Building a Movement to End ICE Terror

by the Maine ISG Branch

On Monday, July 13, ICE agent David Brouillette murdered 25 year old Johan Sebastian Guerrero in the former mill town of Biddeford, Maine. His three-year-old daughter watched as her father was shot and killed through the window of their car. ICE agents dragged Guerrero out of his vehicle, handcuffed him, and left his bloody body on the ground for five hours. Witnesses heard Guerrero tell officers, “I tried to stop,” before he died of his injuries.

The murder of Guerrero occurred days after Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed by ICE in Houston, Texas. Since the start of Trump’s second term in office, ICE has killed 24 people, and over 54 have died in ICE prisons, 26 in this year alone so far. The Trump administration’s recent ICE surge this summer has resulted in 2,000+ arrests daily, and 10,000 arrests in just five days. In July alone, ICE made nearly 50,000 arrests.

On July 30, ICE abducted Debora Kapisha, a nurse at Maine Medical Center (MMC) in Portland, while she was traveling through Boston Logan International Airport. Union nurses at MMC quickly organized to protest the detention, resulting in a halt to Kapisha’s transportation to ICE facilities in Louisiana, and her almost immediate release from ICE custody. The nurses are demanding that MMC sponsor Kapisha for permanent residency.

When a movement arose in Minneapolis to stop ICE violence in the streets, ICE agents quickly moved to target activists and protesters. The January murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis proved that ICE is willing to kill those who stand against them. This summer, the Trump administration also arrested and leveled severe charges against the Minneapolis 15 and Texas Prairieland anti-ICE activists, including union members. Some received as much as 100 years in prison. The killings did bring about widespread calls for general strikes in Minneapolis and beyond, however, a partial one-day abstention from work and shopping is not enough to provide sustained change. 

In response to the murder of Guerrero, protests materialized quickly in Biddeford, Portland, Scarborough, and other Maine towns. The immediate anger of these protests is aimed at the Republican Party including local Republican Susan Collins, who provided the tie-breaking vote to approve $70 billion in additional funding for ICE this past June. Democratic Party senate candidates, hoping to be the one to replace disgraced nominee Graham Platner, latched onto the protests, turning them into campaign rallies focusing on the need to elect Democrats and restrain ICE, ignoring the calls on the ground from protesters to completely dismantle ICE rather than attempt to reform it. Their actions came across as out of touch and opportunistic, especially considering the active support of the Democratic Party regarding ICE thus far. 

Over the last 23 years since the creation of ICE, Democratic Party politicians have consistently voted to create, fund, and expand ICE when in power. There is no reason to believe that they will not continue this pattern. If we want to see ICE abolished and end state terror inflicted on our communities, anti-ICE protestors must use this moment to organize an opposition on an independent, working-class basis.

At a press conference on July 17, just four days after the Biddeford killing, Maine AFL-CIO president Cynthia Phinney spoke about standing in solidarity with the Biddeford community and called for these attacks on workers and immigrants to cease. She also made the demand for ICE to “stand down.” However this falls short of publicly calling for workers and unions to mobilize against ICE. The MMC nurses showed that strong and militant action can frighten the state into retreat. We call on the Maine AFL-CIO and other unions to come out actively against ICE terror in the state, leverage worker power across industries, and help build a movement by us, for us. We need a day of action on a larger scale than previous attempts in order to kick off a new, broad-based anti-ICE organization, and to build toward a real general strike with strong union involvement.

Members of the Independent Socialist Group (ISG) joined in the Minneapolis protests in January against the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and raised the need for a real general strike. We organized public meetings to share our experiences on the ground and to raise ISG’s program for stopping ICE.

The Independent Socialist Group (ISG) calls for:

• ICE off our streets! Organize mass protests and strikes, backed by unions walking off the job to stop ICE.
• Convict killer ICE agents. Justice for Johan and everyone killed by ICE.
• Shut down the ICE prisons, release those who’ve been kidnapped, and reunite separated families.
• Abolish ICE! Instead fund housing, healthcare, and jobs programs for all.
• The right to asylum and a real path to legal residency and citizenship.
• A new independent workers’ party to organize against the anti-immigrant and anti-worker Republican and Democratic parties.

The example of the mass protests in Los Angeles and Minneapolis need to be followed and built upon. ICE detainees have organized hunger strikes and work stoppages in the prisons, despite harsh beatings and repression. We need anti-ICE organizations to pool resources and efforts and create democratic bodies which can organize and sustain mass protests calling for the conviction of killer ICE agents, an end to anti-immigrant state terror, and for the abolition of ICE. Anti-ICE organizations  could also prepare to run independent candidates on pro-worker platforms calling for the abolition of ICE and opposing the anti-immigrant Democratic and Republican parties as a step towards a workers’ party. A workers’ party could fight in the streets and at the ballot box for the total dissolution of ICE and the reallocation of the funds they receive. The $75 billion they were allotted in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill could be used to fund social programs helping both immigrants and domestic workers. Only active and radical solidarity between workers, both immigrant and otherwise, can win against Trump’s divide and conquer tactics that threaten our lives.