A World Where All Workers Are Welcome here ♦ Ethnic Cleansing of Mexicans here ♦
Fighting for a Communist World that Welcomes Workers Everywhere
SEATTLE (USA), May 15— Fascist deportations of factory and farm workers are growing. Meanwhile, industrial and agricultural workers, students, and others are demonstrating against ICE arrests. ICE is the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement police.
Friends asked what scenarios we need to resist the expanding deportations. “There are no capitalist scenarios that will save the working class,” a long-time comrade from Boeing answered. “We need our own communist scenarios.”
Comrades told a friend about the recent arrest of Maximo Londonio. She notified an organization she works with that includes hundreds of workers and activists. Its members asked what they should do.
“They can start with demonstrating against the incarceration of this IAM worker,” she declared.
Maximo Londonio, 42, was originally from the Philippines. He has been in the US since age twelve. He has held a green card (permanent residency) for over twenty years. He works at a manufacturing company south of Seattle. He is a member of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW).
Londonio was arrested on May 15 when he stepped off the plane at Sea-Tac Airport. He has been held since then. He was returning home with his wife and young daughter after celebrating his 20th wedding anniversary and visiting family in the Philippines.
He is now imprisoned at the Northwest Detention Center, south of Seattle. His incarceration has drawn people to demonstrate there.
“Remigration”: Racism against Non-White Immigrants Is Attack on All Workers
Londonio’s arrest is part of a string of recent ICE detainments in the Seattle area. But the attacks are not limited to Washington state.
All this takes place as the US Supreme Court allows the Trump regime to end protection for more than 500,000 immigrants facing dire crises in their home countries. Migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti are among the most vulnerable.
But Irish immigrants in Boston and Polish immigrants in Chicago are also terrified. As always, racism is the cutting edge of capitalism’s attack on all workers.
The fascist Trump administration wants an Office of Remigration. The State Department calls this new office a “hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking.”
“Remigration” is a proposal for ethnic cleansing that emerged from European neofascists. It calls for the mass deportation of non-white immigrants and their descendants to their place of “racial ancestry.” There is no regard for their citizenship or legal status.
From the US to South Africa to Gaza and beyond, large sections of the ruling classes are relying on promotion of racism to secure brutal fascism.
Trump made up a racist lie about genocide against some Afrikaners, allowing them to migrate to the US. “After all the horrors of apartheid, they have some nerve,” yelled a retired Boeing comrade.
A Palestinian Boeing worker reminds us of the real genocide in Gaza. He links the detention centers like the one where Maximo is incarcerated to the horrors in occupied Gaza and the West Bank. About ten thousand Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons and detention centers, most with no charges.
Communists Must Mobilize the Masses to Fight this Racist Terror
ICWP friends and neighbors come from all parts of the world. Retired and active IAM members, teachers and students, are all furious. Our friends are reaching out to their friends and organizations. The rallies grow.
The current attacks are part of advancing fascism fueled by boiling racism. US imperialists will try anything to maintain their supremacy in the face of Chinese and Russian imperialists.
Our party and friends will bring Red Flag and communist leaflets to the Northwest Detention Center. We will seek out contacts among the anti-fascist masses.
The contacts made at rallies like the one in Tacoma will lead to political and social relationships among ICWP members and friends. These relationships will move us along the path to mobilizing masses for communism, recruiting new members and party leaders.
Comrades and friends must have confidence in industrial workers and the international working class. Stopping some deportations or reforming the immigration system is not enough. Communism will eliminate exploitation, long and dangerous journeys, and separation of families.
Now is the time to fight for a world without borders: a communist world.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Mexicans from the US During the Great Depression
A massive depression shook the capitalist world in the 1930’s. US politicians, from President Hoover to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, scape-goated Mexican immigrants. They labeled Mexicans “criminal aliens” who were stealing American jobs.
One million Mexicans and Mexican Americans were put on trains to Mexico. About 60% of them were US citizens— US-born children of Mexican workers.
Many more were legal residents. Very few were legally deported. Most were fired from their jobs, cut off of welfare, and hounded into “self-deportation.”
In Los Angeles, workers were terrorized by mass raids at the Placita Olvera. They were shipped directly from LA County Hospital. In the Midwest, welfare relief was denied to workers fired by steel and packing-house bosses in Chicago and Gary, Indiana. In Detroit, the Mexican Consulate collaborated with the Chamber of Commerce to put 432 fired auto workers on a train to Mexico. Ninety percent of all Mexican workers were removed.
The Communist Party USA fought against deportations but not for revolution. It organized Mexican farmworkers in Pixley, CA, and miners in Gallup, NM. It organized the International Labor Defense, which led fights against deportations. But it also supported the liberal-capitalist New Deal. It organized for the Democratic Party.
ICWP has learned from this history to fight directly for a communist world without borders.
ICWP pamphlet: Fight for the Day When No Worker Will Be Called Foreigner here