What is being constructed is a deportation machine designed to function as a testing ground for dictatorship. Immigrants are being detained without due process, illegally rendered to foreign prisons, and held under conditions amounting to torture. At least 30 people have died in ICE custody this year alone, several under highly suspicious circumstances.
The Trump administration's own officials have openly declared their aim to become the "Amazon" of deportations, "Like Prime, but with human beings," in the words of acting ICE Director Todd Lyons.
This campaign serves multiple purposes for the ruling class. It is intended to divide the working class by scapegoating immigrants for the catastrophic social conditions produced by the capitalist oligarchy itself. It diverts attention from the political crisis engulfing the ruling elite and from escalating attacks on social programs and democratic rights. And it provides the legal and political framework for expanding police-state powers that will inevitably be turned against all workers, regardless of immigration status.
The Democratic Party is entirely complicit in the attacks on immigrants. Democratic Party leaders such as Senator Charles Schumer have grown silent as the repression accelerates, while figures such as Bernie Sanders openly praise Trump's border policies and repeat nationalist slogans. The trade union bureaucracy has also lined up behind economic nationalism and deportations, refusing to defend workers targeted by federal agents.
The assault on immigrants in the United States is part of an international process. Across Europe and globally, capitalist governments are militarizing borders and criminalizing refugees fleeing wars produced by imperialism itself. Repression at home is inseparable from preparations for war abroad.
The defense of immigrants is inseparable from the defense of democratic rights as a whole. It requires the building of rank-and-file committees in workplaces and neighborhoods, the rejection of nationalism, and the development of a unified international movement of the working class against capitalism.
This is the perspective advanced daily by the WSWS. But this work depends entirely on the support of our readers. We receive no funding from corporations, governments, or foundations.
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