“Justifying” a military crackdown – Trump, Stephen Miller use ICE to provoke and goad
“Justifying” a military crackdown – Trump, Stephen Miller use ICE to provoke and goad
June 9, 2025
In the USA, the working class is now facing the open beligerence of a military attack in the guise of the “National Guard”. It was explicitly designed to provoke and incite demonstrations. This will thereby enable a “justification” for a spiralling military clampdown. It is the latest – but perhaps most dangerous example yet – of its determination to bring the state ever closer to formal, fully-blown fascism. This is an extremely calculated and well-planned move.
Why Los Angeles (LA) ?
The first step the Trump government took was to target a city well known to be full of immigrants, whether ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’. Los Angeles is the second-largest city in the USA.
In a first step, sweeps were made at public areas by agents of the notorious force called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This federal law enforcement agency is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Created in 2003, it was always intended to detain and deport unauthorized immigrants. However, under Trump as we have seen, it has been newly invigorated. As the ex-editor of the LA Weekly puts it:
“Los Angeles is a city that’s home to millions of immigrants and their children. Latinos and Asians constitute more than half of LA County’s nearly ten million residents. They are at the centre of the economy and deporting them destabilises families, businesses, and the city at large.
Trump knows that. So does Stephen Miller, his policy tsar, who grew up in nearby Santa Monica. It’s Miller who is directing Trump’s war on immigrants, which he and his boss are now using to goad California’s elected officials into defying them. “
Harold Meyerson; editor at large of The American Prospect and the former executive editor of LA Weekly; “Trump is provoking LA to fire up his base”; Financial Times July 9, 2025.
This is why LA was the test case of Trump’s new domestic militarised strategy. The action taken was to attack not only a “doughnut shop” but also two known workforces of Latinos – seamstresses and construction workers:
“The president has repeatedly claimed that the agents are arresting convicted felons and gang members, although the numbers belie that claim. On Friday, agents swept through downtown Los Angeles’ fashion district, where the immigrant workforce is largely composed of seamstresses. On Saturday, they swarmed a Home Depot store in a Latino working-class suburb, targeting immigrant day labourers seeking construction jobs. The resulting protest hardly constituted a riot.”
Meyerson; Ibid.
Not only immigrants – but unions were targeted here
In addition, almost as small change in the bigger picture, an element of union busting serves another motive. According to the Oakland Socialist – ‘Workers’ struggles and Marxism’; Monday, June 9th, 2025:
“The Angeles Daily News reported ‘There were reports of raids being carried out in the downtown LA Fashion District and other areas, including Pico-Union and Cypress Park. Angelica Salas of the Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights said there were at least seven immigration raids held across the region Friday, many of them at workplaces, including a doughnut shop… For the last few years, the Garment Worker Center (GWC) has been conducting an organizing campaign in the Los Angeles garment/fashion” district. This is a low-wage industry that employs undocumented workers among others.’”
Oakland Socialist
In the process, David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California, has been arrested, after being beaten, it seems, by police and arrested:
“David Huerta, the 58-year-old president of a statewide janitors’ union and of the Service Employees International Union California, was arrested by federal agents Friday outside a Los Angeles garment warehouse where protesters gathered to watch and oppose an apparent workplace immigration raid.”
The Press Democrat, June 9, 2025; Everybody stood up’: Why a union leader’s arrest galvanized California Democrats on immigration”; at Press Democrat
SEIU California represents about 700,000 workers in California. Unfortunately, the “Press Democrat” has it a little wrong – there are not hordes of Democrats amounting to “everybody” standing up. Where are the supposed ‘leftist’ leaders of the Democrats – including Bernie Sanders? It is true that lots of “letter-writing” has been done:
“On Sunday, the governor sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth formally requesting that Mr. Trump rescind the call-up of the National Guard, saying federal actions were inflaming the situation. And on Monday, Mr. Newsom said California would file a lawsuit challenging the president’s order to federalize the state’s National Guard.
He was echoed by other Democratic officials, who said the mounting demonstrations were the result of Mr. Trump’s own actions.”
Tyler Pager; “Trump Jumps at the Chance for a Confrontation in California Over Immigration”; June 8, 2025; New York Times
But what organisational actions have the supposed “leftists” of the Democratic Party initiated? It would be foolish to wait for their leadership.
The LA Times has a more realistic and factual accounting of what happened than the “Press Democrat”:
“Service Employees International Union California President David Huerta was injured and detained while documenting an immigration enforcement raid in downtown Los Angeles Friday, labor union officials said — prompting protests and calls for his release.
Huerta, 58, was treated at a hospital and then transferred to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown L.A., where he remained in custody as of 5:30 p.m., according to a spokesperson for the labor union. Protesters spray-painted the center with messages such as “F— ICE,” “Burn Prisons” and “Abolish ICE.”
“What happened to me is not about me; This is about something much bigger,” he said in a statement from the hospital. “This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening. 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.”
The labor union said in a statement that Huerta was detained while “while exercising his First Amendment right to observe and document law enforcement activity…
Elected officials representing Los Angeles at the city, county, state and federal levels released a flurry of statements condemning Huerta’s arrest, criticizing the raids and decrying the Trump administration’s escalation of deportations.”
Rebecca Ellis, Rachel Uranga, Clara Harter, Ruben Vives and Kaitlyn Huamani; “David Huerta, president of SEIU California, detained during L.A. ICE raids“; at: LA Times 6 June 2025;
The real motivation of the ICE storm: to trigger demonstrations and enable wider use of military
The initial and totally predictable protests against arbitrary and widespread arrests of anyone conceivably looking like a Spanish-speaking immigrant – were “initially limited in size. The Governor of California – Gavin Newsom called any deployment of armed forces “purposefully inflammatory”:
“The White House insisted it sent in federal troops to restore calm. But the intervention was wholly unjustified by the scale of the protests; Newsom wrote on Saturday night there was “no unmet need” for federal help. Deploying National Guard forces, he added, was “purposefully inflammatory” and would only escalate tensions.”
The Editorial Board; “Trump’s show of force in Los Angeles – Deploying federal troops is a warning to states opposed to immigration clampdown”; Financial Times London, UK; 9 June 2025.;
But the small protests triggered a fast and violent response from Trump. As the Editorial Board of the Financial Times – not particularly noted for its revolutionary consciousness – points out:
“Not for 60 years, since Lyndon B Johnson sent National Guard troops to protect civil rights marchers in Alabama, has a US president deployed federal soldiers in a state without a request from its governor. Donald Trump’s decision to order National Guard troops into the streets of Los Angeles, over the loud objections of California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, is one of the most serious moments of his tumultuous presidency. It is a further attempt to expand the boundaries of executive power. It also sends a warning to other states that, like California, plan to resist the administration’s mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.”
The Editorial Board ;“Trump’s show of force in Los Angeles – Deploying federal troops is a warning to states opposed to immigration clampdown”; Financial Times London, UK; 9 June 2025.
Similarly – the New York Times points out that:
“It is the fight President Trump had been waiting for, a showdown with a top political rival in a deep blue state over an issue core to his political agenda.
In bypassing the authority of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat, to call in the National Guard to quell protests in the Los Angeles area over his administration’s efforts to deport more migrants, Mr. Trump is now pushing the boundaries of presidential authority and stoking criticism that he is inflaming the situation for political gain.”
Tyler Pager; “Trump Jumps at the Chance for a Confrontation in California Over Immigration”; June 8, 2025; New York Times.
While the National Guard troops initially numbered only 300, by Sunday the number was reported by the NYT to be “2,000” (Ibid). They wielded tear gas, rubber bullets and “flash-bang” weapons of “so-called “less than lethal” nature.
As most remotely independent sources point out, the real intent is to “paint a picture of disorder and further mischaracterise migrants as “illegal” and “violent criminals”. This is designed to further enable President Trump to wield arbitrary control:
“The federal intervention seemed calculated to create a showdown and paint a picture of disorder — to fire up Trump’s base, bolster appearances that the president is fulfilling campaign promises and create a distorted impression of illegal migrants as, by nature, violent criminals. Above all, it intensifies the administration’s efforts to expand the powers of the presidency, at the expense of Congress and US states.”
The Editorial Board; “Trump’s show of force in Los Angeles – Deploying federal troops is a warning to states opposed to immigration clampdown”; Financial Times London, UK; 9 June 2025.
Regardless of what exact “legality” is used to achieve their goals, they intend to, and they will – militarise:
“The president declined to say whether he planned to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which allows for the use of federal troops on domestic soil to quell a rebellion. But either way, he added, “we’re going to have troops everywhere.” [Our emphasis].
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, posted on social media that “this is a fight to save civilization…
“It could not be clearer,” said Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker and ally of the president who noted that Mr. Trump had been focused on immigration enforcement since 2015. “One side is for enforcing the law and protecting Americans, and the other side is for defending illegals and being on the side of the people who break the law.”
Tyler Pager; “Trump Jumps at the Chance for a Confrontation in California Over Immigration”; June 8, 2025; New York Times.
The armed forces code provision enables a deployment of National Guards and indeed, of the full military under Federal control to over-ride the state government. This happened last in the 1992 LA uprising (called riots by most press) over the police beating up of Rodney King, a black man. Today, the Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth is “ready” to send in the military.
This escalation is also meant to warn other states to toe Trump’s line. And to warn the Unions of what is coming their way if they resist the growing Trump militarisation. A united Marxist-Leninist party is urgently needed to achieve the following goals embodied in the slogans.
The appropriate slogans are now:
Release David Huerta now!
For trade union solidarity and the rights of low-paid workers!
Stop ICE attacks!
Stop state attacks on immigrants!
Develop the united front against fascism!
