Chicago, July 13—Thousands of workers poured into downtown Chicago this weekend to protest against the racist attacks on undocumented workers. This multiracial, multi-gendered and multi-generational crowd showed the power of a united working class. As a youth marching with our Progressive Labor Party (PLP) contingent said, “If we don’t get it, shut it down!”
As in: a revolution, where we replace capitalism with an egalitarian communist world run by the working class. We led anti-racist, anti-sexist chants and even got many protesters to abandon the slogan “close those camps” and start chanting “smash those camps.”Closing them isn’t enough; we have to destroy them along with the borders the bosses use to justify creating them.
This protest showed working class anger and will to fight back especially when we passed a city jail in the middle of downtown that is believed to detain undocumented workers. We paused there, chanting and showing solidarity with workers we could visibly see at the top of the building, but it isn’t enough.
Six days later, ICE, in collaboration with Homeland Security and the TSA, detained three children ages 9, 10 and 13 at O’Hare International Airport in an attempt to lure their parents into picking them up and being arrested. All three children were born in the United States, but their parents are undocumented (Chicago Tribune 7/19).
 Until the working class holds state power, the ruling class will continue to terrorize and brutalize us. Whether it’s ICE raids or “stop and frisk”, we have to beat back the bosses’ attacks, as we build a revolutionary movement for communism.    
Bosses go on the attack
Trump’s threat of deportation raids against immigrant workers and their families, kicking off his 2020 re-election campaign, is just the latest attack caused by this racist, declining, capitalist system. There has already been an increase of immigrants being detained by ICE. In early June, there had been approximately 52,500 immigrants detained in more than 200 detention centers. Families have continued to be split up and forced to live in torturous conditions.
Hundreds of migrants are being forced to take more dangerous routes across the U.S. border since there is a bottleneck at the ports of entry where workers wait for an asylum interview. And the conditions on the Mexican side are becoming unbearable because of extortions and kidnappings. As a result, hundreds are dying in the desert, in the rivers and in the extreme heat. Instead of trying to help or rescue these workers, the bosses’ government has been harshly prosecuting people who leave water and other supplies for these immigrant workers!
Two brands of fascism: overtly racist or liberal veneer
As they attack immigrants, the U.S. bosses are deeply divided because their international rivals, mainly China and Russia, have been challenging and competing with them for more markets and resources. Trump does the bidding of the more domestically oriented bosses who are content with  a smaller, less expensive, predominantly white military trained as racist killers. But the dominant finance capital bosses, who have a world empire to control, understand that they need a “multicultural” army for World War III. These bosses see immigrants as invaluable cannon fodder in the bigger wars to come.
Under Trump, the attack on immigrant workers has shifted and intensified, but history shows that the working class can’t trust the Democratic Party to defend and protect immigrant workers. Last fiscal year, U.S. Enforcement and Removal Operations deported more than 250,000 undocumented immigrants. But, under President Barack Obama, the “Deporter in chief,” the annual number of deportations peaked in 2012 at about 410,000 (New York Times, 6/18).
Working people have no nation
As internationalists, communists welcome immigrants as fellow workers who are fighters against capitalist brutality and exploitation. We are encouraged by the growing movement in Chicago to defend and protect our immigrant sisters and brothers from the ravages of these bosses’ attacks. Workers have struggled against loopholes in the Sanctuary City laws, the racist gang databases, orders of deportation against countless immigrants and their families, and against the holding of children separated from their parents.
But the biggest lesson workers must learn is that we will be stuck in the endless struggle for reforms as long as we rely on billionaire politicians, like the governor of Illinois J.B Pritzker, for protection and relief. We must destroy the capitalists’ state power and replace it with working class power. The Progressive Labor Party calls on all workers to defend our immigrant fellow workers against deportations and murder in concentration camps and along the border. Smash capitalism! Fight for communism!