Activists distribute solidarity statement and campaign against U.S. blockade of Cuba
By Mark Friedman, member, International Association of Machinists in LA
As the Trump administration continues terrorizing immigrant communities with illegal raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other police agencies, thousands around the country are protesting, often spontaneously, as communities stand up against the brutal assault on workers’ rights guaranteed under the Constitution.
In many cities like San Pedro, citizens are organizing into roving teams to challenge police stops and arrests by ICE and other police agencies to ensure that the due process rights of the detained, which now number hundreds in Los Angeles, are honored.
ICE arrests two car wash workers in California
On June 22, approximately 20 masked federal agents violently arrested two workers at a Bubble Bath Car Wash in Torrance, shocking customers, employees and family members. The operation took place on June 22, without prior notice or visible identification by the officers. The detainees worked there for more than 15 years.
Nationwide ICE and Department of Homeland Security Raids Intensify
On June 26, in Laredo, Texas, a Hispanic worker climbed onto a cherry picker in a desperate attempt to avoid being arrested by immigration agents. The worker was among the 20 undocumented workers who were detained during a raid at a construction site off Mile Marker 13.
According to an Oxford Economics report released June 26, net immigration to the United States is expected to fall to 500,000 people in 2025 due to deportations by the Trump administration. Owners of restaurants, farms and hotels complain of large numbers of immigrant workers not coming to work for fear of arrest. The same is happening at schools and hospitals.
The report also adds that deportations are resulting in the loss of 300,000 immigrants from the undocumented population, at an annualized rate.
Not only Latinos are being targeted
As reported in the Los Angeles newspaper La Opinion on June 28, “what was supposed to be the start of a new chapter ended in an immigration ordeal for Ward Sakeik, a 22-year-old Saudi-born woman who was detained by ICE upon returning from her honeymoon. The woman, who lives in Texas, was arrested in February after returning from a trip with her husband to St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
“The young woman had come to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia, where she was born, but she didn’t obtain local citizenship because the country only grants it by blood, not by birth, and her parents are originally from Gaza. Her legal status, then, remained trapped in a state of statelessness, with no country officially recognizing her.”
Trump Administration to End Deportation Protections for Haitian, Cubans, Venezuelans, Immigrants
The Trump administration said on June 27 that it was terminating long-running deportation protections for Haitians in the United States, called Temporary Protection Status (TPS), declaring that the violence-plagued Caribbean nation was now safe enough for the program to end by September.
The announcement, by the Department of Homeland Security, continues the administration’s campaign of revoking special protections afforded to migrants from around the world. Hundreds of thousands of other immigrants who had previously been authorized to remain in the country, including Afghans, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, could face deportation.
Mass immigration arrests have led to overcrowding in detention facilities.
Medications for diabetes, high blood pressure and other chronic health problems are not provided. In New York and Los Angeles, people have been held for days in cramped rooms designed for brief processing and their lawyers and family members have remained in the dark about their whereabouts. ICE officials deny these truths.
As raids on workplaces and arrests at immigration courts continue, despite massive opposition by the majority of people in the U.S., at protests in more than 2,100 cities, more than 56,000 immigrants were in government jails June 15. At least 10 immigrants have died in ICE custody since Jan. 1, including two at the Krome detention center in Miami, where detainees earlier in June formed a human “S.O.S.” sign in the yard.
The Trump administration has expanded contracts with private prisons and several government enforcement agencies. The House version of the president’s budget bill proposes $45 billion for immigration detention, more than 10 times the current budget.
“Liberal” Democrats Attack Immigrants’ Medical Care.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a budget on June 27 that relied on scaling back health care for undocumented immigrants, even as he and other California Democrats have condemned the Trump administration for cracking down on immigrant workers. In signing the budget, Newsom backtracked on his earlier pledge to insure all low-income residents, regardless of their immigration status.
San Pedro Protest
A key organizer and chairperson of the vigil and rally, Maya Suzuki Daniels, addressed the crowd with urgency and conviction.
“As educators, parents, union members, Terminal Island descendants and community advocates, we are demanding that ICE and DHS stop using Terminal Island as a staging ground for their activities in Los Angeles,” Daniels said. “They have unleashed a wave of terror on our city that has impacted small businesses, student attendance and community events. We are calling on our elected leaders to make good on their commitments and get ICE out of LA. We can no longer believe their empty promises about a ‘sanctuary city’ when we see our neighbors, friends and family members brutally kidnapped without warning or due process. The shameful brutality must end.”
The San Pedro protest, held June 27, was one of hundreds nationwide in response to recent ICE raids. The harbor town, where 40% of U.S. imports arrive, drew a crowd of approximately 200 union members, elected officials, religious leaders and community activists.
One of the speakers, Chavo Romero of Unión del Barrio, told the crowd: “We are here to support and train residents for community patrols because they are on the front lines in a political skirmish. Their monitoring of police and ICE actions helps our people and led to the discovery that Terminal Island has 40 to 50 vehicles acting as strike forces leaving every day to kidnap our people. This experiment in repressive tactics in LA is being used to test strategies that will later be deployed in cities across the country.”
United Teachers Los Angeles had a sizable presence. Representing local schools, Maria Miranda addressed the crowd: “The violence will not end until we put an end to it. When I see la migra beat down a man or woman, I see my father or my mother.”
A delegation from Nikkei Progressives, a Japanese American organization, also participated. Representative Joy Yamaguchi spoke about the painful legacy of state-sanctioned detention.
“The taking of immigrants is all too familiar to us,” Yamaguchi said, referencing the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. “We know what happened. It is up to us to make the change. ICE out of LA! We demand that the LAPD stop assisting with the arrests.”
Local politicians and clergy also addressed the crowd. The LA Hands Off Cuba Committee distributed a statement criticizing media narratives and connecting U.S. immigration policy to foreign policy.
“The media gives false narratives of ICE raids, like those spread for decades against Cuba,” the statement read. “A 1960 State Department memo detailed how the blockade in Cuba’s case was explicitly designed to deny ‘money and supplies … to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.’
“Washington uses Cubans who come here, as a result of the hardships its own blockade, trade and travel bans, and sanctions have created, as pawns in its political and economic war. Most Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and other immigrants felt forced to come here because of similar anti-democratic and economic strategies. We won’t let Washington justify its brutal anti-immigrant attacks by trying to convince us that victims of its policies are now the criminals.”