Protesters in Los Angeles are standing off against ICE agents.
And protesting Trump’s mass deportation policies. To fight for immigrants, we need a united, class-independent response.
Los Angeles has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s escalating war on immigrants. On Friday, June 6, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided a Home Depot parking lot in the city’s Westlake District, detaining several undocumented day laborers. Later, agents raided the city’s garment district.
But ICE is meeting fierce opposition from community members. The raids sparked demonstrations, with protesters chanting and throwing eggs and rocks at the agents and police officers, who responded with pepper spray and tear gas. Forty-four people were arrested, among them California SEIU president David Huerta. The labor leader has been treated for injuries, but still in federal custody.
The next morning, ICE targeted Home Depot in Paramount, a city in the South Bay area of Los Angeles county. Agents literally chased people down the street but were confronted by the community. The majority Latino and Black youth built barricades around the store, and responded to the agents’ flash bang grenades, rubber bullets, and tear gas with rocks and bottles. They changed, “Fuera!” (“Get out!”) and “Get Out of Our Community!” Border Patrol agents dressed in camo gear were forced into a corner.
As the day progressed, clashes took place in Compton, Inglewood, and Long Beach, led by Latino and Black youth. Vehicles, including a Border Patrol car, were burned and young people took over the streets, marching with Mexican flags, wearing keffiyehs, and demanding ICE out of their communities.
Highlighting the interconnectedness of our struggles, protesters commented that Los Angeles shares a common cause with Palestine; that “the enemy is not me or you, it’s them!” The fight for Gaza is also linked to the fight for immigrant rights — after all, the weapons and surveillance used on Palestinians is also used to attack our migrant siblings in the United States.
A Weakened Trump Sends The National Guard
The Trump administration responded to the mobilizations in Los Angeles by deploying 2,000 members of the national guard, the first time a president has used these powers since the 1992 LA Riots. On Sunday, a Blackhawk helicopter even brought ammunition and supplies. Other members of the administration, like Stephen Miller and Vice President JD Vance, have escalated their rhetoric, calling this weekend’s demonstrations an “insurrection.”
The confrontations in Los Angeles are just the latest episode in the growing resistance to Trump’s anti-immigration agenda. Across the country, people — including high school students — are protesting ICE and fighting to protect their community members. It’s clear that Trump’s war on immigrants is facing limits, and the president’s show of force is meant to curry favor from his jingoist, anti-immigrant base. He’s hoping that, by playing the hits, he can strengthen his support amid plummeting approval ratings and mounting policy failures like the stalled Big Beautiful Bill and lack of tariff deals.
Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have threatened to withhold federal taxes and called the national guard deployment a provocation. Because Los Angeles is a sanctuary city, local law enforcement — the Los Angeles Police Department — has not assisted the raids. The LA County sheriffs, however, have been on the scene and helped ICE agents.
We Need A Class-Independent Fight Against Deportations
While Democrats in California and elsewhere are posturing as anti-Trump, we need to be clear: these raids and the war on immigrants would not be possible without the infrastructure developed across both Democratic and Republican administrations — whether under George W. Bush, Barack Obama (the “Deporter-in-Chief”), or Joe Biden. For all their rhetorical overtures against the current administration’s policies, Democrats are deeply complicit and cannot be trusted to fight for immigrant rights.
Instead, we need a class-independent mass movement against deportations, taking this fight to the streets and our workplaces. We must unequivocally call for the release of David Huerta and all those detained by ICE, ensuring that we do not isolate the labor movements from the social movements and the Black and Brown precarious youth who are rising up against these reactionary forces. In short, defeating ICE and the war on immigrants, and protecting our democratic rights, will require the strongest possible unity. When we fight, united, we can win — like when Trump was forced to reinstate thousands of student visas.
At the end of April, 55,000 SEIU local 721 members went on strike, powerfully showing how workers can fight for their rights. The same union should be mobilized alongside the rest of the working class and oppressed to fight for immigrants, against state repression. Only through class-independent organization can we kick ICE out of our communities and break down the border walls meant to divide us as a class.
From Gaza to Mexico, border walls have got to go!