Anti-racists hit back against Trump’s racist immigration plans

Students in LA taking part in a walkout against Trump (Picture: People’s City Council – Los Angeles)

Anti-racists are putting up a fight to Donald Trump’s onslaught against migrants.

Protesters gathered in cities across the United States this week. Protests took place in more than a dozen states on Wednesday, including California, Minnesota, Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Alabama, Ohio, Missouri and Arizona.

Rodrigo Camarena, an immigrant advocate in New York, told Socialist Worker, “We are seeing some resistance.

“This country relies on immigrant labour. They harvest our food, care for our elderly, build homes and offices and are part of every critical industry.”

The protests were loosely organised under the tagline 50501—50 protests in 50 states in one day. They were built largely online, with different websites and social media accounts issuing calls for action.

The size ranged from hundreds to thousands. Campaigners denounced far right billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s plans to shut down the USAid programme and Project 2025, a far right policy wish list.

One group of protesters in Phoenix, Arizona, chanted, “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here,” and, “Deport Elon.”

Businesses across the US had to shut because of a loosely organised day of protest against Trump’s immigration policies on Monday.

The call to action, which gained momentum on social media, encouraged migrants to refuse to work, keep their children at home and boycott any shops.

Rodrigo thought that “these boycotts are going to become more common”.

Businesses across the US, from a coffee shop in Salt Lake City, to a used-car lot in Baltimore, to an accounting firm in Pasco, did close.

A teacher in a school in LA reported that 390 of the school’s 670 students were absent because of the protest.

There were demonstrations in cities across the US against Trump’s immigration policies last weekend.

The list of cities which held protests is expansive. It includes Arlington, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Idaho City, Las Vegas, LA, Oxnard, San Diego, Vista, New York, Phoenix, Santa Fe, Seattle and St Louis.

In LA thousands marched last Sunday blocking all lanes of traffic on a major motorway for more than five hours. Activists called for immigration reform and carried banners reading “Nobody is illegal.”

On Monday, LA activists gathered to repeat the march but they didn’t succeed in blocking the motorway on this occasion.

Students at multiple schools in LA have been walking out this week, with Thursday marking the fourth day of walkouts to protest against Trump’s deportations. Thousands of students have joined and marched.

One student in LA, Lexi Resendiz, aged 16, said the walkout was a way of standing up for her family, “I’m trying to defend my parents, who immigrated here to get me a better life. How are people going to hate when they don’t even know the real us.”

Samantha Fonseca, aged 17, said the protest was a way “to show that immigrants are not the real criminals”.

Rodrigo told Socialist Worker that there’s “a lot of fear in immigrant communities”. “Absences from schools and places of work are visible,” he said.

“People are forgoing medical attention because they don’t want to be in an environment that could expose them to government processes.”

He attacked Trump’s racist scapegoating as “an easy way to put the blame on someone else”. Racist ideas are having a purchase “because the cost of living has gone up and the US is an incredibly unequal country”.

 “Trump maligns the most vulnerable in society and blames them for problems that all of us share and weren’t caused by immigrants”.

Rodrigo thought that “it is an easy way to simplify complex problems—simplicity is useful for politics”.

He also argued, “The Democrats have some of the blame to share—a lot of blame. They could have put forward comprehensive immigration reform at the start of Joe Biden’s presidency.”

Rodrigo said that policies such as “flying people to Guantanamo Bay” show how “Republicans focus on spectacle and theatre to appease their base”. But “with that said, we are seeing real enforcement,” he said.

“The administration has allowed formally sensitive areas to now be fair game for immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) officers. I dread to see federal officers at my local school or hospital. But that is the reality many will face.

“It will drive more people into the shadows and unsafe conditions, forgo critical services and live in fear.”

Trump is ramping up his attacks, but resistance can push them back