Stop Trump’s Stormtroopers: Protest DHS and ICE in Williston!
Trump is desperate. The pandemic, recession, and uprising for Black lives have undermined his popularity and wrecked his credibility. His polls are plummeting across the country, even in the so-called “red states.”
To salvage his failing regime and hopes for reelection, Trump has turned to law and order racism and repression. At first, he tried to order the military to repress protests against racism and police brutality, but the generals blocked him.
So, instead, he deployed federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security to crush the movement in Portland, Oregon. He’s sending them to Chicago, Seattle, New York, Oakland, and over a dozen cities across the country.
These agents evoke memories of the Gestapo. Their uniforms do not have identification, they patrol the city in unmarked vans, and they pack military grade weaponry.
They have teargassed protesters, beaten them, and detained many without charges in undisclosed locations. Trump’s storm troopers are a threat to our democratic rights and their deployment must be stopped immediately.
Portland Shows Us How to Fight
Trump hoped to intimidate Portland with outright repression. But his strategy has backfired, spurring the movement for Black lives to grow bigger, broader, and more radical.
Parents of protesters formed a “Wall of Moms” and a “Wall of Dads” to protect activists. The dads showed up with leaf blowers to disperse the stormtrooper’s teargas.
More groups are joining them. Organized workers have established a “Wall of Unions” and military veterans built a “Wall of Vets.” The protests have become so militant that they successfully forced the Feds to retreat to their headquarters.
Portland has shown us how to resist. We must follow their lead and rise up against the deployment of Trump’s storm troopers everywhere. In the words of the anti-fascist movement in Spain against Franco in the 1930s, we must say “No Pasarán!”—“You Shall Not Pass!”
Bringing the War Home
Who are these federal agents? They all come from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It was formed as part of the so-called War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. We know that war is based on lies. It has nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with empire and oil.
The US set up DHS to be its domestic arm of the war abroad. It houses among other agencies the Federal Marshalls, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and ICE’s Border Tactical Unit (BORTAC) that are right now deployed in Portland and elsewhere. They usually police the borders as well as surveil, arrest, and deport undocumented immigrants, Arabs, and Muslims.
Trump has now turned this giant apparatus of repression against the uprising for Black lives and against all of us. Thus, as Martin Luther King said during the Vietnam War, “the bombs dropped abroad explode at home.”
Will the Democratic Party Resist Trump?
Thankfully the Democratic Party has objected to the stormtrooper’s deployment. But let’s be honest about the Democrats. They supported the establishment of DHS. Obama used ICE to deport more immigrants than any other president in US history.
Our own Senator Leahy secured contracts with DHS and ICE to establish their operations in Vermont. ICE’s office in Williston centralizes national information on undocumented workers and informs agents to arrest and deport them across the country.
Even worse, some Democrats are collaborating with Trump. Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced that she would welcome his agents on the condition that they police violent crime in her city. In other words, she will aid and abet federal police brutality.
Other Democratic Party governors and mayors oppose the deployment, but not on anti-racist grounds. They say their state troopers and local police can control protests and fight crime.
That is no alternative. We don’t want state troopers and local cops repressing our protests and policing our cities. They are part of the problem, not the solution.
Defund DHS, ICE and the Police!
Regardless, Trump won’t listen to the Democrats. He will deploy his storm troopers if we do not organize mass actions to stop him. Here in Vermont, we have a responsibility to demonstrate at the ICE and DHS offices in Williston.
They help Trump carry out repression in our state and across the country. Community Voices for Immigrant Rights already staged an emergency action in Burlington and will soon announce plans for a protest in Williston.
We all have a stake in this fight. As Martin Luther King declared, “a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Trump is attacking immigrants, Black people, Muslims, Arabs, and Indigenous people.
In repressing demonstrations, he is undermining our collective right to organize, assemble, and fight for justice, equality and freedom. And he’s wasting our money on this repression and policing. That’s why we must unite and fight to defund DHS, ICE and the police and eventually abolish them.
We should take all that money and pay reparations to Black people and other groups oppressed by the US at home and abroad as well as fund jobs programs, Medicare for All, social services, and a Green New Deal. Amidst the pandemic and recession, it is time to invest in programs that put the needs of oppressed people, the working class, and the environment first.