Popular resistance to ICE’s campaign of repression and terror on the immigrant masses in the United States, in particular immigrant workers, continues to develop in a more militant direction. Not only have mass confrontations and street blockades against ICE agents become a regular occurrence, particularly in nationally oppressed and working-class communities, but the masses have increasingly begun to spontaneously defend against the reactionary violence of ICE, and the police departments which collaborate with them, with their own violent and combative actions in self-defense. This spontaneous mass resistance must continue to be organized into stable and community-based self-defense organizations with a mass character, committees which can mobilize working-class communities at a moment’s notice and can actively politicize the struggle.
In May, members of Rhode Island’s Southeast Asian community rallied in support of three Lao men who were abducted by ICE, the Trump administration’s secret police. US imperialism forced countless individuals to flee Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam decades ago. Now, the Trump administration continues that legacy of violence—targeting these same communities with renewed terror.
Laos, along with several other nations, has refused to cooperate with US deportation efforts. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has authorized the removal of several individuals to South Sudan—a country ravaged by internal conflict and imperialist exploitation—even in the absence of cooperation from their countries of origin. According to Trump’s former Border Czar, the current whereabouts of those deported to South Sudan remain unknown.
More recently, on July 13, ICE agents and Providence Police arrested a local man “without any reason,” according to the man’s brother. The homeowner reported that officers used excessive force during the arrest. Providence Mayor Brett Smiley has falsely claimed that ICE does not collaborate with Providence Police. In response, the Providence masses have demanded the man’s release and called for the withdrawal of both ICE and Providence PD from RI neighborhoods. Local class-conscious organizations of masses in Rhode Island have intensified their work in recent months, conducting regular work in major immigrant communities and where the poor and oppressed working-class masses in the state are concentrated. The people of Rhode Island must remain steadfast in their resistance to ICE, the Trump administration, and the broader US Imperialist system which is behind this offensive of terror.
The Partisan has also received an image of a banner seen over a highway adjacent to the neighborhood where the recent ICE abduction had taken place. The banner read “ICE out of RI” and had on it the flags of Guatemala, Dominican Republic, and Laos, who are some of the major immigrant communities in the state being actively targeted by ICE, and who are among those fighting back.
Image – Banner reading “ICE out of RI” on Rhode Island highway.
