The Struggle to Close the Concentration

Camps

Written by La Voz East Bay

I​n April of 2018, the Trump administration announced its family separation policy, the illegal and
inhumane practice of separating children from their families who are seeking asylum and
crossing the border. However, ​evidence1 shows the practice of separating families began
months before then. After two months of public outcry, President Trump signed an order to end
separation but it did not stop. In February 2019, amidst widespread activism, the ACLU sued the
administration in federal court. In June, a U.S. District Court Judge ordered the government to
return all children under five years old to their parents within 14 days and within 30 days for
children over five years of age. There is still an unaccounted number of migrant children who
are separated from their families, detained in privately owned and operated concentration
camps.

The Underlying Causes

Most of the recent asylum seekers are coming from Central America, in the ​Northern Triangle​;
Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, where violent crime and economic conditions have
caused them to flee. Behind this instability are the US government’s neoliberal policies in
collaboration with the IMF and World Bank, material support for oligarchs, and the ​War on
Drugs​.
 
As J
​ ustin
Akers Chacón​, a prominent author & professor on Latin@ migrant rights history, puts it
in a recent informative on the Concentration Camps crisis:

“While the most extreme and degraded conditions in the camps are the result of policies directly
attributable to Trump, the overall growth of the migrant incarceration system has been a
bipartisan project. The number of m ​ igrants held in detention2 has increased under every
presidential administration for over the last 25 years, and during periods in which both
Democratic and Republican majority-controlled congress. “3

1
​https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-BL-18-00511.pdf
2
​https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/02/12/how-trump-inherited-his-expanding-detention-system
3
​http://www.rebelnews.ie/2019/07/11/close-the-concentration-camp
Justin Akers Chacón​ is also apt to point out that Trump is only continuing the bipartisan (i.e.
Democratic and Republican Parties) policies that Obama and Bush Jr. had built and refined into
what they are today :

“It’s important to point out that though migration rates have ​not increased4 to a higher point than
in the past, the fact that there is a deeply hated president in power who is more visibly
criminalizing and pushing indefinite detention, former presidents Obama and Bush Jr. had been
the ones who built the detention and deportation system that Trump has only deepened. Both of
the twin parties of capitalism, the Republican and Democratic parties, are responsible and must
be held accountable for causing this barbaric anti-immigrant rights system. “

Immigration is Used to Divide the Working Class

Many immigrants are forced into low-paying jobs and substandard living conditions, and then
treated with hostility by native-born workers who see them as competitors. The antagonisms
linked to this competition are fueled by racial and ethnic prejudices, artificially maintained and
intensified by media outlets. Anti-immigrant forces purport that immigration depresses the
wages of native-born workers, though evidence shows the effect is very limited5. This
anti-immigration rhetoric results in the working class being further divided. It is most important
for Internationalists to have class-based solidarity and not blame immigrants for driving down
wages but instead, the systems that force immigrants out of their homelands, and the
exploitation that they face upon arriving in the US.

The combined announcement of President Trump on the week of June 18, 20196 (which then
got delayed 2 weeks after facing some backlash) that his administration would enact another
mass pursuit to imprison more undocumented immigrants in concentration camps, plus the
recent viral images of dead and incarcerated migrants in inhumane conditions, once again
brought this issue back to the US mainstream media, on a larger scale then before. Meanwhile,
Trump has made new threats to deny asylum to migrants crossing the US-Mexico border7.

4
​https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/us/border-crossing-increase.html
5
​https://papers.tinbergen.nl/04134.pdf
6
https://www.vox.com/2019/7/11/20690251/immigration-raids-deportation-ice-trump-new-york-times
7
​https://www.france24.com/en/20190715-donald-trump-end-asylum-protection-us-mexico-border
Organizing, Actions/Strikes, & Resistance
Nonetheless, some long-time immigrants rights groups and newer coalitions (Lights for Liberty8,
and the Coalition to Close the Concentration Camps9, a network that various organized and
independent socialists and other leftists helped create), called a national coordinated day of
action on July 12th to use public sentiment and build the movement to defend immigrants. The
immigrant rights movement is cohering around the slogan of “close the (concentration) camps”,
and we now have a bigger opportunity to use this framing to win most of the documented
working class (and other middle class layers) to this movement.

The weekend leading up to the National Day of Action on July 12th, 2019 started off with
numerous local actions organized by long-time immigrant rights groups (both nonprofits &
grassroots organizations in alliance with other Latin@ and other migrant-based community
groups) hosting rallies and other demonstrations calling for the closing of the concentration
camps, ending the deportation raids, and raising other demands for more immigrant rights.
Long-time grassroots organizations like Cosecha10, California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance
(CIJYA11), and other grassroots organizations independent of the Democratic Party, along with
newer coalitions like the Close the Concentration Camps, and labor union federations
(AFL-CIO), and other more liberal coalitions that are tied with Democratic Party, like the Lights
for Liberty coalition, were some of the key organizers for demonstrations/events on July
12th/13th.

Some reports say that nearly 800 demonstrations took place in all 50 states and also some in
foreign countries12, and from various news reports, the size of most noteworthy demonstrations
ranged from a couple hundred to the low 1000s for some of the bigger demonstrations in places
like San Diego13, Cleveland, New York City, Aurora-Colorado, Portland, Philadelphia14, and
other regions that have been a hotbed for immigrant rights organizing in the past decade. Along
with these demonstrations, there were protests like the one in Boston with the Never Again
Action coalition, and the protest at Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma15, with Jewish, Japanese, and

8
​https://www.lightsforliberty.org/localevents 

9
​https://www.facebook.com/pg/CoalitiontoClosetheCamps/
10
​https://www.lahuelga.com/
11
​https://ciyja.org/
12

https://www.inquirer.com/news/lights-for-liberty-protest-trump-immigration-raids-philadelphia-20
190712.html
13

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/gallery/close-the-concentration-camps-protest-in-san-ysidro
14
​https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2019/07/12/lights-for-libery-rally-philadelphia-ice-raids-border-camps/
15

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/japanese-americans-among-hundreds-protesting-plan-detain-mi
grant-children-fort-n1032001
Native American protestors all emphasizing the connection of today’s camps with the
concentration camps in the 1930s and World War 2 period.
A noteworthy labor work stoppage action took place at Wayfair16, where hundreds of
workers and community supporters came out to demonstrate against the role Wayfair plays in
providing beds and other goods to a detention camp in Texas. There were also solidarity
petitions at tech giants, Google, Microsoft17, and one at Palantir18, in the Palo Alto (Silicon Valley
area), which is a tech company that provides the software that ICE uses to track and plan its
raids. A noteworthy demonstration took place on July 16th in which 1,000+ immigrants and
Jewish allies from Never Again Action and Movimiento Cosecha shut down ICE headquarters in
Washington D.C., and demanded #DignityNotDetention for all immigrants.19 And, there was a
report that the community in Nashville, Tennessee was able to stop ICE from arresting a father
and his son through forming a human chain to prevent the arrest20. This action showed again
that the most secure community is an organized community.
In sum, this recent wave of actions has shown that the immigrant rights movement is
still alive and kicking, though not as large as it could be and needs to be (the 2006 Day Without
an Immigrant’s mass strike is a good goal to try to achieve21) in order to bring some needed
rights to one of the most exploited and oppressed sectors of this country’s and the world’s
working class. These grassroots groups and the wider movement have been able to use the
recent spotlight on Trump's terror to create more opportunities for community organizing.
The most glaring, momentary advance of the immigrant rights movement is that, so far,
news and community reports show that the number of raids and people that were detained was
not as high as had been expected (35 out of the 2000 migrants targeted were detained in the
recent operation22,23). There’s also the fact that “the Trump administration has so far deported
fewer people, on average each year, than the Obama administration”. This shows that the
immigrant/migrant community has been successful in getting more organized and building its
own rapid response networks, while organizing efforts to minimize arrests and detainments24.

16

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2019/06/29/wayfair-walkout-part-new-era-employee-activism/8uT
w491L5GDRoN38sfecOL/story.html
17
​https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2019/06/29/wayfair-walkout-part-new-era-employee-activism
18
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwuBRJ9uSNE
19

https://www.thedailybeast.com/never-again-action-1000-protesters-with-jewish-group-block-entrance-to-ic
e-headquarters
20

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/07/23/they-came-wrong-community-neighbors-form-human-c
hain-stop-ice-arresting-longtime
21
More information on this historical protest
https://mronline.org/2006/08/24/building-a-mass-strike-wave-alternatives-for-a-new-immigrant-workers-m
ovement/
22
​https://time.com/5625372/president-trump-ice-raids/
23
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/us/ice-raids-apprehensions.html
24

https://www.almanacnews.com/news/2019/07/14/ice-put-on-notice-by-federal-court-no-bay-area-raids-occ
ur
The Necessity to Pressure and Target Democratic Party
Politicians in the 2020 Election
One area where the wider immigrant rights movement today could improve upon, following the
lead of Cosecha & CIJYA, for example, is to continue to put pressure on the Democratic Party
(DP) politicians (and not just Trump and the Repulican Party politicians)25. The aforementioned
July demonstrations were explicit in their target of DP politicians, those that vote for funding the
border walls and ICE raids and those that are silent on the issue. Grassroots orgs like CIJYA
and Cosecha understand the key to using electoral pressures coming up to an election year,
and they have been using their media spotlight to also mention the key role that DP politicians
have in funding the deportation and incarceration apparatus.

One thing that has recently become more clear, especially with the speeches and Tweets in
July by President Trump, is that he is using these treats of deporations and incarceration to
keep his racist and xenophobic base content26,27. He wants to be seen as taking action on his
campaign promise to have México fund the border wall, so he is more than happy to continue
the historical scapegoating of migrants from Latin America, Africa, and other semi-colonial
nations.

Since we are fast approaching the 2020 election year blitz, the movement could use this to its
advantage and put pressure on the candidates that are running in the DP primary. Even
self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders has been unclear if he supports the
movement’s call to close the camps28, and he doesn’t believe in abolishing ICE, nor is he
against a border wall (he doesn’t agree with México or the US funding it but he’s okay with the
wall we have now). As DP politicians go and to Alexandria Ocassio-Cortez’s credit, she helped
spearhead the framing of the incarceration system as “concentration camps”.

Uniting & Building a Mass Movement to End Deportations and the

Camps
The need to unite and connect the various grassroots immigrant rights groups, labor unions,
and other community groups continues. We in Workers’ Voice/La Voz de l@s Trabajadores see

25

https://www.thedailybeast.com/never-again-action-1000-protesters-with-jewish-group-block-entrance-to-ic
e-headquarters
26
​https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-planned-immigration-raids-20190711-story.html
27
​https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/trump-racism-comments/588067/
28

https://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/Bernie-Sanders-refuses-to-call-US-temporary-shelters-concentra
tion-camps-592998
this task as central in the work we have been doing since we started building our group, and we
see the struggle to end migrant criminalization & discrimination as an ongoing campaign that
must continue with the ebbs and flows of the immigrant rights movement29. The mass movement
needed to end the deportation and incarceration machine must also connect to other national
and international movements of the working and oppressed communities in order to increase
the mass pressure needed to meet its demands.

Our movement must expand & unite the various struggles in order to approach mass strikes and
other work-stoppages in our workplaces and communities, and this is possible as other
movements (Sudan, Algeria, France, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, etc.) are showing. With mass
direct actions, we can call and implement the immediate ousting of the entire Trump
administration (like many of the aforementioned movements in their respective nations), and
build steps to cohere the working and oppressed movements and organizations into a mass
party of the people (akin to a workers’/labor party). La Voz, as part of the IWL-FI, with its
different organizations in the world, puts itself in service of the construction of a political
leadership that realizes these tasks, both in the semi-colonial countries and in the imperialist
countries in which we are present.

● The working class has no borders! No human is illegal! Stop the criminalization of
migration! Open the borders now!
● Safe and humane asylum and shelter for all migrants!
● The unions and social movements must organize solidarity actions with migrants on both
sides of all the borders!
● Out with U.S. imperialism in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico,
and all nations!
● Complete solidarity with all exploited and oppressed peoples that fight against dictators
like Maduro/Guaidó, (Venezuela), Juan Orlando Hernández (Honduras) and Ortega
(Nicaragua)!
● Down with governments and dictatorships which serve Trump and the European Union!“

------------​--- Notes

Images to use:

29
​https://lavozlit.com/the-immigrant-rights-struggle-is-a-working-class-struggle/
Jewish Activists of 'Never Again' Action Oppose Immigrant Detention Centers

Protestors against ICE and the Trump administration's policies have formed human chains while
demonstrating against the agency, detention centers, and occupying ICE offices. (Photo: David
Swanson/philly.com)
100-plus protesters march against ICE in nearly 100-degree heat in Baltimore - Baltimore Sun
 Possible sections cut:

There have been ups and downs with the immigrant rights movement.or example, Feb 2017 &
May 1, 2017 (May 1 is now unofficially seen as an Immigrant rights Protest since the 2006 mass
immigrant strike)30 were some of the bigger recent protests31, but there are still some limitations,
obstacles (we can’t deny the fear and risks that immigrants/undocumented have to take in order
to speak up and protest) and organizational fragmentation our movements need to work on to
get back to the peak of 2006.

Prisoners’ conditions, human rights abuses, lethal force 32

30
​https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/05/may-day-marches-and-protests-around-the-world/525087/
31
​https://lavozlit.com/lets-make-may-1st-another-a-day-without-immigrants/
32

https://texascivilrightsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/20180531-Emergency-Request-F
or-Precautionary-Measures_Redacted.pdf

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2019/apr/15/geo-group-corecivic-face-class-actions-alleg
ing-prisoner-slave-labor/
Private prisons, prisons in general

Need for solidarity; short term reform to immigration policy and prisons; abolish ICE,
CBP, private prisons, the criminal justice system;