When Auto Workers Defended Immigrants

1 November 2025

To the Editor of WV:

Facing the current wave of anti-immigrant terror, labor militants are angry and looking for a way to stop Trump’s masked ICE thugs. I thought it might be helpful to recount an example from the mid-1970s, when militant autoworkers in New Jersey successfully headed off a deportation raid by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), known as “la Migra.”

The Ford plant in Mahwah, New Jersey, had a diverse workforce: about a third were white, mainly from upstate New York; a third were black residents of Harlem or Brooklyn, and a third were immigrants from Haiti, Dominican Republic, and other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, many of whom were undocumented. The Mahwah workers were a feisty lot, with wildcat strikes and work stoppages not uncommon. And there was a lively political life at the plant, with various left-wing tendencies representing the U.S. left as well as the Dominican and Haitian communities.

In United Auto Workers Local 906, our small Militant Solidarity Caucus (MSC), led by supporters of the Spartacist League, had won support among much of the plant’s workforce, publishing a regular newsletter in English, French and Spanish. The class-struggle program we fought for included defense of immigrant workers and for full citizenship rights for all foreign workers. The MSC had won wide respect after standing up to a vicious anonymous red-baiting attack. As a candidate for union convention delegate, I was attacked for having traveled to Cuba, and accused of being trained in guerrilla warfare to “kill American soldiers.” The local UAW bureaucrats echoed this redbaiting campaign, looking quite stupid when it was exposed as a ploy by Ford’s labor relations management.

When the word came that an INS deportation raid on the Mahwah plant was imminent, we decided to act. A senior Spartacist leader advised us to go watch the film The Godfather, so we’d know how to make the union leadership “an offer they can’t refuse.” To meet with the local union bureaucrats, we sent a delegation which included a few of the key leaders of the militant black workers from the body shop. These guys were the recognized shopfloor leaders who led most walkouts: whenever the welding robots in the body shop stopped, the whole plant ground to a halt.

Our caucus had exposed the local union bureaucrats for their craven support for Ford’s redbaiting (and for selling bedsheets made by scab labor!). With the support of the most militant black and immigrant workers in the plant, we demanded that the official union take a stand to defend our foreign-born coworkers. Feeling the pressure, the local union leaders were forced to give Ford an ultimatum: if la Migra comes in the plant, they would pull out the entire workforce. Ford management got the message, and the INS stayed away from the plant.

This was an important victory protecting the hundreds of undocumented immigrant workers at the Mahwah plant. Hopefully it can also serve as a useful example for militant unionists today, showing that even a small nucleus with a clear program can catalyze effective labor solidarity to defend our immigrant brothers and sisters.

Comradely Greetings,
Lisa D.

WV replies:
We thank Lisa for her contribution.