The Reality of The “Sanctuary” City - No Sanctuary for Workers Under Capitalism
Minnesota ICE Raids
On January 23rd, about 50,000 people went to the streets in Minneapolis in response to the continuous terror carried out by the capitalist state’s ICE agents, brought to a head by the brutal killing of Renee Good, whose instinctual defence of her class must be praised and who in action revealed the forces of capital in their naked dictatorship of society. She was among one of the many victims already claimed by the state apparatus with about 30 killed prior to her. Our duty is to explain the forces that set the field for such episodes of violence which are always present, tolerated everyday by the proletariat and rarely reported in the capitalist press, but which come out the seams of society like the smoke from industrial plants that breathe life to our society.
The deployment of ICE across the country has targeted “sanctuary” cities to raise terror and discipline the migrant section of the working class. We have reported that similar actions have taken place in Chicago, Los Angeles, Charlotte, and now Minneapolis. It has become evident to everyone that the justification of deporting criminals holds very little weight given that more than 70% of deportees have no prior convictions. The aforementioned cities also on top of being “sanctuary havens” which limit, but never stop, to varying degrees the complicity of the local governments with federal immigration enforcement also boast significant migrant workers both documented and not. If we look at the table below for 2016 immigration population levels within the cities that have been targets of the raids. We note that they have varied across the board in hosting unauthorized immigration populations as a fraction of the total population in relation to the national average in 2016 of 3.3%. Los Angeles at 6.9% more than double the national average thanks to its proximity to the border along with Chicago at 4.1% right behind is Charlotte and lastly Minneapolis at 2%. However, this does not take into account the recent migration wave during the past 5 years which saw 11 million immigrants arrive into the United States. For the time being, noting the concentration of the populations will suffice and further context will be elucidated once we investigate the economic developments.
| Metropolitan Area | Total Unauthorized Immigrant Population (2016) | Unauthorized Immigrant Population as % of Total Percentage (2016) | Rank in the United States(2016) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim | 925000 | 6.9 | 2 |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin | 400000 | 4.1 | 7 |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington | 70000 | 2 | 25 |
| Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia | 100000 | 3.9 | 20 |
| Nationwide | 1070000 | 3.3 | - |
Data obtained from 2019, PEW Research Center Data on Unauthorized Immigrant Populations. Unauthorized immigrants are those who have limited or no protections under law which on top of undocumented migrants includes receipts of DACA, green cards, and those under Asylum. Margins of errors are not included for clarity but due to the nature of getting an accurate account of unauthorized populations due to the fear of being discovered, it may be possible that counts are an under-representation of the total immigrant worker population.
Latest Immigration Wave
Looking at overall immigrant trends, including authorized immigrants, shows how the total immigrant population has increased substantially in the past decades and how the composition of the immigrant population has varied across the past two centuries This latest surge has set a historical record pushing the immigrant population, as a percent of the total United States population, from 14.8% in 1890 to 15.8% at the beginning in 2025.
| Year | Total Immigrant Population, millions | Percent of United States Population |
|---|---|---|
| June 2025 | 51.9 | 14.9% |
| January 2025 | 53.3 | 15.8 % |
| 2022 | 46.1 | 13.8% |
| 2019 | 44.9 | 13.7% |
| 2010 | 39.9 | 12.9% |
| 1990 | 19.8 | 7.9% |
| 1970 | 9.6 | 4.7% |
| 1890 | 9.3 | 14.8% |
| 1850 | 2.2 | 9.7% |
Data obtained from July 2024, PEW Research Center Data. Gaps filled with Official Census Data
Furthermore we can note that the vast majority of the undocumented migrant section of the working class in the United States is of working age (77%) from 16-64 in contrast to the native working class (60.4%). From which industry, commerce, and financial capital can draw life from in industries where low wage labour is especially taxing to bodies such as in construction and agriculture.
The cause of the recent wave is undoubtedly the coupling of the COVID pandemic crisis with the economic slowdown at the tail end of 2018/19. An exodus that has its roots in the underdevelopment of Latin American economies as a consequence of the colonialism of the past and today global imperialism. These historical developments have relegated Latin American economies as subordinates to the capital of the dominating imperialist powers, mainly Yankee. For reference, in 2025, the top foreign investors were the United States at $11.8 billion, then Spain at $8.4 billion followed by China at $4.7 billion. Meanwhile the Mexican bourgeoisie itself desperately needs workers to establish its own internal markets and domestic production, as the expansion of maquiladoras continues to develop a proletariat population with increasing consumption demands. Meanwhile Mexico itself has started to export capital; growing its own foreign direct investments as it aspires to become its own regional imperialism. The dominant imperialism uses its military and financial instruments to perpetuate Latin America to auxiliary positions within global productive forces by developing their economies for exportation of manufactured goods, resources extraction and agricultural products, while maintaining financial domination, however, as we have seen in China over the last decades such actions have the consequence of eventually giving rise to an increasingly powerful capitalist class in the subordinate country empowered with a growing industrial base which can eventually transform into a rival. Along with the exportation of goods manufactured by and for foreign corporations, comes the exportation of profits that leave many sectors of the economy, especially domestic industrialization at a low level and it finds itself in a difficult position to develop especially in competition from the international market (see Monographs on Latin America, 1950 - 1995). The result is an economy that is still unable to engage the majority of workers into the capital production process, relegating them to informal work where wages remain below official minimum wages and to unemployment and underemployment. In Mexico’s case, the drug economy has become a viable “employer” which notes the severity of the situation. As a consequence, when crises occur as did during the late 1960s, mid 1980s, and early 1990s, these economies created an influx of migrants coming out of Latin America.
Yet, today we see that in Mexico’s case, its economy is transforming increasingly into an emerging rival industrial contender despite its continued subordination to U.S. imperialism. It has significantly expanded its infrastructure through large-scale highway investment and development programs. The federal government’s 2026–2030 Infrastructure Investment Plan, projects a total investment of MX$5.6 trillion. For 2026 alone, the plan anticipates an additional MX$722 billion, on top of the MX$900 billion already budgeted for improvements in energy, railways, highways, ports, health, water, and education. The country’s national road network now spans about 989,000 km, including over 11,000 km of toll highways, while the government announced MXN 53 billion (≈$2.7 billion) in road infrastructure spending for 2025 and plans to build around 3,000 km of new priority roads. At the same time, Mexico has been increasing domestic production capacity: local production in the transportation infrastructure sector, for example, grew from $5.7 billion in 2020 to over $12 billion in 2023, reflecting stronger internal industrial activity. Government policy has also explicitly aimed to strengthen the domestic market and raise investment above 25% of GDP by 2026, supporting a shift toward producing more goods for internal consumption and reinforcing domestic supply chains
Looking from 1965 and onwards the majority of immigrants coming into the United States are from Latin America, around 50%, with 23% originating from Mexico reaching its peak during 2007 before trending downward. Workers facing low wages and deteriorating conditions flee the boundaries of their nation state to another in search of liveable wages–that is, to survive. The native bourgeoisie, especially the Mexican, have historically been laissez-faire on enforcing control along the United States-Mexican Border as it helps them relieve the mass of unemployed workers avoiding a greater social crisis of their own, hoping to also take advantage of a trained workforce once they came back all while receiving significant contribution to their GDP from remittances sent back home from migrant workers. Recent developments show that Mexico has ramped up control of its own southern border along Guatemala to prevent the influx of South American proletarians at the behest of the Americans, which benefits the Mexican bourgeoisie. Control of the northern border is also expected to increase.
In the United States, the latest trends from 2000 until 2023 show almost a doubling of unauthorized immigrants, the majority of whom are employed ‘illegally’. An explosive rate that has not been experienced since the 1990 to 2000 period. It wasn’t until 2007 that we saw a decrease in the unauthorized population as a result of the economic crisis, with estimated populations decreasing from 12.2 million to 11 million in 2017, continuing until 2019 where it stood at 10.2 million. Picking back up around the start of the COVID epidemic in 2021 to 10.5 million. Despite these fluctuations, in the last 30 years, the unauthorized population has exploded by 400% from 3.5 million to 14 million. The need to manage the incoming immigration population on a permanent basis has been slowly developing in the United States, the organs to deport and discipline the increasing mass of immigrant workers (i.e. manage) has become imperative, the occasional deportation campaigns or integration of workers by amnesty have been historically exhausted in the current status of global capitalism that awaits the next crisis.
To elucidate this historic outlook we can quote the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s (FAIR) representative, Roger Conner, who in 1982 spoke to the bourgeoisie perspective on immigration from Latin America in relation to the United States in rather Malthusian terms at a time when it had not yet reached these current historic levels and when the economic situation was not as bleak:
“To charge [racism against us], I respond that the issue in the modern immigration debate isn’t the race or ethnicity of the people, it is the numbers of people who are coming…. I don’t believe we can [absorb the present flow] and meet the needs of minority and disadvantaged Americans for a better standard of living, and I don’t think we can protect the natural resource base of this country for the future generations at that level of people in the United States”.
Ignoring the hypocrisy about protecting the future for the next generations, the bourgeoisie can only look at cutting the mass of workers from the productive process as it cannot engage them in capital expansion and so it relegates them to starvation.
Thus, only as a historical development in this chapter of the capitalist epoch can we understand ICE as functions of the state, that is the capitalist state, in its efforts to address a mass of workers which it cannot do without for use as cheap labour in multiple sectors such as construction, agriculture and service activities, in fact Trump has made assurances to those industries that they will not be hurt, but also the need to mitigate a section of the working class that is politically expendable and “do away with” when no longer at service of capital but a possible explosive element when unemployed without access to the traditional welfare programs which have pacified native workers-now currently being attacked by the current administration. This reserve army of labor thus can present a potential risk to capital if it grows too large. We can look at the unionization campaigns of Mexican and Filipino workers in California during the 60s and the mass mobilization of 2006 against H.R. 4437, a bill that sought to criminalize undocumented immigrants to get a picture of the latent combativity of this section of the working class due to its precarious existence.
| Year | Total Number of Unauthorized Immigrants, millions | Percent Change from Previous Year of Comparison, % | Total Number of Unauthorized Immigrant Workforce, millions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 14 | 18.6 | 9.7 |
| 2022 | 11.8 | 12.4 | - |
| 2021 | 10.5 | 3 | 7.8 |
| 2019 | 10.2 | -7.2 | - |
| 2015 | 11 | -9.8 | 8 |
| 2007 | 12.2 | 41.9 | 8.2 |
| 2000 | 8.6 | 145.7 | 5.6 |
| 1990 | 3.5 | - | - |
Data obtained from July 2024, PEW Research Center Data. Gaps filled with Official Census Data
Immigrant Labor and Economic Industries
Looking at the distribution of the unauthorized immigrant workers by the industries which hire a significant amount of immigrants in proportion to their total workforce, using a similar dataset from the Center of Migration Studies and US industry data, we can look at the change in economic output by industry and their recent changes to grasp the direction of these sectors.
| Industry Sector | % Hiring of Total Unauthorized Immigrant Population Workforce 2023 | Real GDP of Industry Sector, billions (2005). Indexed to 2017 Dollars | Real GDP of Industry Sector, billions (2019). Indexed to 2017 Dollars | Real GDP of Industry Sector, billions (2024). Indexed to 2017 Dollars | % Change (2019 to 2024) | % Change (2005 to 2024) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing & Hunting | 3% | 159.6 | 172.5 | 205.5 | +13.1% | +22.2% |
| Construction | 20% | 934 | 882.3 | 871.5 | -1.22% | -6.69% |
| Accommodation & Food Services | 12% | 528 | 638.8 | 650.3 | 1.8% | +23.2% |
| Manufacturing | 11% | 1877.7 | 2224.8 | 2361.4 | 6.1% | 25.8% |
| Administrative, Support & Waste Management Services | 10% | 462 | 747.4 | 735 | -1.65% | +59.1% |
| Retail Trade | 8% | 979.1 | 1253.7 | 1469.5 | +17.2% | +50.1% |
Note: varies estimates for the distribution of the unauthorized immigration workers exist due to the difficulties in capturing a population that remains largely outside official records. However, datasets all point to construction having a large population of the unauthorized workforce and agriculture as well which is not captured with this estimate some other estimates put it at over 20% which includes H2-A workers. For consistency sake, we will use the figures provided that estimated the 2016 immigrant population.
The data shows modest growth in all sectors, except for a diminishing one in construction and Admin/Waste Services, ranging from 1.8% to 17.27% during the COVID epidemic from 2019 to 2024. On a 20 year basis, the growth of all sectors, except construction with a -6.69%, are still positive ranging from low end in agriculture at 22.2% and at 59.1% for the upper range by the Admin, support, & waste management services. The construction sector has seen a contraction still not reaching peak spending levels prior to the recession of ‘07/08. We are not yet seeing a general contraction in all industries that disproportionately hire immigrants except in construction with an estimated unauthorized population of 2.8 million workers. It is this sector that is first showing the retreat of the covid economic upsurge, and specifically the retreat of capital in certain sectors.
Economic Developments
Through capital’s own impetus to increase productivity, AI advancements also increase the risk of jobs associated with immigrant populations being automated, including those in the service sector, which is at the highest risk of shrinking the necessary work force. According to a study by National Equity Atlas the accommodation and service industry has job tasks with a high probability of being computerized at 73% (~8.5 million jobs at risk), retail trade at 66% (~11.5 million jobs at risk), admin and waste management at 66% (~4.3 million jobs at risk), and construction at 59% (~6 million).
In the agriculture, while the sector has not experienced a contraction, the smaller farmers are increasingly worried of being proletarianized with more bankruptcies occurring every year, (by end of 2025, there were 15,000 fewer farms) due to the high international competition, and lack of entry to foreign markets like India, which have excluded tariff free duties on products grown in their country, in addition to domestic competition of the more high yielding large industrial farms. This layer of the bourgeoisie stands to benefit from the reduced H2-A wages for agriculture just recently announced and a climate of anti immigration where working conditions can further be deteriorated.
Amidst a looming crisis, capital and its state must contend with the expected increase in unemployment. It does this by readying to use the instruments of oppression on the politically vulnerable sections of the working class which finds itself cut off from the native workers by the poisonous miasma of chauvinism and its own historical defeats. The modernized deportation tools like the usage of technologies developed to oversee and monitor populations such as those employed in Gaza by the state of Israel, and the expanding network of the prison detention center complex have yet to be used to their full capacities and are continuously increasing.
Currently, the interior deportations by ICE, are estimated at 333,000 in Fiscal Year (FY) 2025, which does not include exterior deportations at ports of entry by Custom and Border Protection Agency which we can estimate at 270,000 for a total of 600,000 still short of the administration’s 1 million deportations a year. The nature of the data makes it hard to estimate the actual deportations and removals as DHS has not discerned the total removal by ICE deportations; However, it is becoming evident that interior removal and deportations are higher than the external deportations at points of entry especially along the Mexico-US border. For comparison, last fiscal year during Biden’s term in FY 2024, it was estimated that 685,000 deportations took place with ICE conducting 271,000 removals, a doubling from 143,000 in FY 2023. The discernment between the two levers of the bourgeois state is from border removals to interior removals, where the current direction is aiming at removing migrant workers further away from the border at a much more rapid pace.
This development is further validated by the expansion of the deportation infrastructure in which ICE has been given a $45 billion carte blanche check to buy and retrofit warehouses, moving away from subcontracting space in existing facilities to an “Amazon” warehouse model. This “ICE Detention Reengineering Initiative” aims at centralizing and having the capacity to hold anywhere from 70,000 to 100,000 migrant workers at a given time. The supposed blockade of immigration enforcement by Democratic officials is crumbling as quickly as it was built. Even in New Mexico, local obstruction has been little more than a temporary speed bump. By leveraging federal contracting, ICE has not only outmaneuvered its critics but has ensured that the "resistance" remains largely toothless and increasingly irrelevant
We can conclude that the immigrant populations are tied to these industries to a significant degree that we can see this management of the labour force taking after the ebbs and flows of their economic activities requiring the ever increasing management of the workforce which has been built up in recent decades and exploded in the last 5 years. If workers cannot find wages to survive at home, they surely cannot find them in the very same United States for long especially when industries start to falter. More dangerous is the idea that sanctuary cities, that is local governments who aim to protect immigrant workers through legislation and limiting cooperation, can offer an effective means of resistance to the unleashed terror by ICE or provide a life worth living for that matter. Especially, if one takes the time to look into the reality of the laws and policies within these “sanctuaries”.
History of Sanctuary Cities
The Sanctuary movement kicked off in the 80s when Guatemalan and Salvadorean refugees started to pour into American Cities due to civil war ravaging those countries, as a result of the imperialist rivalry being waged between the USSR and the U.S. who supported contending bourgeois factions across Latin America. Local religious communities in Arizona and California, declared their churches as sanctuaries for refugees amidst reports of deported refugees by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), whose deportation operations are now replaced by ICE, dying once returning to their respective countries of origin. The amnesty given to refugees fleeing from political conflicts were not given to the Guatemalan and Salvadorans as the bourgeoisie declared them “economic migrants”. Rather it would be more accurate to say it handed enemies of their puppet states back into their grasp. In 1983-85, activists documented the inhuman treatment of detainees at the INS Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas. At the peak of the moment in 1986-87, 20 cities and 2 states passed resolutions, mostly public statements, to declare themselves as sanctuaries for Central American migrants. San Francisco, being the only city to issue an ordinance limiting municipal employees’ cooperation with the INS in 1989. The historical result of this activist movement resulted in shelter for these fleeing workers in some cities and which would only culminate into a lawsuit against the supreme court for imposing amnesty restrictions and giving special provision in immigration hearings for migrants from these countries.
Today’s Sanctuary cities and counties or jurisdictions have evolved to mean legal jurisdictions that afford some level of protection to undocumented immigrants in relation to federal immigration enforcement. It does this generally by limiting the amount of cooperation local law enforcement has with federal agencies, noting that it does not actively prevent them from carrying out their missions where they are deployed. States like California can prevent any municipality from having 287(g) agreements which deputize local law enforcement for immigration enforcement. Some cities issue public resolutions which are nothing more than statements and others share information with federal enforcement in a limited way such as providing fingerprints.
The mayor of Chicago’s latest executive order in October 2025 “prohibits” ICE from using city owned property such as parking lots, garages, and vacant lots for staging - by posting signs. City employees who observed ICE using the facilities are "encouraged-but not required” to report to their supervisor to let the city administration know of the violations. Private owners may request the same signage to post on their private property. Here’s the response from the ‘Welcoming City’ which can only document the terror unleashed on the immigrant worker!
Noting the reality and limitations that at best carve some minor relief in contrast to more conservative jurisdictions, we can dive into the working conditions of the immigrant workers within these "sanctuaries". In Minnesota, the immigrant worker can survive but to call it life worth living is something only a sycophant can proclaim.
The Minnesota Case
The January 23rd mobilization was brought forth in a very half hearted matter by multiple groups drawing from the multitude of classes. In Minneapolis’s case, a big factor has been businesses mobilizing by closing their shops in protests of the ICE raids. It will be rather shortsighted to see this as fruitful development in the protection of immigrant workers given that these businesses, despite their support, rely on the low wage population of immigrants to draw profits. It goes to say, that immigrants are employed and depend on these businesses to secure a wage and living but on the other hand they are subject to increasing exploitation by the employing class on a social average basis. One only needs to look at the wage theft rate amongst immigrant workers employed in the metropolitan area of the Twin cities to see the reality of this relationship.
In the construction sector, one in four workers experience wage theft from employers which disproportionately hire unauthorized immigrant workers on top of employers regularly skirting safety regulations. The same sector was responsible for one in five of the annual deaths occurring in the private sector during 2023 according to the official US labor statistics. Despite the labor legislation that stipulates protection from wage thefts, especially in so-called “sanctuary” cities, it is in most cases not enforced to its full degree and little is recovered from these measures. In Minneapolis’s case only $2 million was recovered in 2025 from the estimated $90 million stolen each year from 2013 to 2022 in unpaid wages or minimum wage violations (i.e. paying below the municipal standards of $16.37/hr). The recent city budget, under democrat Mayor Jacob Frey who made a great spectacle of “standing up” to ICE, proposed a cut to the program responsible for enforcing wage regulations from $658,824 to $309,646 out of the city’s $7.8 million budget allocated to civil rights. Contrast this to the municipal budget for the police department which stands at $230 million this year!
Looking at the trend within the Minneapolis Metropolitan area economy, the wage theft rate is highest in sectors that disproportionately hire immigrants and minority workers–of particular note is that Minneapolis has rates that surpass the state averages. Industries with the highest violation rates include food services and drinking places (11.3%), social assistance (8.3%), and personal and laundry services (7.2%).
| Industry | Minimum Wage violation Estimate (percent) | Public Complaints | Estimate Employment, 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arts, entertainment, and recreation | 6.7 | 8 | 24795 |
| Social assistance | 8.3 | 0 | 67916 |
| Personal and Laundry services | 7.2 | 4 | 16695 |
| Food services and drinking places | 11.3 | 38 | 91864 |
| Administrative and support services | 5.7 | 3 | 88462 |
| Nursing and Residential services | 4.5 | 3 | 50144 |
| Total, all industries | 3.6 | 79 | 1817290 |
| Educational services | 4.2 | 3 | 137141 |
| Retail Trade | 4.6 | 5 | 153655 |
Data obtained from November 2023, Minimum Wage Non-Compliance in Minneapolis study
However, the reality of this is underscored by the low amount of complaints that are sent to the Labor Standards Enforcement Division (LSED) where often many immigrant workers are unaware or intimidated to report due to fear from losing their jobs, which is often the case. The findings as the authors note show “how deep and widespread violations are in these industries". When looking at which sections of the working class experience the highest rate of wage theft occurrences it is often the immigrant, black, and female workers that are disproportionately targeted who experience wage violations 3.7 times the rate of the white male native worker counterparts. This is of particular importance given that Minneapolis hosts a large number of African born immigrants outnumbering the rest of the immigrant community.
| Worker Demographic | Compared to | Probability of Minimum Wage Violation (X Greater) |
|---|---|---|
| Black Female Non-Citizen | White Male Citizen | 3.7 |
| Black Female Non-Citizen | White Female Citizen | 2.8 |
| Black Male Non-Citizen | White Male Citizen | 2.4 |
| Black | White | 2 |
| Latin American Female Non-Citizen | White Male Citizen | 2 |
| Latin American Male Non-Citizen | White Male Citizen | 1.5 |
| Non Citizen | Citizen | 1.5 |
| Female | Male | 1.4 |
Data obtained from November 2023, Minimum Wage Non-Compliance in Minneapolis study
Furthermore, the concentration of these violations are located within the microbusinesses category which are defined as having less than 20 employees accounting for 54% of wage complaints received by (LSED). It is important to note, that usually it is the same immigrant community which enterprises in these businesses and hires the same workers denoting that class relation underpinning these complaints. Regardless of the origin of place, businesses under the competition of the market are pushed to undercut their workers wages to remain afloat among the service sectors such as restaurants which work with very little profit margins and where this fact is intensified. The reality of the matter is these operations cannot exist for long without the labour of a highly exploited workforce which in addition to wage theft are subject to longer workdays and minimal safety protections. Thus, with the ICE terror in Minneapolis which has frightened immigrant workers from coming out of their homes and to spend money on these businesses for fear of being deported. It is no surprise the small businesses who have lost their customers and their workforce have jumped to denounce the ICE raids. During the economic blackout, hundreds of businesses closed in the name of kicking out ICE from the city but under different sets of class interests that must and should be highlighted.
For the immigrant workers, who already are subject to everyday exploitation and harassment there was no voice amongst the action to denote demands that belong solely to the proletariat beyond the anti ICE slogans that drew other elements. No mention of low wages, workplace protections, 40 hour work weeks, maternity leave or time off. Demands that are necessary and vital for the immigrant workers not just in Minneapolis but across the nation and regardless of place of origin, sex, religion, or race. Only slogans and calls that lead to nowhere. Often back into the hospices of the democrats and parliamentary channels under various affiliations that are stuck to aberrations of the civil rights movement. The naive belief that protests or civil disobedience alone has forced governments to capitulate into demands is an unfortunate sickness which we still suffer from today but to a lesser degree due to its ineffectiveness to address the social problems plaguing the classes.
The Sanctuary Guardians
For workers who are led to believe the Democratic Party has their best interest at heart the reality is counterposed with the minimal protections afforded to the immigrant section of the working class. The limited tools at their disposal never touch the economic foundations that guarantee their deteriorating living conditions. The multiple channels that comply to federal, state, and local law are driven to affairs in the courts where more often than not die and remain in juridical limbo or when some form of compensation is wrestled out of it, it comes months even years after where workers are left to the hospices of unemployment and the deterioration of living conditions that spring from it.
We can derive from the developments, that even under the best of circumstances the best protection these sanctuary cities can enforce is within the framework of the law which never defies federal law which is nothing more than bourgeois justice. Which under our current state of affairs, means nothing other than the rule of wage labor, private property and mercantile exchange, the cornerstone foundations of profit extraction. That is, it will never undermine the social forces that require the surplus value extraction of workers or rather it will never assault wage slavery, only make it palatable for a short while–such is the nature of reforms. Or when they do find their engine in the midst of class struggle, they are neutered by forces ready to bind the movement into the hands of the class enemy.
Thus the reprieve given to immigrants is precipitated by its ability to be exploited by the whole capitalist class. In the event of an economic crisis, the political forms to expedite the deportations of migrant workers will have fertile grounds in the fabric of increased unemployment, bankruptcies, increased cost of living which will open up the landscape for the reactionary forces of the bourgeoisie to pin the economic contradictions on immigrants and not the logic of this senile social organization that binds humanity with the grips of capital accumulation which births the many social ailments seen today. Such is the case for the “protections” of today which may become a hindrance for the movement of capital which we should not be surprised if tomorrow they are eroded further or even removed entirely.
We have not derived any new formulations, but set these predictions on the development of American capitalism, whose national capital extends beyond its political borders, one which is not a stranger to deportations and which has set an apparatus of oppression ready to be unleashed and which will expose the all bark and bite of peaceful resistance promoted by the left and democrats who are ready to play their historical roles as the worst enemies of the working class–the deceivers and the disarmers. We will inform our reader of the best result of the alternative under the American parliamentary circus, the Mamdanis and the like, have already shown their cards, see TCIP 65. For workers this tactic has always been a loss in the long run under this counter revolutionary historical epoch, especially in the absence of a strong labour movement and clarity from its most advanced element: the party. Especially, as opportunists only limit the struggle inside the parliamentary structure in which the bourgeoisie has nothing to fear from a proletarian assault. Worse, it disarms the proletariat by instilling the illusion it can meet its class needs by relegating to these fellows its faith in lieu of expanding their defensive organs. It is tantamount to class betrayal under all developed nation states where capitalism has already penetrated all human societies.
The Play at Hand
Recent political developments underscore this reality, Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, was in coordination with Trump regarding the intense ICE operations that resulted in the death of another native worker Alex Pretti on January 24. The immediate response from the masses has been outraged with calls for another “strike”, or more precisely a class collaboration economic blackout stamped with the same petty bourgeoisie outlook of the January 23rd one. The political backlash has reached the Republican party who showed a divide on the intensification of this approach with the removal of Greg Bovino, who was sanctioned to proceed with the utmost force with apprehensions intensified on basis of racial discrimination, with the more temperate Border Czar Tom Homan who has taken a more tacit approach by deporting immigrants with a criminal record. Recently, Christie Noem was fired from her position as head of the Department of Homeland Security for the handling of the Alex Pretty affair, calling the two US citizens killed ‘terrorists’, making the profiteering of this migration apparatus apparent. This spectacle has no other aim but to obfuscate the reality of the deportation machine which still is intact and ready to be headed by whichever bourgeoisie representative takes hold of it next.
A middle ground so to say, that has no intent of stopping the deportation machine only slowing it for the time being and to quell dissent. Further divisions can be explained by the Republican faction representing business interests in the construction, agriculture and hotel industries who are suffering from losing their labor force as a response to the raids.
This reaction should not be seen as the illusion that the mobilization has turned the direction of the deportation machine as reported by some on the left. The fact is both sides feared that the continuation with aggressive tactics would In fact only result in greater economic harm for Capital as a whole which expresses itself in part in the democratic protests of the petite-bourgeois element. Let’s consider the future world capital promises, intensifying imperialist conflict means that even potential rivals must be leveled, whole nation’s industries destroyed to preserve the dominant capital’s accumulation in the face of overproduction. In such a world, masses are uprooted. The immigration system being built today is being built for that tomorrow. The veneer of retreat by the Trump administration in its aggressive tactics is merely a reflection of it overselling its initial aims to rile up its base while capitals terroristic regime of intercontinental labor management is continually developed. The raids have mainly occurred in the streets, restaurants and workplaces showing the ineffectiveness of these measures. On the ground, the local police have been employed to separate the reaction from ICE agents–in effect protecting them under the guise of civil order. Behind the slogans and bravado of resistance by Governor TIm Walz during his administration’s press release, he offers to workers the following solution: “Indeed, as hard as we will fight in the courts and at the ballot box, we cannot, and will not, let violence prevail.” In short, he offers nothing to stop the hangman from pulling the lever, only alms and promises of a better life for the victim.
Had a more severe unrest exploded outside the confines of interclass channels the democratic “resistance” would soon be put in a situation where it would have to assist federal forces which numbered only a few thousands by sending its own police force and national guard. Thus jeopardizing the semblance of division between the parties who differ in factions, benefactors, to certain extent approaches, but never are they divided in maintaining the subjugation of the proletariat, especially if its own demands came to light.
Migrant Labor Struggles
Immigrant workers cannot trust the bourgeoisie, much less the current regime unions who only see their immigrant brethren as competitors or at best offer symbolic solidarity, thus the only historical path for a defensive struggle against the reactionary attacks by the bourgeoisie is through independent class unions belonging solely to the proletariat. Immigrant worker strikes and organization on class struggle lines is necessary and possible. We can harken back to the struggle by Salvadoran workers, mostly women, who led a struggle in the janitor industry in LA during the 90s winning a 22% raise and inspiring the $15/hr campaign. Or the struggle from Guatemalan workers who fought against Case Farms, which supplied poultry to brands like KFC and Taco Bell, by withholding their labor to improve their working conditions. Their temporary defeat came around 1995 when they were organized by Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) which channeled their latent combativity, as some migrants fled for organizing strikes, to the legal channels of the NLRB. When the LIUNA leadership failed to get a contract signed they stopped the union drive despite having legal impetus that required the company to recognize the union which it simply refused to do. Under another union campaign in 2004 led by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) it again failed due to in large parts by the intimidation tactics employed by Case Farms including the firing of workers leading the union campaign, only through their work stoppage were they able to stop case farms from increasing the working speed but which was soon brought back after the unionization effort failed. The workers were once again led astray by the UFCW and remembering their defeat of 2004 were able to win the unionization drive in 2007. However, no major improvements have been gained in their workplace in which workers are still suffering to this day despite the combativity of workers who are willing to strike. In fact in 2008 during the economic crisis, they struck again but this time under the regime union direction which neutered its development in the ULP strike fashion–that is the most palpable strike to bosses, one which allows scabs in!
To all workers regardless of nation, race or sex! Abandon illusions that any current capitalist political party can meet your demands! History has shown, the slaughterhouse of wage slavery continues even under vegan management. Only through the working class strength, on an international scale, can they develop real measures to stop the attacks on immigrants through the use of it’s most powerful weapon, the strike! Be like the invading ‘horde’, the bourgeois paint you as! Advance barbarians!