Clare Lemlich, a member of Solidarity’s US sister group, Marx21, reports from the frontline in Los Angeles
For four consecutive days Los Angeles has turned out for immigrant rights. Led by the Community Self Defence Coalition in most cases, thousands have poured into the streets in response to a series of ICE raids across the city. Trump says they will stay in town for 30 days.
On Saturday 7 June we reported on the Home Depot raids and community response the day before. The protests continued throughout the weekend at various raid sites and the metropolitan detention center in downtown LA. Some neighbourhoods looked like warzones as the LAPD used their “less-lethal” stun grenades and tear gas against protesters.
On Sunday 8 June over 10,000 people surrounded the area in downtown LA with all the government buildings. This includes the metropolitan detention centre where ICE has detained over 100 immigrants it has kidnapped this past few days, holding them captive in the building’s basement. By Monday morning the entire building complex was covered with graffiti saying things like “All my homies h8 ICE” and “I did it for my mom”.
For hours the crowd held firm at either end of the detention centre and surrounded the 101 freeway nearby. The National Guard stood behind the police lines and LAPD periodically set off stun grenades to scare and disorient the crowd. They fired rubber bullets at at least one international journalist.
In the early evening police sent flash grenades into the crowds which prompted a freeway takeover. The excessive force used by the LAPD, including tear gas, is why some activists threw rocks at their cars and burned self-driving Waymo vehicles nearby. They are understood by many as a symbol of tech bro capitalism and unpaid corporate taxes. The company has since suspended services in downtown LA.
Disproportionate force
Liberal forces have widely condemned Trump’s use of the National Guard starting on Sunday and his subsequent deployment of the Marines on Monday afternoon. Both LA mayor Karen Bass and California governor Gavin Newsom (a potential future Democratic presidential candidate) slammed Trump for his federal overreach in the country’s first sanctuary state. This is the first time since 1965 that a president has activated a state’s National Guard force without a request from that state’s governor.
Trump hasn’t been able to deport people as fast as he promised so this excessive wave of federal intervention is largely about optics to show his racist base that he is following through on this key electoral promise.
Aside from the goal of deportations themselves, this skirmish with California is the latest installment of the fight between the blue (Democrat) states and Trump’s broader agenda to slash DEI, restructure universities and tear communities apart. Glendale has terminated its contract with ICE and Santa Ana is contemplating announcing to the community when ICE is in the area. From city councils to the governor, every California political institution understands that raids are deeply unpopular. Los Angeles is a third immigrant and the state has the largest undocumented community in the country.
We are glad to have the temporary support of the California liberal establishment against Trump’s ICE raids. It shows how public opinion can sway what the people in power say and do. But we also know what they truly stand for. These Democrats aren’t opposed to deportations as such. Biden had deported more people by this stage in his presidency than Trump has this year or was able to do in his first presidency. Obama still holds the title for the most deportations of any US administration. If Newsom runs and becomes president, he will follow in Biden and Obama’s footsteps.
These Democrats believe in “due process” (meaning they are perfectly fine deporting people as long as a judge see their case). In general they prefer to apprehend immigrants at the border, whereas Trump is aggressively going after immigrants who have already lived in the US for many years.
When the Democrats push back against Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and Marines, what they really mean is that they already know how to repress movements locally and would rather do it by themselves, not give Trump a chance for spectacle. It’s the Democrat-run City of LA that controls the LAPD, which is the main source of violence at the protests and who are collaborating with ICE to ensure it has access to raid sites and detention.
At the time of writing the Democrats are pinning the violence on federal authorities but there is an emerging “good protestor vs. bad protestor” narrative forming. The implication is that only “peaceful” protest, and not civil disobedience, is an acceptable form of resistance against ICE abductions.
Labour protest
On Monday 9 June the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) called a rally to free David Huerta, a local SEIU president who joined the protests on Friday and was knocked down while peacefully standing next to an ICE van, held down by ICE agents, and so seriously injured he had to be hospitalised. A few hours after the demonstration Huerta was released on bond. He is charged with conspiracy to impede an officer for monitoring an ICE raid, which is a felony that carries up to six years in federal prison.
Education, entertainment, government, service and building trade workers were all heavily represented at the protest, with speakers at the front calling for Black and brown unity and a class fight against deportations.
The politics varied, with some speakers calling on participants to get ready to vote Democrat in the 2026 midterm elections. One called to dismantle capitalism and for a new workers’ political party. Another speaker had just arrived from protesting at LAX against Trump’s new Muslim ban, connecting the dots between these two different types of racist attacks coming from the administration.
We are also seeing workers’ resistance against ICE outside of formal labour channels. On Sunday the Community Self Defence Coalition reported that it convinced auto repair workers not to fix the slashed tires on ICE vehicles. ICE had to duct tape their own tyres.
There is a great deal workers can do in the coming days. There are already reports of ICE agents staying at hotels in Pasadena and Glendale. On Monday the community held protests outside the AC hotel in Pasadena, where ICE agents were not only staying but demanding hotel workers present identity documents based on racial profiling alone.
The protest managed to boot ICE out of one Pasadena hotel. If we are organised, big community mobilisations can make it so that ICE agents cannot sleep, eat or drive in LA.
