ICE: Hands off the United Farm Workers! No Deportations!

The government’s ICE raids, deportations and anti-immigrant hysteria are being used as a dagger against the trade unions. On May 2 in Western New York, ICE agents stopped a bus carrying farm workers organized by the United Farm Workers (UFW), called out the names of 14 including prominent union activists and detained them for deportation. In March, Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, leader of the farm workers union Familias Unidas por la Justicia in Washington state, was detained by ICE for deportation. In a May 8 letter protesting the detentions in New York, the PDC stated: “This blatant act of government union-busting is an attack on the entire workers movement.” An injury to one is an injury to all!

The racist roundup of immigrant trade unionists only underscores that the labor movement has a vital interest in actively defending all the victims of the Trump administration’s many-sided attacks. Divided we fall! The government is going after the largely immigrant, isolated and vulnerable agricultural workers to open the door for attacks against the entire working class. Deportations put the winds in the sails of repression and compel immigrant workers and their descendants to not cause any trouble for the bosses—which is bad for all of us. If they keep getting away with massive arrests and deportations of immigrants, government forces will only be emboldened in broadly attacking organized labor. Just look at the mass layoffs of government workers and shredding of their union contracts.

Pitting immigrant and native workers against each other only serves the bosses. The battle should not be U.S.-born workers against immigrant workers to divide up scraps off the bosses’ table, but a fight by all workers against the bosses to make real gains and raise conditions for the class as a whole. A drive to organize the unorganized, especially in industries with a heavy immigrant component, would go a long way toward protecting these workers and strengthening the trade union movement’s position to fight.

As a first step, labor needs to mobilize broadly in defense of our brother and sister unionists who are detained and facing deportation. We are calling on the unions and their members to take action on behalf of these workers. Send protest letters and statements, raise the call in your union, donate to their legal defense, mobilize labor contingents for rallies against the deportations and for broader collective action. An injury to one is an injury to all! Hands off the UFW! Free the detainees! No deportations!

17 May 2025