By David Bacon
January 30, 2025
Source: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - 24MARCH17 - San Francisco janitors and other workers supporting AB 450, a bill introduced by Assembly Member David Chiu, to protect workers during immigration raids and enforcement actions. Copyright David Bacon
The current fight within the Republican Party highlights, once again, that ensuring a steady labor supply for corporations remains Trump’s primary focus. I say “once again” because this mirrors what happened in 2017, when he met with corporate growers to assure them that his immigration enforcement would not deprive them of workers in the fields. In fact, that is just what happened with the expansion of the H-2A guest worker visa program and the absence of mass firings of farmworkers at critical times because of their undocumented status.
Two months ago, construction companies in Texas made media appeals, not for more border enforcement, but urging Trump not to use enforcement to deprive them of workers. Now, the tech industry is demanding more workers too. The supply of workers for the tech industry “simply does not exist in America in sufficient quantity,” according to Tesla owner and billionaire Elon Musk. Tech corporate titans, including Google’s Sundar Pichai, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos all visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate during and after the campaign, making the same demand. Just before New Year, Trump responded by saying, “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.” In his hotels and golf courses, he has also used another Federal guestworker visa program, H-2B, to supply gardeners and housekeepers.
Whether for tech titans or corporate growers, the key issue is supplying workers at a price employers want to pay. Agriculture and construction laborers are just two industries built on a workforce at close to minimum wage. Guestworker contract labor programs in these industries are structured to provide labor at that wage. Tech companies want to use the H-1B visa program to keep their software workforce at substandard wages as well. They all expect Trump to meet their demands, and poured money into his campaign to make sure that happened.
For defenders of immigrant workers, this is a threatening moment. Some immigrant workers, like the million-plus undocumented laborers in agriculture, will certainly feel the brunt of Trump’s threatened immigration enforcement. The corporate need for labor will not ultimately protect them. Employers, if given the opportunity to replace workers with others at lower wages, have no loyalty to their current workforce. However, it does give undocumented workers some leverage to resist raids, firings, and other forms of enforcement, where employers remain dependent on them. That can be a crucial protection. In addition, if unions and workers living here ally with contract workers under H-2A, H-2B, and H-1B visas to expose and protest abuses within these programs, it can further strengthen protections for all workers
The benefit of organized resistance goes beyond fighting raids and keeping jobs. Organizations and coalitions that defend immigrant workers, their families, and their communities have historically been the pillars of movements for deeper social change. They have shown great persistence and strategic vision, as they fought back against threats of deportation. More than that, they have imagined a future of greater equality, working-class rights, and social solidarity, and have proposed ways to get there. That vision, the capacity and willingness to fight for basic change, is as necessary to defeating repression as action in the streets
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - 24MARCH17 - San Francisco janitors and other workers supporting AB 450, a bill introduced by Assembly Member David Chiu, to protect workers during immigration raids and enforcement actions. Copyright David Bacon
The current fight within the Republican Party highlights, once again, that ensuring a steady labor supply for corporations remains Trump’s primary focus. I say “once again” because this mirrors what happened in 2017, when he met with corporate growers to assure them that his immigration enforcement would not deprive them of workers in the fields. In fact, that is just what happened with the expansion of the H-2A guest worker visa program and the absence of mass firings of farmworkers at critical times because of their undocumented status.
Two months ago, construction companies in Texas made media appeals, not for more border enforcement, but urging Trump not to use enforcement to deprive them of workers. Now, the tech industry is demanding more workers too. The supply of workers for the tech industry “simply does not exist in America in sufficient quantity,” according to Tesla owner and billionaire Elon Musk. Tech corporate titans, including Google’s Sundar Pichai, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos all visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate during and after the campaign, making the same demand. Just before New Year, Trump responded by saying, “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.” In his hotels and golf courses, he has also used another Federal guestworker visa program, H-2B, to supply gardeners and housekeepers.
Whether for tech titans or corporate growers, the key issue is supplying workers at a price employers want to pay. Agriculture and construction laborers are just two industries built on a workforce at close to minimum wage. Guestworker contract labor programs in these industries are structured to provide labor at that wage. Tech companies want to use the H-1B visa program to keep their software workforce at substandard wages as well. They all expect Trump to meet their demands, and poured money into his campaign to make sure that happened.
For defenders of immigrant workers, this is a threatening moment. Some immigrant workers, like the million-plus undocumented laborers in agriculture, will certainly feel the brunt of Trump’s threatened immigration enforcement. The corporate need for labor will not ultimately protect them. Employers, if given the opportunity to replace workers with others at lower wages, have no loyalty to their current workforce. However, it does give undocumented workers some leverage to resist raids, firings, and other forms of enforcement, where employers remain dependent on them. That can be a crucial protection. In addition, if unions and workers living here ally with contract workers under H-2A, H-2B, and H-1B visas to expose and protest abuses within these programs, it can further strengthen protections for all workers
The benefit of organized resistance goes beyond fighting raids and keeping jobs. Organizations and coalitions that defend immigrant workers, their families, and their communities have historically been the pillars of movements for deeper social change. They have shown great persistence and strategic vision, as they fought back against threats of deportation. More than that, they have imagined a future of greater equality, working-class rights, and social solidarity, and have proposed ways to get there. That vision, the capacity and willingness to fight for basic change, is as necessary to defeating repression as action in the streets
.
LOS ANGELES, CA – 22JULY11 – Los Angeles janitors, members of United Service Workers West SEIU, protest the firing of immigrant workers by Able Building Maintenence. The company has fired workers whose immigration status the company questions, even though the workers have been cleaning the buildings where they work for many years. In protest, workers marched through downtown Los Angeles at lunch hour, and sat down in an intersection, stopping traffic. Copyright David Bacon
Replacing Migrant Workers
Immigration enforcement does not exist on its own. It functions within a larger system designed to serve capitalist economic interests by ensuring a labor force for employers. Immigrant labor is more vital than ever to many industries. More than 50 percent of the entire agricultural workforce in the country is undocumented, and the list of other industries that rely on immigrant labor is long: meatpacking, some construction jobs, building cleaning, health care, restaurants, retail, hotels, and more.
Trump is not free to eliminate this workforce. This is potentially a source of power for workers. Employers know this, and within months of his inauguration in 2017, agribusiness executives were already meeting with him to ensure that threats of border closures and raids would not jeopardize their access to labor. Last month, Texas construction companies warned Trump that mass deportations would threaten their profits. In 2006, some California farmers bused workers to big marches in the hope that the Sensenbrenner Act would not deprive them of workers.
But workers, communities, and unions cannot rely on employers to fight Trump for them. What businesses seek is labor at a price they are willing to pay. The current system has served them well. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that about 8 million of the 11-12 million undocumented people in the United States are wage workers, most earning near or at the minimum wage. The abysmal federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour produces an annual income of $14,500. Even higher minimums in states like California result in incomes barely double that amount. The median household income for farmworkers is less than $25,000. Yet Social Security estimates the median wage in the United States at $66,000.
That huge gap is a source of enormous profits. If industries reliant on immigrant labor paid the national median wage, they would owe undocumented workers an additional $250 billion annually. The profits they make from low-paid labor are enormous. Trump’s role is to ensure not only the availability of labor but also that its cost remains acceptable to corporate employers.
In 2017, Trump assured farmers he would expand the contract labor system, which allows employers to hire up to a million workers annually. These workers can only come to work, not stay. Visa categories include the infamous H-2A program for agricultural labor, like the old bracero program of the 1950s. Last year, farmers received 378,513 H-2A visa certifications, one-sixth of the entire U.S. agricultural workforce. The program is notorious for exploitative practices, and recent reforms by Labor Secretary Julie Su are not going to survive. Similar programs are expanding into other sectors like hospitality, meatpacking, and even education.
Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, has criticized the H-1B visa program, primarily used by the tech industry. There its function, he says, “is not to hire ‘the best and the brightest,’ but rather to replace good-paying jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad. The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make.” While the number of new applications for those workers is capped at 66,000 per year, the limit is often exceeded. he visa lasts three years and can be renewed, resulting in a cumulative total of 619,327 H-1B workers in the U.S. by 2019, according to U.S. Customs and Immigration Services. Sanders pointed out that the top 30 corporations using this program laid off 85,000 American workers while hiring over 34,000 H-1B workers.
There is no way to recruit and deploy so many workers without displacing the existing workforce, which, in agriculture and meatpacking is largely made up of immigrants who already live here. For unions and worker advocates, this poses a dilemma. How can they organize and defend existing workers, including their members, while also defending those who replace them? The expansion of programs like H-2A and H-1B exacerbates this tension.
H-2A farmworkers, for instance, are not passive victims. Despite the risk of being fired, losing their visas, and facing blacklisting, they have a history of protesting exploitation when conditions become dire. Unions like Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ) in Washington state have helped contract workers when strikes break out. However, employers often isolate workers, making organizing difficult. FUJ and other unions also protest against displacement, as job losses in farmworker communities lead to widespread hardship, including hunger and evictions.
In some farmworker localities, fear of being replaced is growing. Strikes to demand higher wages have become less frequent due to the risks involved. At the Ostrom mushroom plant in Washington state, United Farm Workers members have been striking for two years against replacement by H-2A visa workers.
By the early 1960s, the increasing willingness of braceros to leave their camps and join local workers’ strikes caused the program to lose popularity among growers. This shift contributed to its abolition. Trump’s labor policies may lead to similar challenges, but they also present opportunities for organizing and collective action.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – 24MARCH17 – San Francisco janitors and other workers supporting AB 450, a bill introduced by Assembly Member David Chiu, to protect workers during immigration raids and enforcement actions. Copyright David BaconResistance in Working-Class Communities
For decades, immigration enforcement has combined workplace enforcement with community-based raids and sweeps. Chicago’s working-class neighborhoods have a long history of resisting these actions through large marches protesting immigration raids. In 2013, as President Obama entered his second term, activists, including members of Occupy Chicago, blocked buses transporting detainees to immigration courts. Labor activists, including Emma Lozano of the Center Without Borders, were arrested during these direct actions. Similar tactics were employed in Tucson, Arizona, where young people chained themselves to buses carrying detainees to specialized immigration courts.
Trump’s 2016 campaign promised to turn Chicago into a hotbed of enforcement. As the anti-immigrant hysteria promoted by his campaign spread, ICE began stopping people on the streets, knocking on apartment doors, and pulling people out for detention. The enforcement spree, which continued through 2019, included raids on street corners and sidewalks near Home Depot and other gathering spots for day laborers. The public presence of day laborers has historically made them a particular target of immigration street raids.
Activists responded to Trump’s threat with action. In 2019, thousands marched through the Loop, chanting “Immigrants are welcome here!” Protesters gathered in Federal Plaza when news broke of impending ICE deployments. Labor unions played a significant role in organizing these efforts. Don Villar, a Filipino immigrant and leader of the Chicago Federation of Labor, told protesters: “Throughout the labor movement’s history, immigrants have enriched the fabric of our city, our neighborhoods, our workforce, and our labor movement. Many of the fundamental rights that immigrants struggle to attain are the same rights the labor movement fights to secure for all workers every day.”
Chicago has also been the site of some of the most impactful direct actions against deportations. As President Obama prepared his re-election campaign in 2012, young undocumented immigrants—brought to the U.S. as children—occupied his campaign office. This occupation capped two years of organizing, including marches and fierce opposition to activist detentions. The pressure led to Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order, which provided temporary protection from deportation.
DACA has withstood a legal onslaught for a decade, but right-wing courts and the MAGA administration will no doubt try again to kill it. The program’s applicants, required to provide personal information, face the risk that this data could be used to locate and detain them if protections are revoked. A similar issue confronts beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which allows people fleeing environmental or political crises to live and work in the U.S. Should Trump or others withdraw these protections, the government already possesses the information needed to target these individuals.
The most effective resistance to immigration enforcement in recent history came during the massive immigrant marches of 2006. Triggered by the passage of HR 4437 (the Sensenbrenner Act) in the House, millions marched on May Day. The bill sought to criminalize undocumented status, posing an existential threat to countless families. Spanish-language radio played a vital role in mobilizing participants, along with immigrant rights activists and organizations that rallied communities across the country.
Labor unions were prominent among the mobilizers, organizing one of two marches held on the same day in Los Angeles, each drawing more than a million participants. Unions and immigrant networks also organized marches of hundreds of thousands in cities across the country. The message was further strengthened by a grassroots movement, “A Day Without Mexicans,” which urged immigrant workers to stay home to demonstrate how essential their labor is. When some participants were fired on their return, some unions became involved in defending their right to protest.
The movement achieved its immediate goal: HR 4437 died in the Senate. But its cultural impact was just as important. May Day, long maligned during the Cold War as a “communist holiday,” was revived in the U.S. after 2006, aligning with global celebrations and marches are now held widely every year. Although not as large as in 2006, annual May Day marches continue to bring together progressive labor and community activists and could serve as a platform to challenge renewed deportation threats under Trump.
A similar bill, California’s Proposition 187, which sought to deny schools and medical care to undocumented children and families, had similar unintended consequences. It galvanized many immigrants in Los Angeles and their citizen children to become voters, contributing to the city and state’s leftward political shift. Today, labor wields significant political influence in Los Angeles—a city once known as the “Citadel of the Open Shop.”
Both May Day and the Day Without Immigrants became vehicles to protest Trump’s first inauguration. In San Francisco, members of several chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America marked the first May Day after Trump’s election with a direct action blocking ICE’s garage doors with a human chain, brandishing signs reading “Sanctuary for All” and “We Protect Our Community.” During these mobilizations, labor’s solidarity with immigrant workers facing raids deepened. Four unions publicly declared: “We will march and stand in solidarity with our immigrant worker brothers and sisters against the Trump administration’s terrorist tactics.”
EAST PALO ALTO, CA – 26FEBRUARY14 – Immigrants, workers, union members, people of faith and community activists demonstrated in front of the Mi Pueblo market in East Palo Alto, calling for a moratorium on deportations and the firing of undocumented workers because of their immigration status. Thousands of workers have been fired as a result of the audits of I-9 forms by the federal government, and the use of the E-Verify database, including hundreds at the Mi Pueblo markets. Almost 400,000 people have been deported every year for the past five years. The demonstration was organized by groups in Silicon Valley Copyright David Bacon
Defending Against Workplace Raids
In the decades following the Cold War, workers and unions developed increasingly sophisticated strategies to resist immigration enforcement. From factory floors to union halls, these battles helped shape today’s immigrant rights movement.
One of the earliest battles against workplace raids took place at the Kraco car radio factory in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. Workers who had joined the United Electrical Workers union stopped production lines, forcing the owner to deny entry to immigration agents, thereby protecting each other from deportation. Later, the Molders Union Local 164 in Oakland collaborated with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund to sue the Immigration and Naturalization Service over the practice of locking factory gates, detaining workers, and interrogating them without cause. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled the practice unconstitutional, affirming that agents cannot enter workplaces without a warrant or specific names.
In one of the Bush administration’s final raids in 2008, immigration agents took 481 workers from Howard Industries, a Mississippi electrical equipment manufacturer, to a private detention center in Jena, Louisiana. The detainees were held without charges, denied access to lawyers, and unable to secure bail. Jim Evans, national organizer for the AFL-CIO in Mississippi and a leading member of the state legislature’s Black Caucus, said, “This raid is an effort to drive immigrants out of Mississippi and a blow to immigrants, African Americans, whites and unions — all those who want political change here.” Evans, other members of the black caucus, many of the state’s unions, and immigrant communities all saw shifting demographics as the basis for changing the state’s politics. They organized the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance (MIRA) as a vehicle for protecting the immigrant part of that constituency.
By the 2000s, workplace battles against immigration enforcement had evolved into complex struggles over race, labor rights, and political power, especially in the South. Howard Industries, one of the state’s few unionized factories, paid $2 an hour less than the industry norm. “The people who benefit from Mississippi’s low-wage system want it to stay the way it is,” Evans said, charging that the immigration raid was used to undermine the union.
MIRA activists responded to the raid with organizing and sitting on the grass with the families of detainees. “When the shift changed, African American workers started coming out and they approached these Latina women and started hugging them,” MIRA organizer Victoria Cintra recalled. “They were saying things like, ‘We’re with you. We’re glad you’re here. ’” Building solidarity between African American and immigrant workers became a cornerstone of MIRA’s strategy.
In 2011, Chipotle fired hundreds of workers in Minnesota for lacking immigration papers. Thousands of laid-off workers were targeted by the Obama administration’s key immigration enforcement program: identifying undocumented workers and then forcing companies to fire them. Without work or money for rent and food, they would presumably “self-deport.” In Minneapolis, Seattle, and San Francisco, more than 1,800 janitors lost their jobs. In 2009, more than 2,000 young women working on American Apparel sewing machines were fired in Los Angeles. Obama’s ICE director, John Morton, said ICE had audited more than 2,900 companies in just one year, and the number of layoffs ran into the tens of thousands.
In Minneapolis, the Service Employees Union Local 26 helped Chipotle workers organize marches and demonstrations, in cooperation with the United Workers Center in Struggle, a local worker center, and the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee. They were arrested for civil disobedience at a Chipotle restaurant and organized a boycott of the chain. Their pressure successfully halted further layoffs at Chipotle.
It is now almost certain that this enforcement tactic will be key for the new administration as well. When Trump took office in 2017, workplace raids and firings became a central enforcement tool. The hotel union in Oakland, California, proactively negotiated contract provisions requiring employers to notify the union if immigration agents sought to enter the workplace. In one case, hotel workers—both documented and undocumented—collectively refused to provide immigration documents, forcing the employer to back down. It also called on the Oakland City Council to protect immigrants on the job. The city council passed a resolution noting that it has been a “city of refuge” since the anti-apartheid movement of the mid-1980s.
Trump is threatening again, as he did in 2016, to end federal funding to more than 300 sanctuary cities. In addition, many cities, and even some states, have withdrawn from the 287(g) program, which requires police to arrest and detain people based on their immigration status. Trump promises to reinstate it and cancel federal funding to cities that do not cooperate.
California unions further pushed back through legislative action. The janitors union SEIU United Service Workers West championed the Immigrant Worker Protection Act, a state law that prohibits employers from granting ICE access to workplaces or sharing sensitive information without a court order. This law built on years of organizing against workplace raids. In 2011, Los Angeles janitors sat down at city intersections to protest layoffs at Able Building Maintenance, and fought similar layoffs at Stanford University cafeterias and among janitors at Apple and Hewlett-Packard’s Silicon Valley buildings.
When Trump took office in 2017, unions and worker advocacy groups also conducted raid preparedness training. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), in collaboration with Filipino Advocates for Justice, held sessions where members role-played scenarios to protect colleagues during workplace raids. Some were veterans of an earlier organizing drive among recycling workers, in which they stopped work to prevent the company from firing employees for not having papers.
At the beginning of the Bush administration, workers in wealthy Palm Springs, California, fought a crucial battle. They were earning just $4.75 an hour at the luxury Palm Canyon resort. When they began organizing with Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 309, the hotel hired security guards dressed as Border Patrol agents to intimidate them. In response, immigrant housekeepers staged a silent march and refused to return to work. After a four-month strike, workers won back pay and reinstatement. When the hotel attempted to limit reinstatement to those with legal status, all workers—documented and undocumented—struck again for another month, ultimately returning together.
What makes the Palm Canyon experience important today is not just the workers’ inspiring courage, but also the strategic ideas that guided them. They organized around the concrete conditions of their lives. Faced with legal repression and layoffs, they defied efforts to make them suffer. Knowing they could not fight alone, they sought help. The union stood by them. And most important, they stuck together.
That same year, the AFL-CIO held its convention in Los Angeles, focused on organizing immigrant workers. Rejecting its history of supporting anti-immigrant legislation, the union federation adopted a resolution calling for immigration amnesty for undocumented immigrants and the repeal of the 1986 law that prevents them from working. Palm Canyon strikers were among the many witnesses at the subsequent union hearings organized around the country to expose the violation of immigrant workers’ rights. Public hearings and exposure, as demonstrated then, continue to be critical tools for resisting workplace enforcement.
Beyond the Threat of Deportation
During the civil rights era, the fight against Cold War mass deportations and the bracero program was two-pronged. Leaders of the Chicano civil rights movement in particular—Bert Corona, Cesar Chavez, Larry Itliong, Dolores Huerta—fought to end the program, a demand they won in 1964. But the movement did more than address abuses. It proposed and fought for more fundamental change.
In part, this played out on the ground. In 1965, Larry Itliong and veteran Filipino farm unionists initiated the Great Grape Strike, just a year after the program ended. That same year, the civil rights movement among Chicanos, Mexicans, and Asian Americans achieved a fundamental change in U.S. immigration law. The family preference system, which favored family reunification over the labor needs of employers, became the foundation of U.S. immigration policy—at least temporarily.
In the flow of people crossing the border, “we see our families and coworkers, while the farmers only see money,” says farm and domestic worker organizer Rene Saucedo. “So we have to fight for what we really need, and not just what we don’t want.” In other words, the fight to stop deportations requires fighting for an alternative. Over the past two decades, many such alternative proposals have emerged, including the Dignity Campaign and the American Friends Service Committee’s New Path. Today, the movement for an alternative is centered on the Registry Bill, a proposal that would provide legal status to an estimated 8 million undocumented people. The bill seeks to update the cutoff date that determines which undocumented immigrants can apply for legal permanent residence. Currently, only individuals who arrived before January 1, 1973, are eligible—a tiny and dwindling number. The proposed update would bring the date to the present.
A more ambitious, long-term demand is the extension of voting rights. It is no coincidence that many counties and states with high concentrations of undocumented workers—where their labor generates significant profit for employers—are MAGA strongholds. If the entire working population of Phoenix and Tucson could actually vote, they would likely elect representatives who prioritize social protections for all workers. Extending the franchise could strengthen the political coalition in Mississippi enough to finally expel the Dixie establishment. Instead of viewing voting as a restricted privilege, as we are often taught, we should see it as a working-class tool—and recognize the transformative potential of class unity across immigration status lines.
Likewise, the political education of the American working class must include an understanding of the roots of migration. U.S. actions abroad—ranging from military intervention to economic sanctions to neoliberal reforms—make migration a matter of survival. When Mexicans fight for the right to stay home rather than come north, and elect a government that promises to move in that direction, they deserve and need the support of the working class north of the border. Cross-border solidarity has a rich history, but mainstream media often obscures it. Without independent efforts to educate workers, the door remains open to MAGA narratives and closed to the possibility of organizing in our collective interest.
Faced with 281 million people living outside their countries of origin, the United Nations has adopted the Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. This Convention supports the right to family reunification, establishes the principle of “equal treatment” with citizens of the host country in relation to employment and education, protects migrants against collective deportation, and holds both origin and destination countries responsible for upholding these rights. However, only forty-nine migrant-sending countries, such as Mexico and the Philippines, have ratified it.
No U.S. administration, Democrat or Republican, has ever submitted it to Congress for ratification.
The Importance of History
The history of working-class organizing in the United States is full of examples of immigrant resistance to mass deportations, sweeps, and other tactics. Time and again immigrant workers have reshaped society through their actions. They have built unions representing workers across industries, from copper miners to janitors. Their efforts have even transformed the political landscape of cities like Los Angeles. This tradition of worker resistance is the true target of immigration enforcement waves, both those currently in effect and those threatened by the incoming administration.
Organizers of the past confronted deportation threats much as we do today, and their experiences offer valuable insights for the present. Not only did they show tremendous perseverance in the face of direct threats, but they also envisioned a future of greater equality, working-class rights, and social solidarity—and proposed pathways to achieve it. Increased immigration repression has a way of exposing the underlying structure of the system, making the need for change abundantly clear. Organizations and coalitions defending immigrant workers, their families, and their communities have often served as foundational blocks for broader movements for deeper social transformation.
The rich tradition of worker organizing against immigrant repression is a testament to courageous struggle and a reservoir of strategic thinking—resources that can help immigrant workers and communities confront the looming MAGA wave of repression.
Amid the fear and outrage sparked by Donald Trump’s threats to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, many have drawn comparisons to the mass deportations of 1932–33. At the height of the Great Depression, hunger plagued millions of working-class households. Relief authorities denied food to Mexican and Mexican American families, urging the government to deport them under the pretense that their removal would save money and create jobs for citizens. These recycled lies have been used repeatedly over the past century, most recently by MAGA proponents.
Hunger was indeed a powerful weapon to force people to leave. Thousands were swept up in street raids, while many more fled in terror. Voluntarily or not, people were loaded into boxcars and dumped at the border gates. The euphemism of the 1930s was “repatriation.” Today’s immigration enforcers call it “self-deportation.” The idea remains the same, and Trump and J. D. Vance are only the latest proponents of this inhumane policy.
Resistance to deportations during this era was organized through radical groups like the Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Española and unions formed during bloody strikes in mines and fields. The largest farm labor strike in US history, the Pixley cotton strike, erupted in 1933 across the barrios of California’s San Joaquin Valley during that peak deportation year. Radical activists were singled out for deportation but were defended by communist and socialist defense organizations, including the Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born. Even the Mexican government, then just a decade past its revolution, protested these actions and sought to assist deportees.
This history of resistance is as important to remember as the history of deportations themselves. The organizations born from this resistance resistance—and the larger working-class movement to which they belonged—outlasted the deportation wave. While many groups were put on the attorney general’s list of subversive organizations during the Cold War, others emerged during the civil rights era. When the immigrant rights movement gained momentum in recent decades, it inherited this legacy.
This is a history of courageous struggle and a reservoir of strategic thinking that can help immigrant workers and communities as they face the repression promised by today’s MAGA
During the civil rights era, the fight against Cold War mass deportations and the bracero program was two-pronged. Leaders of the Chicano civil rights movement in particular—Bert Corona, Cesar Chavez, Larry Itliong, Dolores Huerta—fought to end the program, a demand they won in 1964. But the movement did more than address abuses. It proposed and fought for more fundamental change.
In part, this played out on the ground. In 1965, Larry Itliong and veteran Filipino farm unionists initiated the Great Grape Strike, just a year after the program ended. That same year, the civil rights movement among Chicanos, Mexicans, and Asian Americans achieved a fundamental change in U.S. immigration law. The family preference system, which favored family reunification over the labor needs of employers, became the foundation of U.S. immigration policy—at least temporarily.
In the flow of people crossing the border, “we see our families and coworkers, while the farmers only see money,” says farm and domestic worker organizer Rene Saucedo. “So we have to fight for what we really need, and not just what we don’t want.” In other words, the fight to stop deportations requires fighting for an alternative. Over the past two decades, many such alternative proposals have emerged, including the Dignity Campaign and the American Friends Service Committee’s New Path. Today, the movement for an alternative is centered on the Registry Bill, a proposal that would provide legal status to an estimated 8 million undocumented people. The bill seeks to update the cutoff date that determines which undocumented immigrants can apply for legal permanent residence. Currently, only individuals who arrived before January 1, 1973, are eligible—a tiny and dwindling number. The proposed update would bring the date to the present.
A more ambitious, long-term demand is the extension of voting rights. It is no coincidence that many counties and states with high concentrations of undocumented workers—where their labor generates significant profit for employers—are MAGA strongholds. If the entire working population of Phoenix and Tucson could actually vote, they would likely elect representatives who prioritize social protections for all workers. Extending the franchise could strengthen the political coalition in Mississippi enough to finally expel the Dixie establishment. Instead of viewing voting as a restricted privilege, as we are often taught, we should see it as a working-class tool—and recognize the transformative potential of class unity across immigration status lines.
Likewise, the political education of the American working class must include an understanding of the roots of migration. U.S. actions abroad—ranging from military intervention to economic sanctions to neoliberal reforms—make migration a matter of survival. When Mexicans fight for the right to stay home rather than come north, and elect a government that promises to move in that direction, they deserve and need the support of the working class north of the border. Cross-border solidarity has a rich history, but mainstream media often obscures it. Without independent efforts to educate workers, the door remains open to MAGA narratives and closed to the possibility of organizing in our collective interest.
Faced with 281 million people living outside their countries of origin, the United Nations has adopted the Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. This Convention supports the right to family reunification, establishes the principle of “equal treatment” with citizens of the host country in relation to employment and education, protects migrants against collective deportation, and holds both origin and destination countries responsible for upholding these rights. However, only forty-nine migrant-sending countries, such as Mexico and the Philippines, have ratified it.
No U.S. administration, Democrat or Republican, has ever submitted it to Congress for ratification.
The Importance of History
The history of working-class organizing in the United States is full of examples of immigrant resistance to mass deportations, sweeps, and other tactics. Time and again immigrant workers have reshaped society through their actions. They have built unions representing workers across industries, from copper miners to janitors. Their efforts have even transformed the political landscape of cities like Los Angeles. This tradition of worker resistance is the true target of immigration enforcement waves, both those currently in effect and those threatened by the incoming administration.
Organizers of the past confronted deportation threats much as we do today, and their experiences offer valuable insights for the present. Not only did they show tremendous perseverance in the face of direct threats, but they also envisioned a future of greater equality, working-class rights, and social solidarity—and proposed pathways to achieve it. Increased immigration repression has a way of exposing the underlying structure of the system, making the need for change abundantly clear. Organizations and coalitions defending immigrant workers, their families, and their communities have often served as foundational blocks for broader movements for deeper social transformation.
The rich tradition of worker organizing against immigrant repression is a testament to courageous struggle and a reservoir of strategic thinking—resources that can help immigrant workers and communities confront the looming MAGA wave of repression.
Amid the fear and outrage sparked by Donald Trump’s threats to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, many have drawn comparisons to the mass deportations of 1932–33. At the height of the Great Depression, hunger plagued millions of working-class households. Relief authorities denied food to Mexican and Mexican American families, urging the government to deport them under the pretense that their removal would save money and create jobs for citizens. These recycled lies have been used repeatedly over the past century, most recently by MAGA proponents.
Hunger was indeed a powerful weapon to force people to leave. Thousands were swept up in street raids, while many more fled in terror. Voluntarily or not, people were loaded into boxcars and dumped at the border gates. The euphemism of the 1930s was “repatriation.” Today’s immigration enforcers call it “self-deportation.” The idea remains the same, and Trump and J. D. Vance are only the latest proponents of this inhumane policy.
Resistance to deportations during this era was organized through radical groups like the Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Española and unions formed during bloody strikes in mines and fields. The largest farm labor strike in US history, the Pixley cotton strike, erupted in 1933 across the barrios of California’s San Joaquin Valley during that peak deportation year. Radical activists were singled out for deportation but were defended by communist and socialist defense organizations, including the Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born. Even the Mexican government, then just a decade past its revolution, protested these actions and sought to assist deportees.
This history of resistance is as important to remember as the history of deportations themselves. The organizations born from this resistance resistance—and the larger working-class movement to which they belonged—outlasted the deportation wave. While many groups were put on the attorney general’s list of subversive organizations during the Cold War, others emerged during the civil rights era. When the immigrant rights movement gained momentum in recent decades, it inherited this legacy.
This is a history of courageous struggle and a reservoir of strategic thinking that can help immigrant workers and communities as they face the repression promised by today’s MAGA
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OAKLAND, CA (3/13/11) — Members of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, the Jeremiah Fellowship, Mexican supermarket (or mercado) workers and union organizers protest the firing of 300 workers by the Mexican market chain, Mi Pueblo. They sang and protested inside an Oakland store, and then picketed outside it. An estimated 10,000 mercado workers work in the Bay Area and most are recent immigrants from Latin America and Asia. Workers lack proper meal and rest breaks, earn poverty wages, and often endure abuse.
Copyright David Bacon
David Bacon is a photojournalist, author, political activist, and union organizer who has focused on labor issues, particularly those related to immigrant labor. He has written several books and numerous articles on the subject and has held photographic exhibitions. He became interested in labor issues from an early age and he was involved in organizing efforts for the United Farm Workers, the United Electrical Workers, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, the Molders' Union and others.
[Editor’s Note]
On Saturday, February 1, 2025 at 1:00 pm EST, ZNetwork is hosting a 1 hour online panel discussion with Zafiro Patiño, Aviva Chomsky, and Peter Bohmer that will focus on the critical and increasingly contentious topic of immigration.
The panel will highlight the key dangers for immigrants once Trump comes to power, the current mood in immigrant communities and how they’re preparing, and practical action that can be taken to resist what might happen. There will be time for some questions from the audience too.
Register here: https://actionnetwork.org/events/immigration-immigrants-in-a-fascist-us-panel-discussion
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