Los Angeles-based socialist and member of Marx21 Clare Fester spoke on deportations and resistance to Trump in the US at this year’s Keep Left conference. Below is an excerpt of her speech.
We warned during the first Trump presidency that next time they would come back more organised, more vicious. And that’s exactly what’s happened.
The deportations of undocumented migrants are chilling. The point was never to deport all 11 million undocumented people, as Trump says he wants to. Agriculture, domestic work, healthcare, childcare all completely rely on undocumented workers.
The point is to terrorise the community, appease Trump’s base, and create a scapegoat for when we start feeling the tariffs and the massive social service cuts.
Other US presidents have had their own deportation agenda. Obama deported more people during his first term than Trump did, and so did Biden. What’s different this time is the campaign of fear and the total lack of due process.
ICE can go into schools and hospitals and churches now, which used to be prohibited. In late April ICE tried to go into two schools in South LA. Thankfully the union was prepared and the school turned them away.
The teachers’ union in the LA district is really strong against deportations. Their victorious strike back in 2019 had undocumented families and anti-racism front and centre.
There’s a concerted Know Your Rights campaign that in some instances has delayed and even prevented deportations. Under the Constitution, you have a right to a lawyer, and ICE needs a warrant from a judge, [otherwise] you’re not required to let them in.
But the Republicans have the House, the Senate, the Presidency and the Supreme Court. So you can send ICE away today but they can get a warrant and come back tomorrow.
One person [tried to assert their rights] and ICE just smashed their car window and took them away anyway, while they were on the phone to a lawyer. That person is a unionised farm worker and his union marched to the detention centre. So we need to start talking not just about knowing our rights but defending our rights.
We’re also facing deportations of Palestine activists and student activists. It’s deliberate that they went after someone at Columbia first, Mahmoud Khalil, because Columbia kicked off the encampment movement last year.
It’s about making people so afraid that they won’t fight anymore.
There have been big anti-Musk demos at Tesla outlets and the anti-Trump, anti-Musk “Hands off” demos. Elon Musk is so roundly hated that people put stickers on their Tesla cars now that say, “I bought this before Elon lost it.”
There have been union-led legal challenges against the attacks on federal workers and the attempt to abolish the Department of Education. There’s also a visible union presence at the Hands Off demos—with postal workers and education workers’ contingents. But we’re not effectively leveraging our power as a class yet.
Rounding up immigrants and Palestine activists are all tests to see how far we’re willing to let them go. It’s up to us to nip it in the bud.
