to decline seeking a fourth term this fall.
Epps told the MLK crowd that Bowser, even without a Trump command, ripped up Black Lives Matter plaza “brick by brick” on 16th Street just north of the White House and replaced it with plain asphalt pavement. The plaza occupied two blocks, including the space right in front of the AFL-CIO headquarters.
The plaza was named and painted in big yellow “BLACK LIVES MATTER” capital letters after the 2020 police murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd. His death set off nationwide protests.
All this prefigured Trump’s crackdown during the last months of his first administration, which picked up and has continued throughout his second.
In D.C., ICE agents, with the Guards protecting them, drag people out of their cars on 16th Street, raid restaurants, schools, and businesses, and lurk at playgrounds to grab Latinos—migrants and citizens alike. Agents also intimidate workers into staying home and off their jobs for fear of being picked up, detained, and deported, without cause or hearings. Parents are afraid to drop kids off at school.
“What they are doing is a betrayal” of U.S. values, Epps said. “So our mission and purpose is to take down this authoritarian government.” Trump is “criminalizing communities that are doing hard work.”
Epps conceded that unlike the rest of the country, D.C. “knew what was coming” after Trump won a second term in 2024. That’s because D.C.’s special status—Trump, not Bowser, even controls its National Guard—makes it uniquely vulnerable to federal manipulation and repression.
Besides having no voting congressional representation, the District, whose taxpayers pay more, totally, than residents of several states, also is subject to congressional control of its budget, and congressional vetoes of its locally passed laws.
In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, for example, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., sat on legislation to restore a $1 billion D.C. budget hole a prior Trump-pushed law imposed.
And D.C., whose 710,000 people are 43% Black, 40% white, 11% Latino—who can also be Black or white—and the rest everyone else, is a favorite political piñata of white congressional Republicans.
When those lawmakers aren’t mouthing racist myths about how Black the capital is, they’re creating lies that it’s filled with do-nothing federal workers. The two myths and groups overlap. Trump’s unilateral firings of federal workers left tens of thousands of Black women without jobs. And 85% of federal workers live and work outside the greater D.C.-Baltimore-Northern Virginia area.
All this made D.C. “a test kitchen” for Trump’s anti-migrant campaign, Epps said.
“We have to call out racism” of Trump’s crusade, said Huerta. “It is what divides us and prevents us from making gains across this country.”
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