Braving a Campaign of Terror: Unnamed

“We’re seeing very little activity with immigrant workers right now to empower themselves the way they could under the previous administration,” says Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, composed of 1,300 unions representing 2.3 million workers across multiple industries. ​“Immigrants are just very afraid.”

The terror campaign constitutes not only an attack on immigrants, but on the entire working class, impacting the labor rights and conditions of citizens and noncitizens alike. Any worker should be concerned about a class that, by virtue of living under paralyzing fear, is prevented from asserting its rights, says Xóchitl Bada, professor of Latin American and Latino studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and vice president of the faculty union. The situation both erodes the rights of everybody, she explains, and will trigger a race-to-the-bottom competition among low-wage, precarious workers.

In its first two months, the Trump administration — which pledged to conduct the largest mass deportation in history — expelled more than 200 Venezuelans to an infamously brutal prison in El Salvador without due process, revoked hundreds of student visas, and abducted legal residents for expressing support for Palestine. It has also detained and repatriated immigrants who had lawful immigration documents. The administration has also threatened to punish attorneys who defend noncitizens in court.

Prominent immigrant labor organizers have also been targeted. On March 17, ICE agents in Colorado detained Mexicoborn Jeanette Vizguerra, a labor activist for Local 105 of the Service Employees International Union and an immigrant rights advocate, ​“for her community organizing and critiques of the deportation system,” according to a letter signed by more than 200 labor and immigrant rights organizations and allies.

On March 25, Mexico-born Alfredo ​“Lelo” Juarez, cofounder of Familias Unidas por la Justicia — an Indigenous farmworkers union in Washington state — was violently arrested during a traffic stop.

Rank-and-file workers have also been targeted. On April 2, about 50 masked ICE agents arrested 37 roofers in Washington state. ICE also arrested 16 workers at a concrete factory in Mississippi and nine at a mill in New York state.

The mass deportation pledged by President Donald Trump has not yet been carried out, but arrests of immigrants rose sharply in the four weeks after Inauguration Day, according to ICE records from the Deportation Data Project. Detentions in ICE centers increased 22% in the first two months of the administration, reaching 47,892 individuals.

Although the exact figure is unclear, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services confirmed to In These Times that the last report issued on the program was in October 2024, when 7,700 workers had benefited from DALE.

Now, the Trump administration has thrown those protections up in the air. DALE has not officially shut down, but immigrant rights organizations are urging workers not to apply. It would ​“be extremely risky,” they say, because applying reveals their undocumented status. Many who were awarded DALE are currently living in fear, as they self-reported information that could lead to their deportation.

“It just makes organizing a lot harder,” Barraza says. Consequently, he expects a significant increase in the main scourge of immigrant workers — wage theft.

Industries with large percentages of foreign-born workers — like the cut-and-sew garment industry, agriculture, building maintenance, hotel work, food services, construction, nursing homes, warehouses and car washes — have high rates of wage theft. Employers routinely pay below the minimum wage and deny overtime pay; if workers complain, they’re intimidated with threats of deportation.

In 2024, the Labor Department certified 384,900 H-2A visas, the vast majority from Mexico. In the first quarter of 2025, the Labor Department received nearly 20% more applications for H-2A visas compared with the previous quarter. The department has no limits on the number of H-2A visas it issues annually — usually valid for 10 months.

To counter the widespread abuse of guest workers, civil society organizations pressured the Labor Department to publish, in April 2024, a regulation that protected the rights of H-2A workers to organize. Several industry organizations and at least 17 states pushed back, filing four lawsuits to block these protections, which the current administration is unlikely to enforce regardless. ​“It’s tougher to organize workers who are here on a work visa,” Gonzalez says, as ​“they are in a very vulnerable position.” Guest workers have even been used inappropriately to displace U.S. farmworkers and circumvent basic labor protections, she adds.

Take the case of Sakuma Brothers Farms, in Washington state, which recruited H-2A workers amid a labor dispute with its U.S. workforce. ​“It’s what corporate America does — burn through workers in the cheapest way possible,” Gonzalez explains.

Agribusinesses are not the only ones benefiting from vulnerable laborers. The H-2B visa program is used by hospitality and tourism, landscaping, construction, forestry and seafood processing, industries with ​“extensive wage theft and lawbreaking by employers,” according to the Economic Policy Institute. The number of these visas are also set to increase in 2025.

“You have already seen the consequences [of the anti-immigrant policies] in Florida,” Bada says. Mass deportations are not going to bring better jobs, she adds. On the contrary, increasing the number of vulnerable H-2 guest workers and children in the workplace will only intensify the quest of employers for the cheapest and easiest labor to exploit.

On March 24, Chicago teachers rallied on the Near West Side to demand a fair contract, after more than 11 months of bargaining. Chicago firefighters, who have gone without a new contract for nearly four years, were also protesting.

Alejandra, a Mexico-born member of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), planned to participate — but ultimately decided not to, afraid of the consequences as a noncitizen.

“I would have liked to show solidarity with the movement,” says Alejandra — who agreed to be interviewed on the condition of being identified only by her first name — ​“but right now, I don’t think that’s very prudent.” Alejandra arrived in Chicago in 2008 and has a green card. Still, the Trump administration has targeted even permanent residents for deportation, and Alejandra doesn’t want to take any chances.

Alejandra’s apprehension comes as some immigrant students across the country who are sympathetic to Palestine have been detained for political speech. Many other immigrants, including college students who apparently have been racially profiled, have been targeted for no apparent reason. In the face of the Trump administration’s current war on immigrants, she concedes: ​“I’m afraid.”

The labor movement is fighting back.

In 2019 CTU fought for and won contract language aimed at protecting members, students and their families who could be targeted because of their immigration status. And on April 14, CTU ratified a new contract that maintains these protections. The union also holds regular know-your-rights trainings for employees, parents and other community members.

On April 1, more than 100 protesters, including members of Local 32BJ, protested in Boston against the targeting of immigrant students and faculty with pro-Palestinian sentiments. Union members also rallied outside 10 ICE detention centers across the country. Local 32BJ is also a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the decision to cut short the Temporary Protected Status program for Haitians, which would expose 200,000 workers to deportation in August.

In Tacoma, Wash., hundreds of people, led by the AFL-CIO, protested outside an ICE center for the release of Juarez and another union member, Lewelyn Dixon. Four days later, on March 31 — Cesar Chavez Day — thousands of United Farm Workers and members of SEIU California State Council and the California Federation of Labor Unions rallied in Delano to denounce ​“mass deportation policies as an attack on the entire working class.”

Organizers say it was the largest mobilization of union workers on behalf of immigrant rights since Trump’s election.

“We want to make sure that people aren’t in the shadows, that they’re able to work and organize like anyone else into a union,” Gonzalez says. She adds that it’s essential because it ​“puts everybody on an even playing field — that’s what helps even non-immigrant workers.”

The displays of labor solidarity may only be starting. On April 7, more than two dozen labor organizations— the American Association of University Professors, the Association of Flight Attendants, the American Postal Workers Union, National Nurses United, the National Writers Union, the United Auto Workers and SEIU, among others— published a petition urging the administration to immediately release immigrant workers, while calling on unions ​“to organize rallies, demonstrations and other actions” to demand an end to the detention and deportation campaign.

“Trump has been very blatant about pitting working people against each other,” Rivera says. ​“Not just immigrants, but women and students and the elderly and people of color. But unions have, in the past, made strides to build solidarity across races, across ethnicities.”

By rallying alongside immigrants, Rivera says, the labor movement can play a special role in demanding labor protections. ​“It’s very clear that Trump’s disdain for differences doesn’t only impact immigrants. It threatens so many other vulnerable groups. I think we have an opportunity right now to actually play the role of helping to unite folks.”