Concern In The Caribbean Over Geopolitical Landscape – OpEd

 June 15, 2025  

By Dr. Nand C. Bardouille

Can CARICOM effectively face this geopolitical moment, insofar as the bloc is divided on issues of foreign policy pertaining to the two Chinas?      

In a show of concern over growing geopolitical tensions that was broad in its reference to the contemporary “geopolitical landscape” but light on detail, once again, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) bloc foreign ministers recently placed a spotlight on the current geopolitical moment. They did so last month in a broader effort to advance their respective countries’ national interests.                              

This is against a backdrop where the second Trump administration has taken a foreign policy-related hatchet to the liberal international order—whose advent the United States largely engineered. In the closing months of World War II, transatlantic leaders framed the organizing principles and institutions for the postwar world. 

A particular emphasis was placed on multilateral institutions, laying the groundwork for intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations (UN), which is the subject of a wide-ranging, reform-related debate. In his famous Sinews of Peace speech, the late Sir Winston Churchill, one of the principal architects of the postwar world, underscored the importance of “adher[ing] faithfully” to the UN Charter as the community of nations emerged from World War II seemingly intent on “walk[ing] forward in sedate and sober strength seeking no one’s land or treasure.” 

In the eight decades since the Allied victory in respect of the Second World War, this high-minded idealism was belied by the messy reality of the West’s liberal internationalist ethos. Notwithstanding, in the second half of the twentieth century, the world was “dominated” by the U.S.-led liberal international order. Over the course of the two decades following the end of the Cold War, it entrenched itself further still.      

Until recently, the United States was the principal driver of this order. Since his return to the U.S. presidency, Donald Trump’s multi-dimensional bid to dislodge the multilaterialist moorings of that order has troubled CARICOM no end. 

What is especially worrying are Trump’s strong-arm tactics in the Western Hemisphere and beyond—e.g. Trump’s diatribes against Panama, Canada and Greenland, to name but a few, and his global trade war—which have roiled CARICOM. As small states, the bloc’s member states are sticklers for the postwar rules-based international order. This mindset hinges on their foreign policy-related mantra that ‘might is not right’, in the vein of a well-known line from The Melian Dialogue (part of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War).  

They worry about Trump’s apparent foreign policy-related pursuit of spheres of influence, which—as I argued recently in an article for The Diplomat magazine—Washington has timed in such a way as to visit early setbacks for Chinese soft power in the wider Latin America and Caribbean region. As an approach to statecraft, the spheres of influence stratagem has also been embraced anew by the world’s two other great powers. 

In this regard, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of and war of aggression against Ukraine is noteworthy. So, too, is Chinese aggression and gray-zone gambits in the South China Sea, along with China’s Taiwan-focused provocations.  

As President Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-led government continually rachet up cross-strait tensions between America’s strongest competitor and Taiwan, greenlighting increasingly daring Chinese military exercises around Taiwan, Washington recently sounded the alarm again about “[t]he threat China poses.” Regarding the Ukraine war, though, the Trump administration is deferential to the Kremlin—at least for now.   

These circumstances are indicative of an international system that, at the hands of the great powers, is in flux. On a global scale, the U.S.’s geopolitical edge is slipping away. In a sign of Washington’s shift in focus for the exercise of U.S. power, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, the Trump administration is doubling down on America’s strategic pivot to the Indo-Pacific.  

Indeed, among International Relations-related scholarly and practitioner circles, it is now widely accepted that U.S.-led unipolarity is giving way to greater multipolarity. According to the Munich Security Report 2025, “recent trends suggest that [multipolarity’s] negative effects [as it gains ground] … are prevailing as divides between major powers grow and competition among different order models stands in the way of joint approaches to global crises and threats.” 

With the UN ensnared by the geopolitical fallout, to CARICOM’s dismay, UN-vested multilateralism is being sidelined in the process. This moment does not augur well for the international community’s smaller nations. Even so, it is not the first time that Caribbean countries have had such a concern.     

There were notable Cold War-related moments—e.g. the Cuban Missile Crisis and the U.S. invasion of Grenada—that had deleterious effects on the region. The height of post-Cold War, American-centric unipolarity also gave CARICOM pause. For instance, in a context where the heavily criticized U.S.-led invasion of and war in Iraq undermined the UN and international norms, CARICOM voiced its disapproval of the Iraq War. 

That said, and as I argued in an article for Geopolitical Monitor, the Gaza and Ukraine wars are pushing the UN towards its tipping point in this interstices of the aforesaid international system-related transformation. This is deeply worrying for CARICOM. After all, CARICOM member states have long bound themselves to “the framework of the United Nations to promote multilateralism as the guiding principle of international relations.”  

Calls for Attention to the Geopolitical Moment Grow Louder 

At a two-day meeting in May of this year, in St. Kitts and Nevis, CARICOM foreign ministers resolved that it is in the bloc’s interest to place greater emphasis on current geopolitical developments. The last time these foreign ministers made a comparable set of pronouncements was in February of this year, when they met in the margins of a CARICOM summit and paid special attention to “geopolitical issues.” The occasion was a specially convened meeting of the Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR), a regional body that coordinates the foreign policies of CARICOM member states.  

At their May meeting, the regional grouping’s foreign ministers followed the lead of CARICOM Heads of Government, who—at their February 2025 summit—“discussed current geopolitical developments.” At the COFCOR meeting held last month, Foreign Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis Denzil Douglas painted a concerning picture of the mooted geopolitical landscape, whose transformation comes amid the war in Ukraine à la Russian revanchism and now that China has positioned itself as a near-peer competitor to the United States. 

Owing to its role in the war in Ukraine—against the backdrop of its “no limits” partnership with Russia that Xi affirmed on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—China has far more cards to play in this geopolitical moment than it had in recent years. Some look on with concern; others not so much. 

In Douglas’ assessment, the geopolitical landscape “represents an inflection point for CARICOM that requires unity of vision and mission.” Notably, in his capacity as the new chair of COFCOR, he has expressed concern over the dynamics of the international environment. 

This assessment marked another important step in CARICOM’s diplomatic approach to seeing a way forward in a world confronted by intensifying great power competition. To put this into perspective consider that it also telegraphed a response to meet the current geopolitical moment, calling attention to the need for unity. 

In the context of the said landscape, this is easier said than done. Nowhere is this more visible than the matter of diplomatic relations as regards the two Chinas.        

Mind the Gap

Of the 14 independent CARICOM member states, nine have diplomatic relations with China. The remainder side with Taiwan, which—in the 1940s—General Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party or Kuomintang relocated to and ruled over for decades. On the heels of the end of the Chinese Civil War between Kuomintang forces and Mao Zedong’s CCP, in 1949, under the leadership of Chairman Mao, the People’s Republic of China was established.  

Likened to “an anti-communist fortress,” decades ago, Taiwan staked a claim to representation of China as a whole. By the 1970s, however, Taiwan had lost the U.S.’s diplomatic recognition, losing—in the process—its de jure standing among the community of nations. (Refer to United Nations Resolution 2758 (XXVI), passed by the UN General Assembly.)   

It is hard to imagine any official CARICOM attempt to flesh out—against that backdrop—a geopolitical landscape-related narrative in the public domain. The regional foreign policy establishment knows full well that there is no chance of a bloc-wide unified foreign policy agenda on this score, and that is why there was no specific mention of the aforesaid landscape in the communiqué issued following last month’s COFCOR meeting.   

For this foreign policy establishment, given the divided regional diplomatic allegiances on China, the main question now is what, if any, encumbrances may stand in the way of moving the needle on the highlighted COFCOR chair’s charge (above). In proffering an answer, a good place to start is a reference to The Rose Hall Declaration on ‘Regional Governance and Integrated Development’ and the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas establishing the Caribbean Community including the CARICOM Single market and Economy, respectively. For our purposes, interest is in how sovereignty is understood in each of these landmark documents.

On the matter of regional governance, the so-called Rose Hall Declaration reaffirms that “CARICOM is a Community of Sovereign States, and of Territories able and willing to exercise the rights and assume the obligations of membership of the Community, and that the deepening of regional integration will proceed in this political and juridical context.” What is more, the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas commits the CARICOM bloc to “establish measures to co-ordinate the foreign policies of the Member States of the Community;” as distinct from any notion of harmonization of such policies. 

The passages from the two documents that I pointed to (above) clearly show that sovereignty takes precedence in the regional integration enterprise. Scholars of Caribbean affairs have argued that “the youthfulness of sovereignty in the Caribbean has been a powerful force, acting to undermine moves toward greater regional integration.”   

The sheer weight of sovereignty in the CARICOM bloc-related intergovernmental construct suggests national interests trump the regional interest, not least on the highly sensitive foreign policy matter of diplomatic relations with one of the two Chinas over the other. Beyond this matter, there is a twofold additional insight.  

First, above all else, diplomatic relations between China and the nine CARICOM member states in question are multi-pronged, with prominence given to the Belt and Road Initiative, trade and bilateral diplomacy, respectively. Beijing leverages its diplomatic relations with those Caribbean countries as part of its strategy—à la Xi’s so-called “community of shared future for mankind” line of thinking—to meet the geopolitical moment.     

For the five independent CARICOM member states that have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, their calculus about China is markedly different. Behind the scenes, they are concerned about the broader implications of China’s geopolitical manoeuvres. There are signs that—as I outlined in another article for The Diplomat magazine, published in 2022—at least one country in their ranks has not shied away from investing political capital in and weighing in on high-stakes diplomatic episodes involving China and Taiwan. 

Second, China and Taiwan have a history of tussling for recognition in the Caribbean. For China, its recognition-related gains in the Caribbean serve to undermine Taiwan’s sovereigntist-like playbook. Given its de facto international status, Taiwan’s primary foreign policy goal is state recognition in international politics.  

Taiwan’s sovereignty-driven aspirations resonate with some in CARICOM—a regional grouping that comprises postcolonial states that also faced struggles of their own for self-determination and independence. In addition, Taiwan has a strong focus on development aid and technical assistance, partly geared towards those in the CARICOM fold who diplomatically back Taipei. 

Though this grouping’s Anglophone members achieved independence between the 1960s to the 1980s, as scholars of Caribbean studies note, “the idea of sovereignty has always been compromised in the region, both in terms of pressures from external forces and the system of hierarchy and domination embedded within postcolonial systems of governance.” In this view, independent CARICOM member states are all too familiar with laws, norms and practices of a great power-dominated international system that can work against the interests of smaller nations. 

In stark contrast, having regard to its rise over the course of the late twentieth century, China’s diplomatic approach to the Caribbean is reflective of its strategic path to challenge the international system as a great or global power in the twenty-first century. The one-China principle, which deems Taiwan to be an “inalienable part” of China, is but one facet of this path.

Taiwan, of course, roundly rejects China’s claim over it. Similarly, those CARICOM member states that have diplomatic relations with Taiwan dismiss China’s assertion of sovereignty over the island nation. For their part, the nine CARICOM member states that recognize China subscribe to the one-China principle.    

An important metric of the success of Chinese power projection in CARICOM is the diplomatic positioning of the bloc’s independent member states vis-à-vis the one-China principle, which decidedly tilts toward Beijing’s favour qua foreign policy ambitions. Both Beijing and Taipei understand that, in terms of their historical rivalry and the geopolitical imperative behind this rivalry, diplomatic recognition is the foreign policy prize. 

For decades, such diplomatic recognition has been wielded as an instrument of foreign policy. Importantly, it has always hewed more closely to geopolitics.  

The Bottom Line

In the decade-plus since Xi’s China has steadily altered the balance of power in the international system, accelerating this global player’s decades-old rise, it has also significantly expanded its footprint on the geopolitical landscape of the Caribbean—i.e. the United States’ “third border.” (Meanwhile, as rising tensions between China and Taiwan have raised cross-strait stakes, the perception is that China has Taiwan and its relative influence in the region on the back foot.) In my recent article for India’s World magazine, I delved into China’s success in that regard. This success is seen differently in the CARICOM fold, depending on whether the member states in question diplomatically recognize China or Taiwan.   

In addition, as I argued in an article for the Trinidad & Tobago Guardian that was published on May 15, this moment of uncertainty for U.S.-CARICOM relations makes it harder for CARICOM member states to rely on America—a longtime partner. After months of the second Trump administration’s transactional dealings with governments of Caribbean countries, as it was all smiles for the photo op, the prospect of a rift between the two sides looks a real possibility. 

This is at a time when China is name-checking certain Caribbean countries with which it is deepening partnerships, as I contended in an article for The Diplomat magazine that was published last month. Such Beijing-backed diplomatic efforts have not been met with the same enthusiasm among those in the CARICOM fold who diplomatically align with Taiwan.       

Amid a renewed debate on this geopolitical moment’s impact on the Caribbean, then, trying to effect regional unity is complicated by divergent foreign policy approaches to the two Chinas. The CARICOM bloc comprises like-minded countries, within limits. As Caribbean leaders and foreign policy chiefs focus more on current geopolitical developments and associated power dynamics, eyeing regional unity, do not expect a narrowing of the diplomatic gap in relation to the two Chinas.               If Taiwan loses diplomatic ground altogether within CARICOM, by extension, the gap would be no more.

That said, notwithstanding recent setbacks for Taiwan within the wider Caribbean and in other parts of the world, such a scenario is likely a bit of a stretch. (“Fence sitters,” comprising some countries in Latin America and elsewhere, bring yet another dimension to Beijing and Taipei-targeted diplomatic dealings.) There is a widespread recognition that, at least for now, this gap is here to stay.     

Accordingly, despite a greater emphasis on the “geopolitical landscape,” arriving at a collective CARICOM security qua power in international society-related posture in this geopolitical moment will likely prove elusive. All the more so, as China continues to play an outsize role in the emergent multipolar international system, CARICOM’s ability to cohesively navigate the prevailing geopolitical landscape will likely be repeatedly tested. 

Dr. Nand C. Bardouille

Dr. Nand C. Bardouille is Manager of The Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean in the Institute of International Relations at The University of the West Indies (St. Augustine Campus), Trinidad and Tobago.

LAPD Running Amok, Dishing out Numerous Injuries to Protesters and Journalists in LA

by Bill Berkowitz / June 14th, 2025

On 11 June, the Substack, Closer to the Edge, penned a letter to the Los Angeles Police Department, and the opening graph says it all:

You shot a journalist on live television. You struck another in the forehead while he was standing alone under a freeway. You sent one man into emergency surgery after punching a hole in his leg with a “less-lethal” round. You bruised a New York Times reporter’s ribcage. You gassed a foreign correspondent while she was wearing a press badge. You shot a 74-year-old woman in the back. You nailed a man in the chest with a 40mm grenade while he was holding a phone. And you left a woman bleeding from the skull in the middle of the street while people begged your officers to call an ambulance—and they didn’t.

And now you’re “investigating.”

Closer to the Edge maintains it has “completed a full, verified investigation of eight people injured by law enforcement during the protests in Los Angeles. Seven were journalists. One was a protester. All of them were harmed under your watch.”

The Substack notes that it is “publishing” the stories of the victims of police violence “[w]ith verified quotes. With real names. With witness footage, medical updates, and your own damn statements when available. You told the public you’re investigating? Then we’ll do it faster, better, and with the one thing your officers seem allergic to: accountability.”

Reuters is reporting that there has been over 30 incidents of police violence against journalists as tracked by the LA Press Club. According Reuters Helen Coster, “Journalists have been among those injured during protests” in recent days.

Among the injured were Lauren Tomasi (Nine News Australia) who was struck by a rubber-bullet projectile; Toby Canham, freelance photojournalist for the New York Post, was hit in the forehead by a “hard rubbery” projectile; Nick Stern, a British photojournalist, was shot in the thigh with a projectile and required emergence surgery.

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. Read other articles by Bill.

The battle of Los Angeles

Saturday 14 June 2025, by Tempest Collective


As the mass ICE raids began on Friday, June 6 in Los Angeles, members of Tempest’s LA branch participated in rapid response and other protest efforts with mass organizations into the weekend. The Community Self-Defense Coalition, in which Tempest members participate, is a key formation that coordinates LA’s rapid response efforts. Branch members were actively involved in defense efforts during skirmishes across downtown LA, the pitched battle in the city of Paramount, and rapid response efforts to repel ICE in the city of Pasadena. They compile and record their experiences in this report throughout the weekend, covering the first days of mobilization.


FRIDAY JUNE 6

The first day involved nearly a dozen raids near downtown Los Angeles, Sun Valley and North Hollywood neighborhoods, and LA County suburbs, including Pomona. Emergency rallies were called and converged around the downtown Metropolitan Detention Center. After dispersing protesters there, different law enforcement officers went over to the adjacent district of Chinatown to stage late night around 9pm. There was lots of contradictory and confusing information spread across different protest chats throughout the night. At first, we were told that they were setting up for a night raid; later, word on the block was that they were setting up for Trump’s ‘border czar’ Tom Homan’s press conference at 7 am the next morning. Dozens of FBI agents stationed in a parking lot in Chinatown on Hill St., later joined by Border Patrol, LAPD, and Homeland Security. Protesters quickly gathered to monitor and heckle them, soon outnumbering law enforcement, which also reinforced their numbers. Know Your Rights information was blasted on megaphones in English, Spanish, and Cantonese, as protesters informed local residents of their rights.

Things became more intense as armored personnel carriers and additional law enforcement personnel poured in, although it was still unclear why they were staging in Chinatown. Some protesters, including bikers, tried to block vehicles from entering the lot. Some identified undercover officers and their vehicles on the protesters’ side and successfully heckled them to leave. Others followed various vehicles exiting the lot to figure out where they were going. Soon, law enforcement occupied the whole street beyond the lot to pressure the protesters out. Loud popping sounds started, with some claiming that they were sound cannons being blasted by the police. The pressure from protesters continued into midnight, after which all law enforcement retreated without explanation. There were no further reports of mass raids and Homan’s press conference the next day. (Homan later appeared on television the next afternoon to announce the deployment of the National Guard.)

SATURDAY JUNE 7

On the second day, rapid responders rushed to the city of Paramount in the morning, located about a half hour drive south of LA, upon reports of an ICE raid at a Home Depot. Paramount developed into a war zone throughout the day. Paramount is a majority low-income and Latinx area, and one of LA’s key industrial regions. The organized left has little presence in this area, but the militancy seen on June 7 demonstrates the spontaneous power of Brown working-class youth in defending their communities. ICE cars were seen burning. Hundreds of law enforcement officers were deployed throughout Paramount, throwing tear gas and flash bombs as protesters fought back and the Home Depot barricaded itself for safety.

As the Paramount battle stretched on, supporters continued to respond to different reports of ICE raids across LA, as some continued to support detainees at the downtown detention center. More people began gathering back at the detention center early in the evening. Around 100-150 protesters were there around 7pm. LAPD gathered en masse to use tear gas and shoot pellets at protesters in this area between 8-10pm. Most of the street around the detention center was cleared out and occupied by hundreds of LAPD officers. In the meantime, Homan confirms on national television that he’ll be federalizing the California National Guard for deployment in LA, against Governor Gavin Newsom’s dissent. It was unclear that night what this meant or when exactly the Guard would arrive. The day-long battles in Paramount stretched west into the city of Compton, which was one of the last sites where militant mobilization continued that day.

There were reported ICE sightings at probably six other locations throughout southern California but the majority of protest and state activity occurred primarily in the vicinity of the Home Depot in Paramount and Compton that went into the early morning Sunday, and again at the Downtown LA Metropolitan Detention Center where protesters had been gathered the entire day.

SUNDAY JUNE 8

LOS ANGELES

On June 8, Angelenos woke to the news that over 2000 National Guard had been deployed. A protest in the predominantly Latinx working-class Boyle Heights neighborhood was planned by Centro CSO and other immigrant rights and local groups for the morning. Crowds had also already begun to gather back at the detention center downtown.

Activists gathered at Mariachi Plaza to protest the ICE raids of the previous two days. Speakers included labor movement icon Dolores Huerta. Speakers generally emphasized not only the rights of immigrants but also applauded the courage and rapid response of the activists gathered, as well as the importance of showing the Trump administration that people will continue to fight back against his draconian methods. The gathering mobilized to march down 1st Street for 1.5 miles to the Federal Metropolitan Detention Center on Alameda Street where they met a larger crowd of activists that had been gathering from the previous two days. Within minutes of arrival, the authorities fired upon the crowd of protesters, presumably with only tear gas, and the front of the crowd began to disperse. There did not appear to be any serious injuries, though many seemed unprepared for tear gas, and some were adversely affected. The Centro CSO organizers, worried about crowd safety, encouraged those remaining from the Mariachi Plaza rally to return to Boyle Heights. Many of us stayed to record the events, in particular the fully militarized presence of local, state, and federal authorities, including the National Guard. I left soon afterward when the tear gas became too overwhelming.

The crowd at the detention center remained at about 100-300 people for the next two hours and had not yet encountered further violence. Protesters stood off with the 20 California National Guard members stationed at the rear of the building. Eventually, a squadron of 15 LAPD cars arrived further down the road, prepositioned to block one exit along the walled-in road. A large portion of the crowd then moved around the guarded door and went around the corner, escaping a potential kettle. The police formed a line around their vehicles and appeared to fully surround a portion of the protesters, but did not make arrests.

Around this time, a rally called by the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) at the city hall nearby began to march toward the detention center. It was unclear whether the march was part of the original rally plan or if the crowd spontaneously decided to march. This mass contingent arrived just in time to reinforce the surrounded protesters near the detention center. As they arrived, the police were forced to retreat promptly. Thousands of protesters continued to flood the streets outside the Detention Center throughout the afternoon and occupied the nearby intersection at Alameda and Temple. Some remained around the intersection while others continued to march. This contingent went through Little Tokyo back to the Federal Building.

At this point, the crowd was too large to be effectively organized. Some remained at the Detention Center, others continued to march, while a smaller group occupied the freeway.

A formation of LAPD officers opposed the crowd of 200 protesters, who kept a close distance from the line. The police continued to shoot volleys of less-lethal weapons into these different sites, though protesters remained steadfast for hours. Pro-Palestine slogans and clothing were not only ubiquitous, but many of those furthest in the front defending the protests from the police were wearing keffiyehs. We witnessed multiple people around us injured. Street medics helped many protesters tend to their injuries. The police soon declared unlawful assembly but were unable to fully sweep the intersection for hours. At one point, the police declared that they would begin arrests in a minute, but were halted by a protester’s car that slowly rolled through the intersection with a child sitting at the window, raising a Mexican flag with his fist up. The crowd protected them, and the sweeps were delayed for another half an hour.

After another stand-off, the protesters crossed over the median of the freeway, stopping the flow of traffic in the opposite direction. As soon as this happened, the police widened their line and began shooting flash bangs in the sky above the protesters on the freeway. Peaceful protesters were met with disproportionate state violence that increased with time, including being fired on with less-lethal guns from rooftops. Several Waymo automated cars were burned. Significant numbers of protesters remained in the streets at various points around downtown LA into the evening and after nightfall. They were forced off the freeway but continued to march to other locations. As the protesters’ numbers grew thinner, police aggression increased. By sunset, the remaining protesters were forced to construct makeshift barricades using benches and signs.

PASADENA

In Pasadena, word got out early in the morning across rapid response chats that ICE and DHS agents were staying at three local hotels: the Westin, Dena Hotel, and the new AC Hotel. There were reports of ICE agents questioning hotel workers who were servicing the rooms. By noon, Unite Here and the National Day Laborers Organizing Network brought out more than one hundred people from Pasadena and Altadena to inquire about and protest ICE’s presence. Faith leaders, community organizations and politicians, including Mayor Victor Gordo, showed up afterwards, and the crowd swelled to several hundred. Speakers at the rally denounced the intimidation and the hotel’s collaboration with ICE as they profit from family separation.

Throughout the day, protesters marched and circled the block, vowing to stay until ICE left. Some of the ICE vehicles’ tires were damaged. The protest served as a rallying point for the community. Community organizations like AUSIIME and the pro-immigrant band Los Jornaleros del Norte kept spirits high throughout the day with chants, cumbia, and anti-ICE songs. After several hours of protests, local politicians who had been intermediating with management announced that ICE had been asked to leave the hotel, and the crowd erupted in jubilation. Still, protesters did not leave until the agents had checked out and continued waiting, anticipating any movement. Since the morning, workers had been informing the rally of potential ICE movements, and everyone anticipated the humiliating exit from the hotel. After fixing their popped tires under the hot sun, ICE agents began to exit swiftly from the parking structure where protesters waited for them at all exits. As vehicles swerved through the parking structure, they were chased out by triumphant protesters who celebrated their victory, chanting “Si se pudo!” — (We did it!).

MONDAY JUNE 9

Early in the morning, families of several workers (mostly women and youth) who were detained in Friday’s mass raid at Ambiance garment factory, gathered for a press conference, assisted by the Garment Workers Center and other community organizations. A Tempest member assisted with security. The detained workers were the main providers in their families, and the families shared that they have not been able to hear from them yet. They called on ICE to free them, and to leave our communities. A group of over 100 people gathered to support them, including Palestinian and Palestine solidarity organizations, Indigenous organizations, progressive clergy, and other community nonprofits. The families also shared that Ambiance has still not released the workers’ owed wages to them, and a delegation of them went to the company offices after the press conference to demand these wages. There was no visible police presence or counter-protests, but many of us were informed throughout the event that ICE activity was beginning again in other parts of LA, including in Huntington Park, and the Fashion District again just a mile away from us. Many attendees went directly to the Grand Park rally to support David Huerta and SEIU right after.

Later that morning at 11 am, there was a rally at Grand Park in downtown led by SEIU in support of SEIU California President David Huerta, who was detained for participating in the protest against the mass raids at the detention center on Friday. There was curiously light police presence at first, despite the clashes over the weekend. In addition to SEIU International and various locals, many other major unions were present, including AFSCME, UHW, LULAC, Teamsters, UNITE HERE!, ILWU, LIUNA, IBEW, and IATSE. There were also representatives of various civic and community organizations, like Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), LAUSD, CARECEN, UCLA Labor Studies, and LA County. The DSA-endorsed City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado was also present and spoke.

The general theme was that David Huerta’s arrest is also an injury to all of us. It was a demonstration of around two to three thousand people that affirmed courage in the face of the federal presence sent by Trump. A band, Las Cafeteras, performed some songs like “La Bamba,” “If I Was President,” “Stand By Me,” which also asked the audience what they would change if they were president for a day. Prominent labor leaders spoke and affirmed labor’s role in the fight against fascism, including SEIU president April Verrett, Dolores Huerta, NAACP president David Johnson (who connected workers’ and civil rights, drawing on the Black struggle). Johnson powerfully declared that the Black struggle has taught him that saying nothing about the oppression of the most vulnerable would be an invitation for more abuses against everyone. Representatives from Justice for Janitors USWW, like Luis Fuentes, spoke about David Huerta’s labor bona fides.

But there was little emphasis on the need to build a resistance outside of the Democratic Party. Dolores Huerta emphasized nonviolence and the need for electoral strategies during the midterms, which was reaffirmed by the SEIU Political Policy director. Another policy representative spoke about the importance of forming coalitions with allies in other movements, emphasizing the need for strength in numbers and solidarity.

Police presence and pressure began to ramp up toward the end of the rally, as a student walkout that morning converged at the nearby Federal Building. Hundreds of students and other community members began to join, and police vehicles from other cities, such as Vernon, Torrance, and San Marino, appeared.

The Trump administration announced the deployment of Marines into LA around this time, as mass raids ramped up targeting many cities across Orange County, south of LA.

The situation remains highly fluid, and more protests are sure to occur in the coming days and weeks. There have already been reports of heightened ICE activity for the next 30 days. Tempest LA branch members will continue to participate and report on any resistance activities.

9 June 2025

Source: Tempest.


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