The ugly and brutal mass deportations have begun. ICE agents under Trump have ramped up attacks on immigrants in homes, workplaces, and even schools. While the criminalization of the border and attacks on immigrants have been a bipartisan project, the current wave is unique in its celebration of cruelty and racist pageantry. In NYC, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem showed up with a flak jacket and a fresh blowout, claiming that she was getting “dirtbags off the street.” In Chicago, ICE was accompanied by failed TV host Dr. Phil, turning horrifying raids into reality TV.
Like in Trump’s first term, ICE is carrying out deportations with more brutality and open jingoism than under Biden, even if the total deportations under Republican and Democratic administrations are comparable in recent decades. Trump is also threatening to radically remake even more structures of immigration governance, revoking Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for 30,000 Venezuelans and claiming to be preparing the U.S. torture camp at Guantánamo Bay to receive thousands of migrants.
For the most part, people have not figured out how to respond to these raids. A bevy of social media posts have done little more than virtue-signal and spread false rumors that have only served to isolate and demobilize. So-called “rapid response” networks and “know your rights” trainings give leftists a sense that they’re accomplishing something without seriously disrupting waves of deportations. Liberal politicians and pro-system NGOs, who were utterly silent about mass deportations under Biden, have suddenly stepped up with “know your rights” trainings. These trainings ignore the fact that ICE agents have the state-sanctioned right to brutalize, detain, and deport immigrants.
Yet, there is a possibility of real, determined opposition to the racist terrorism of ICE and the bipartisan deportation machine. Thousands of people, mostly young Latinos, took to the streets the weekend of February 1st. In National City, CA near San Diego, protestors defiantly took over the street with motorcycles while shooting fireworks before the protest was declared “unlawful.” Over 1,500 people hit the streets between two protests in Dallas, and 20,000 gathered in Houston. In Phoenix, 1,000 people gathered in opposition to the spectacle of deportations, and multiple cop cars were vandalized. In downtown LA, thousands converged for the second day in a row and shut down intersections and the 101 freeway for hours in defiance, despite nearly 100 arrests and citations by LAPD. These mass protests and others throughout the country represent a new wave of resistance—precisely because they weren’t organized by leftists, politicians, or NGOs.
The bipartisan deportation machine
The first Trump administration did not build a deportation machine, but rather inherited one. Republican and Democratic politicians oversaw the proliferation of heinous facilities where children are separated from their parents, people imprisoned face life-threatening conditions, and private military contractors carry out mass surveillance. Barack Obama deported 3 million immigrants—more than any other president in U.S. history, including Donald Trump—earning him the nickname “Deporter in Chief.” In 2024, the Biden administration deported 271,484 people, higher than in any year in Trump’s first term, and the most in a single year since 2014. While running for president against Trump, Kamala Harris claimed she would be more effective at rounding up and detaining immigrants than Trump was.
After remaining silent during Biden’s continuation of mass deportations, a pathetic array of Democratic Party hacks, NGOs, and social media grifters are now positioning themselves as the people who will lead the opposition to Trump’s mass deportations. This has included mayors and governors feigning concern, and pro-immigration lobbying groups warning against the economic toll of deportations (the human toll being secondary). What all of these have in common is to ensure that opposition to deportations stays trapped inside the confines of official-channel politics. The mayors of “sanctuary cities” like Chicago may not allow their local police to collaborate with ICE, but none of them are working to stop ICE from operating in their cities. The politics-as-usual that led to the creation of the mass deportation machine is fundamentally incapable of putting a stop to it.
Defense or offense?
Among activist circles, years of fixation on tactics and failing to build organization among immigrants have left us with no preparedness to stop mass deportations. As our comrades in DTS Austin wrote, “The Left has utterly failed to mobilize the masses against the deportation machine. Nonprofits and other groups post ICE sightings and resources, but nothing more.”
Reacting to Trump’s threats of ramping up mass deportations, some have gravitated toward “rapid response” networks, attempting to quickly mobilize people to protest or even disrupt ICE raids and arrests. Despite any genuine efforts to confront ICE, we have yet to see evidence, from any city around the country, that these networks are at all effective in actually mobilizing serious resistance to ICE raids. It is typical of leftist activists in the U.S. to imagine some fantasy of “organized communities” coming together, without ever doing the hard work of getting to know masses of people and developing a coherent strategy to take on ICE. We have heard of too many instances where these networks and text threads have been part of spreading false rumors, creating a hyperbolic climate of fear and isolation for those at risk of arrest and deportation.
If people are actually going to be organized to confront ICE, it would take a level of seriousness, study, and determination to agitate against raids. If people are willing to get serious, this could be part of an overall strategy for confronting the deportation machine. But no tactic or strategy will be effective without people being willing to take up the painstaking process of reaching the masses, getting to know them, and bringing them forward in struggle.
That means not just waiting for ICE to come around and hoping that people will be able to oppose them, but actually going on the offensive against these raids. It should be obvious that no amount of Saturday afternoon yelling at empty buildings will move the Trump government. It’s long past time to leave those tired leftist tactics and the opportunists who promote them in the dustbin where they belong. What we propose instead is finding the means to organize the people, with and without papers, to take the political offensive against the mass deportation machine. The mass protests of early February—especially the highway shutdown in LA, protests in Glendale, are expressions of what’s possible and can be built upon to mount determined resistance to business as usual.
We need creative, audacious, and bold resistance. From high school students to religious people, from Palestine protesters, to young Latinos in the suburbs, there is a potential reservoir of resistance that must be tapped. This means protests that actually disrupt the system, including school walkouts, networks of houses of worship that meaningfully defend immigrants, and dozens of other creative and collective protest actions. The question is: are there people down to build this resistance by going to the masses?
Dare to Struggle 