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Trump’s Storm Troopers Target Immigrants

In cities across the U.S. people have democratically decided to show solidarity to migrants and immigrants. These sanctuary cities have directed the police not to check immigration status, to racially profile undocumented workers, or to call in ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) to imprison our brothers and sisters in detention camps. New Orleans is one of several so-called sanctuary cities.

The ultra-racist Trump, just like the Louisiana legislature, refuses to accept any local decisions to raise wages, get sick pay, or deny corporate tax exemptions and more. Both rule solely to provide millionaires and billionaires with profits at the expense of the entire working class.

These anti-working class, racist politicians want to bring U.S. Border Patrol Tactical Units into sanctuary cities, armed to the teeth to arrest immigrants. These units are like the storm troopers of the Nazis. If they are allowed into our city, they will not stop with immigrants: the militarization and super weaponry will be used against the entire working class.

Anti-immigrant Attorney General Landry Has Got to Go!

Like Trump, Louisiana Attorney General Landry has been one of the loudest and ugliest voices in Louisiana against undocumented immigrants and migrants. This vicious racist and anti-immigrant millionaire opposed raising the minimum wage and initiated a lawsuit to stop Medicaid expansion and to destroy beneficial features of the Affordable Care Act. His lawsuit, which threatens the lives of 700,000 adults and children, was never decided by the workers of Louisiana.

Landry wants to divide workers by pitting citizens against immigrants. In 2017 he led a group of Attorneys General who threatened to sue Trump if he did not cancel the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, which protects 800,000 undocumented immigrants from deportation. Yet when it comes to making profits, Landry is only too happy to exploit migrant workers as part of a “guest” worker contract that his business rigged in order to get skilled and unskilled labor for cheaper than he could get it locally.

Guest workers work under conditions of semi-slavery. This program requires workers to sign contracts stating they will not complain or organize, or they will be deported immediately. Many “guest” workers are forced to live in horrid conditions, and their pay is deducted for food and housing. There is no path to citizenship. The racist-in-chief Trump has overseen an expansion in guest worker programs. There are more short-term migrant farm-workers being exploited as “guest” workers than ever before.

This goes to the very core of why the capitalists, and their media, are beating the message that we should blame immigrants rather than the super-rich. The purpose of the anti-worker, anti-immigrant and migrant hatred is to divide us while they laugh all the way to the bank. They want to lower the wages and benefits of all workers.

We need to tear down the prisons which make Louisiana the world’s prison capital for citizens and immigrants alike. Private prisons for profit, eight of them, are now operating to cage immigrants and take their children away.
All workers should reject the storm troopers and view an attack on immigrants as an attack on all workers. ICE and storm troopers out of New Orleans or anywhere! An injury to one is an injury to all!

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Freedom Now! ICE Concentration Camps Are a Menace to All Workers

By Joseph Rosen

Thanks to President Trump and Governor Edwards’ racist persecution of migrants, a few rich shareholders at private prison companies GEO Group, LaSalle Corrections, and CoreCivic have raked in millions of dollars in profits from an expanding network of more than 15 lockups across the state.

Meanwhile, working people in Louisiana have seen their families torn apart and their wages kept criminally low.

On any given day, around 9,000 men, women, and children are held captive in ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) concentration camps across Louisiana for no reason except to terrorize and super-exploit non-citizen workers. With taxpayer money, ICE contracts private prison companies and parish jails to carry out this abominable ‘business.’

Every year the capitalist U.S. government deducts millions in taxes from the paychecks of workers—citizen and non-citizen alike—in order to hand that money over to multi-millionaire prison owners. Last year, more than $600,000,000 in taxpayer money went to GEO Group; CEO George C. Zoley skimmed $6,963,460 for himself alone.

Capitalists reserve some of their profits for bribing politicians: in 2016, the GEO Group Political Action Committee spent more than $1 million this way. Similarly, the owners of LaSalle Corrections have donated thousands of dollars to Louisiana politicians including Governor Edwards. For this price, GEO Group and LaSalle secure more business and influence over the policies that affect their means of profit-making. This is just one way they work to keep wages down for all workers, citizen and non-citizen alike.

Dec. 3: Human rights demonstrators shut down private-prison firm GEO Group’s corporate headquarters in Boca Raton, FL.

The owners of private prison companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic also reap huge profits from the forced labor and slave wages of the men and women in their custody. Over 60,000 people held captive in a GEO Group work-camp in Aurora, Colorado are seeking damages for being forced to work for $1 or less a day, many under the threat of solitary confinement. Just as in other prisons across the country, this type of slavery is widespread: GEO Group alone operates 130 facilities across the country.

Capitalists get the most profit out of production by putting workers in competition with one another for wages. The less they pay one worker, the lower the wage rate another worker will have to settle for. Citizen workers are worse off when the bosses cheat their non-citizen brothers and sisters who are worse off when the bosses cheat their imprisoned brothers and sisters. Workers are strongest when we come together to fight against our common enemy: the millionaires who would enslave us all if only they owned enough prisons to keep us captive. Workers must unite to put an end to the camps and gather our forces for war on these slavemaster CEOs.

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Honduran Workers Fight Back Against Cuts, Demand Removal of U.S. Puppet

Honduran educators and healthcare workers lead a general strike. Tegucigalpa, May 27, 2019.

U.S.-Backed Dictator’s War on the People Drives Emigration

By Joseph Rosen

Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans are rising up against the corrupt and repressive U.S.-backed government of president Juan Orlando Hernández. The united effort continues daily despite the Honduran government ordering country-wide police and military attacks. Some of the worst repression has come from the U.S.-trained and supported Honduran special forces known as TIGRES.

The police state over which Juan Orlando Hernández rules came to power in 2017 through a rigged election that was met with widespread national protests and international condemnation. The demand to remove the president—”Fuera JOH”— is now heard daily across the country.

Hernández’s regime continues the legacy of the government that was installed in 2009 when the U.S. State Department under Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama used the CIA to orchestrate a coup that forced out the popular elected government of Manuel Zelaya. Under Zelaya the government was shifting funds to meet people’s needs. This is why the U.S. carried out the coup. In only one year after the coup, the national education budget was cut in half and public healthcare spending was cut by 20 percent. In the two years after the coup, more than 100 percent of all income gains went to the wealthiest 10 percent of Hondurans.

Thousands protest cuts to social programs, layoffs

The current surge of protests began after trade unions of health and education workers called for strikes and mobilizations to protest widespread layoffs and cuts to social programs. These attacks were forced on the people as a condition of loans that the government receives from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a consortium of banks dominated by the U.S. and its imperialist partners.

Hundreds of thousands of workers, Indigenous people, peasants and students heeded the unions’ call to action. Because of these massive mobilizations, the National Congress of Honduras was forced to nullify the law that would have enacted the cuts. The masses have been emboldened by this win; now they’re marching with even more determination to take down the illegitimate president.

Mobilizations will continue to swell as Honduras approaches the ten-year anniversary of the U.S.- orchestrated military coup. The Platform for the Defense of Health and Education, a driving force behind the protests, has demanded that the government withdraw its military forces and guarantee that healthcare and education workers not face retaliation for the strike.
New Orleanian and Honduran workers are in the same struggle

The struggles of workers in New Orleans and in Honduras are connected.

In 2010, Hernandez’s predecessor and U.S. puppet Porfirio Lobo Sosa made a visit to New Orleans to sign a memorandum of understanding with former mayor Mitch Landrieu to partner on healthcare and public education “reforms.” The post-coup Honduran government has modeled its attack on public education on the privatizations carried out in New Orleans after Katrina.

More Honduran-born people live in New Orleans than anywhere else in the United States; many of these refugees have migrated because of the difficult conditions forced on their country by U.S. imperialist intervention. Many of the same Honduran workers who helped to rebuild New Orleans after Katrina now face harassment, deportation and concentration camp detentions.

Workers can show their solidarity with our Honduran sisters and brothers by demanding an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. military and intelligence personnel from Honduras and by demanding an immediate end to all U.S. funding and support of the Honduran security forces and government, which are terrorizing the Honduran people.

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Hundreds of Wayfair Workers Walk Out, Protest Company’s Support of Concentration Camps

Hundreds of workers at Wayfair Inc. organized a walk-out to protest the decision of their bosses to fulfill contracts with BCFS, a company that operates migrant detention camps near the U.S. border.

The workers made public that the company had recently approved a $200,000 order to supply furniture to a camp that would hold captive up to 3,000 migrant children.

In a letter to the bosses, they demanded the company “cease all current and future business with BCFS and other contractors participating in the operation of migrant detention camps at our Southern border (or anywhere else).”

Less than a day after the CEO Niraj Shah rejected the workers request in writing, they announced a walk-out for the following day.

The 547 worker signatories to the letter wrote, “the United States government and its contractors are responsible for the detention and mistreatment of hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking asylum in our country— we want that to end. We also want to be sure Wayfair has no part in enabling, supporting, or profiting from this practice.”

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Migrant Children Held in Brutal Conditions

The separation of families has a long history in the U.S. This image shows the fate of many Indigenous and African children.

If this can happen, whose children are next?

Attorneys visiting a detention facility near El Paso, Texas reported that 250 infants, children and teens had been held for 27 days without adequate food, water or sanitation. Children were taking care of sick infants. 15 children had the flu. They were fed uncooked frozen food and had gone for weeks without bathing or a change of clothing. The facility is located in Clint, Texas, in the desert.

The children had been separated from adult caregivers. At least six children have died in detention since December. A teenage mother with a premature baby was in detention for nine days.

The attorneys went to court, but the Trump administration argued that the government is NOT required to give children soap, toothbrushes or diapers.

The Justice Department argued that the camps were not required to provide children with beds. Children have been sleeping on concrete floors with aluminum foil blankets.

Toddlers have been separated from parents and caged in camps.

U.S. imperialist policies like NAFTA have destroyed rural economies. They have put in place dictatorships such as the one in Honduras which has driven thousands from their homes. But they don’t find refuge here.

The Trump administration has threatened to carry out terror raids to deport millions across the U.S. Trump also says the U.S. can keep migrants in unlimited detention. These concentration camps are being run by private corporations for profit so the government wants to fill them up.

This is what was done during slavery to Black and Indian children. This is what they did to Japanese Americans during WWII. This is what the Nazis did.
This policy is an attack on all workers, citizen and immigrant. They want to push down all our wages and take away all benefits. We must stand up together to demand their release.

Close the concentration camps!

Abolish ICE!

Free the children and the families!

Full legalization and equality for all immigrants!

Children at the McAllen, Texas, Border Patrol station are denied bedding, nutrition, and sanitation.
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After Border Patrol Arrests Classmate, 200 High School Students Walk Out in Arizona

Around 200 students at Tuscon Arizona’s Desert View High School staged a walkout after fellow student Thomas Torres-Maytorena was detained by Border Patrol. Torres-Maytorena is facing possible deportation just weeks ahead of his graduation date. The students marched four miles from their school to the local sheriff’s office to demand that sheriffs immediately end their collaboration with immigration authorities. The students demand Torres-Maytorena’s immediate release back to his family and friends.

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Students Protest ICE, Police, Border Patrol

Students Stage 36-day Sit-in at Johns Hopkins University

Until they were arrested on May 8, students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD had staged a 36 day sit-in to protest the school’s contracts with Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the formation of JHU’s own private police force. Over this time, hundreds of fellow students and faculty and community members came to the occupied building for screenings, panels, and community meetings.

The students also took up the cause of Tawanda Jones, who for 300 straight weeks, has held a weekly “West Wednesday” march to protest the Baltimore Police’s murder of her brother, Tyrone West. “Tawanda has been working for 300 weeks, she has been struggling to demand accountability—we also will not stop and these are the kinds of actions we are willing to take to be listened to,” Jilene Chua said. “We’ve tried so many ways to be listened to and nothing has really been working. This is the extent to which right now we are willing to go to be heard.”

“We demand the cancellation of the private police force. We demand the end of the contracts with ICE. We demand justice for Tyrone West.”

After chaining themselves to the building, they issued a statement: ”we hope we have shifted the path of this campus. We hope to have changed the history of Johns Hopkins and its relationship with Baltimore and the broader world. We will remain here until President Ronald Daniels negotiates,” a statement from the sit-in read. “We demand the cancellation of the private police force. We demand the end of the contracts with ICE. We demand justice for Tyrone West.”

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Free the Children, Free All Immigrants, Workers of All Countries Unite!

by Ashlee Pintos

Last June people gathered by the thousands to take action against the internment camps set up by ICE that were holding children in cages and separating families. While Trump signed an executive order claiming to stop the separation of children and families, nothing has put a stop to the violence or terror. The situation of our migrant community clearly shows the importance of all workers demanding to Abolish ICE.

Countless cases have been shared detailing abuse of migrants of all ages at the hands of ICE agents. The most recent case to hit the news is the murder of a 7-year-old Guatemalan child, Jakelin Caal Maquin. As of December 8, 2018 Jakelin, would never again see a world outside of Federal custody. This child spent the last of her limited days under incarceration, denied water, and neglected as she got deathly ill. Jakelin and her father were two of over 160 migrants who were apprehended by ICE on December 6. They were taken to an area at the Border Patrol’s Bound Operating Base in a remote part of New Mexico. These areas where hundreds were detained only had a couple port-a-potties; no running water or access to bathing— and lacked necessities to sustain life.

Jakelin started to become increasingly ill as the migrants were forced on a 90-minute bus to Lordsburg. Only once the child was near death, was she flown to a hospital in El Paso. Following her passing, border patrol agents exploited her father’s grief by forcing him to sign documents in English while his native language is Q’eqchi (a Mayan Dialect).

In the name of Amerikkka, ICE is going about “business as usual” as Jakelin’s murder is one of many who have died in ICE prisons, at the hand of border patrol agents, or when agents dump water in the desert meant for migrant travelers. This child’s death is one among many. The capitalist class can cross borders to carry out business and make profit. Artificial borders and discriminatory immigration laws are enforced only upon our working-class sisters and brothers who only want a better life.

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Honor Molly Tibbetts by Sharing Her Family’s Words: “You Do Not Get to Usurp Mollie…for Your Racist, False Narrative.”

Recently Molly Tibbetts, a young Iowan, was brutally killed. This is a terrible tragedy. Because the alleged killer is an immigrant, politicians and the media seized upon this to vilify all immigrants and justify their racist demonization, led by the white supremacist Trump administration.

But Molly’s family refused to allow this to happen, saying this is not what Molly stood for. This is what they said:

“The Hispanic community are Iowans,” he said during his eulogy this past Sunday, revealing that they “had embraced him as he searched for his daughter in recent weeks,” the Des Moines Register reported. “They have the same values as Iowans. As far as I’m concerned, they’re Iowans with better food.”

The paper reported that during the several weeks Tibbetts was in Iowa searching for his daughter, “he ate at a number of Mexican restaurants, where employees were sensitive and kind. They knew when he needed space or when he needed to joke.” He continued: “Today, we need to turn the page. We’re at the end of a long ordeal. But we need to turn toward life—Mollie’s life—because Mollie’s nobody’s victim. Mollie’s my hero.” He hasn’t been the only member of Tibbetts’s family to reject the false narrative pushed onto her by anti-immigrant figures.

“No,” wrote her cousin Sandi Tibbetts Murphy in a Facebook post. “Especially for those of you who did not know her in life, you do not get to usurp Mollie and her legacy for your racist, false narrative now that she is no longer with us. We hereby reclaim our Mollie.” There’s still uncertainty regarding her alleged killer’s immigration status, but that doesn’t matter to the people doing the fearmongering anyway, because “immigrants-are-criminals” has always been their fall-back narrative despite the fact that immigrants are less likely than U.S.-born Americans to commit crime. Enough, said Tibbetts’s cousin. “You do not have permission to callously use this tragedy to demonize an entire population for the acts of one man. No. We reclaim our Mollie.”