Trump Has Put a Target on SEIU, and the Labor Movement Is Fighting Back

When agents showed up at downtown garment factories on Friday and a Home Depot parking lot in the working-class suburb of Paramount on Saturday, everyday people’s anger at the Trump administration’s agents of repression boiled over into confrontation. Protesters hurled their bodies in front of armored vehicles and vans to stop ICE from spiriting away their loved ones and community members. The federal response was swift and asymmetrical. Federal agents in military gear fired flash-bang grenades against protesters who had thrown eggs or other objects, or just followed alongside federal vehicles. In Paramount, the air thrummed thickly rancid from tear gas and grenades.

Alongside the tight-knit working-class communities of factory workers, retail workers and day laborers that stood against ICE, volunteers from across the city were roused to action by the Los Angeles Rapid Response Network (LARRN), a communication hub to respond in real time to deportation threats. Among them was David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) United Service Workers West. Huerta was arrested and tackled to the ground, resulting in an injury, ​“while exercising his First Amendment right to observe and document law enforcement activity” at a workplace raid on Friday, according to a SEIU California statement. The government alleged that Huerta had been ​“interfering with federal officers” by blocking their vehicles and detained him over the weekend.

The authoritarian crackdown escalated as President Trump federalized 2,100 National Guard troops over the objections of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom. By Monday, the administration announced it would deploy 700 Marines. The Los Angeles Police Department arrested more than 100 protesters and shot several journalists with so-called ​“less lethal weapons.” Immigrants who reported to routine check-ins at the federal courthouse in Little Tokyo were detained in its basement and conference rooms, with young children reportedly among those deprived of food and water. 

On Monday, as the news of the crackdown spread, SEIU and other unions coordinated 35 rallies nationwide to demand Huerta’s release and an end to ICE raids. In New York City, hundreds rallied outside City Hall. Among the participants were union staff and members from 32BJ SEIU, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, the Committee of Interns and Residents-SEIU, the Communication Workers of America, Laborers Local 79, community groups and local elected officials. Those assembled inside the barricaded sidewalk waved placards saying ​“Free David Huerta/​End the Raids” in Spanish and English.

“By standing with David, we stand for all of our rights,” said 32BJ President Manny Pastreich at the rally. ​“Our rights to speak out, to tell the truth, to protest when big business/​employers or bad government gets it wrong.”

Ana Medina Garcia, a home health aide and a member of 1199SEIU, told In These Times in Spanish that she was protesting because she was fed up with all the injustices Trump is visiting upon immigrant workers. Trump is destroying working-class people and their communities, she said, but he’s chosen the wrong target: ​“The majority of us are working-class people who contribute to this country, so we aren’t the backyard nor the garbage dump of any politician.”

Protester and 1199SEIU member Sheik Ward told In These Times that she feels for immigrant workers targeted by the Trump administration. ​“I was once in their shoes, and I know what it feels like to feel left out in this country after you work so hard,” says Ward, a recreational therapist who immigrated to the United States from Jamaica and became a U.S. citizen thanks to her union. 

At an arraignment hearing later that day, Huerta was released on a $50,000 bond and charged with ​“conspiracy to impede an officer,” a felony that can carry up to six years in prison.

“What happened to me is not about me; this is about something much bigger. This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening,” Huerta said in a statement. ​“Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice. And we all have to stand on the right side of justice.”

Huerta is the president of SEIU California (the union’s state council) and SEIU United Service Workers West, a local representing more than 45,000 janitors, security officers, airport service workers and others across the state. His high-profile arrest and detention comes on the heels of others. These include union members and labor organizers like Alfredo ​“Lelo” Juarez, a farmworker organizer with Familias Unidas por la Justicia; sheet metal worker Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia; former grad worker Mahmoud Khalil; and Lewelyn Dixon, a laboratory technician at the University of Washington and member of SEIU Local 925 who was held in detention for three months; and Maximo Londonio, a member of Machinists (IAM) Local Lodge 695 who was detained on his return flight from the Philippines in May. Londonio, Khalil and Dixon are green card holders. 

The mobilization has put SEIU in the vanguard of the resistance to Trump’s billionaire takeover of the government and authoritarian power grab. ​“I think that labor is standing up because they’re out for working people, and we stand shoulder to shoulder, ready to fight this administration and fight for the freedom of all working people in this country, where it’s us against the billionaire class, and it’s time for all of us to stand up,” said Erin Mahoney, assistant director of organizing for CWA, to In These Times at the New York protest.

As the Wall Street Journal has reported, Trump has ramped up immigration sweeps, surpassing even past heinous actions and practices of ICE during previous administrations, while also creating new conditions for military operations on U.S. soil, not sparing a taxpayer dollar on tactical gear, shields, rifles and armored vehicles. 

As Trump summons troops to Los Angeles, the scholar Adam Tooze sees a parallel to the Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020, a showdown that culminated with Trump deploying the U.S. military to Portland, Ore. ​“There is little doubt that Stephen Miller wants to turn LA into a mega-Portland,” wrote Tooze. 

For all Trump’s tough talk, he doesn’t have a ​“blank check” to deploy federal troops domestically, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Gov. Newsom strongly rebuked Trump’s actions and filed a lawsuit against the administration.

But Trump has been also testing the limits of his executive powers elsewhere by ​“authorizing active‑duty troops to detain migrants in newly created military zones along the southern border, using U.S. bases as detention areas and flying detainees out of the country on U.S. Air Force planes,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

SEIU Local 87 President Olga Miranda, representing thousands of janitors in San Francisco, says that we have to be strategic and disciplined to beat this volley of attacks, drawing inspiration from the Civil Rights Movement and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

​“We have made them — all of us, collectively — filthy rich, and these motherfuckers will wrestle each other for their wallets,” says Miranda. ​“This administration only knows money. That’s all they know. We have to call for national boycotts.”

Roxana Rivera, assistant to the 32BJ president and the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants, who was at the New York City protest, says she was amazed by the response to SEIU’s call to action. ​“Literally within 48 hours, people came together across the whole country, inspired by SEIU, but then joined in by so many other organizations and people to say, ​‘Enough is enough, these raids need to stop and you need to stop detaining folks unjustly.’”

1199 SEIU member Sheik Ward says she is hopeful that the tide will turn in favor of working people. ​“I know it’s gonna be hard for us, but one thing I know is that my mom always taught me: Only the good salvation lasts forever, and what goes on in the dark will always come in the light, no matter how hard it is,” she said. ​“From what I’ve experienced out here as an immigrant, it will get better. Just keep pushing, fighting, keep praying, because one day better will come.”