AS A DISINTEGRATING WORLD ORDER spawns ultranationalism around every corner—nowhere more ominously than in the United States—the challenges for the international left could scarcely be greater.
In the US, the Trump White House is gearing up for probably the most substantial round of mass deportations since “Operation Wetback,” the forced repatriation of Americans of Mexican descent during the Eisenhower administration. This time around, however, the net is being cast far more widely. Iranian asylum seekers and Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants have equally been targeted, as the regime experiments with novel strategies, including elimination of temporary protected status and targeting of immigrants at court-scheduled appointments.
Meanwhile, the threat of deportation is being mobilized against political enemies, most visibly in the repeated calls to deport activists who speak out in solidarity with Palestine—even against a backdrop of mass starvation in Gaza that has forced even arch-Zionists like Hillary Clinton and Ritchie Torres to change their tune. We are witness to a New Red Scare, with the complete battery of the state’s antiterrorism machinery deployed against anyone of good conscience. The accelerated drive to authoritarian rule now runs on three rails: the use of mass deportations; the occupation of US cities by the domestic military; and the full-scale repression of dissent in the public arena, all underpinned by an inflation of executive powers. ref1 Even if these extensions of executive power are to some degree exploratory, this only underlines the immediate urgency of organized resistance to the Trump regime.
The threat of deportation is being mobilized against political enemies, most visibly in the repeated calls to deport activists.
Developments in the US combine with the ascension to power of authoritarians elsewhere, most notably in El Salvador, where Nayib Bukele has nearly quadrupled the proportion of the adult population behind bars—now standing at roughly one in fifty, the highest rate in the world. Over 80 percent of those incarcerated were never formally sentenced, and a majority were arrested without charges, trials, or warrants. And this is to say nothing of Bukele’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), the largest prison in the Americas. Within a year of its opening in 2022, it was at nearly 300 percent of capacity according to Amnesty International, which also documents the use of torture there. ref2 CECOT is, of course, the prison where, in March, Trump forcibly expatriated 261 immigrants from the United States who had no ties to El Salvador. As if to compound the obscenities, it was in front of a massive CECOT cage overflowing with prisoners that US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posed with a baseball cap and a $60,000 Rolex.
Palestine, Apartheid, and Global Authoritarianism
Transnational ties are crucial to understanding the current moment in the United States. Rather than an aberration, Trump should be understood as a concentrated form of—and catalyst for the growth of—a resurgent political authoritarianism globally. This has been enabled by extreme levels of nationalism and xenophobia as “true” national identities are mobilized to expel racialized populations from citizenship. This is at the core of the Islamophobic violence of Narendra Modi’s government in India, as well as the anti-
immigrant hysteria sweeping Europe—from Frederiksen’s Denmark to Meloni’s Italy, and from Orbán’s Hungary to the Greek government’s suspension of asylum registration for all North Africans (in flagrant contravention of inter-
national law). It reared its ugly head in the shockingly large anti-immigration rallies in England during the fall. And ultranationalism was also a driver of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s protracted dispossession of Brazil’s Indigenous population. Crucially, as Rawan Abdelbaki and Rana Sukarieh argue on the Spectrewebsite, this context clarifies the centrality of Israel’s Zionist project to this international regime of racialized border control. ref3 With Israel’s use of what the United Nations is finally calling a famine in Gaza as a tool for ethnic cleansing, the most extreme possibilities of racist ultranationalism have come starkly into view. ref4
With all that said, we would still do well to understand the particularities of the Trump 2.0 approach to racist populism. It is true that the scale of deportations under Obama’s first term remains comparable to the pace at which Trump has targeted longtime immigrants. In fact, according to current data, Obama presided over more deportations than any other president in US history. While Biden certainly should not be commended for reversing this trend—he deported more immigrants in a single term than any other US president—the bulk of these were expedited border expulsions rather than formal removals of people already well inside the US. As Trump boasts about rounding up longtime immigrants inside the country, we see in many ways a return to the policies of Obama’s first term.
Yet too-quick comparisons to earlier horrors hide how things are now much worse. To begin with, the existing data tend not to include self-deportations. According to a study by one prominent xenophobic thinktank, nearly one million immigrants self-deported in the first six months Trump was in office. ref5 While this data may be tenuous, the scale of the claim is astounding, amounting in half a year to 10 percent of the total number of immigrants Obama deported over eight years. Moreover, these escalating deportations have been carried out under the banner of fighting lawlessness, reviving 1980s and ’90s “tough on crime” rhetoric. The administration makes frequent references to gang affiliation and the rounding up of “criminals,” though nearly three out of four deportees had no criminal conviction whatsoever. ref6 When pressed on this fact, the Trump administration makes clear that they in fact seek to criminalize the very fact of being in the country. Their stated aim is to make immigration itself a crime, both by changing policy and by fanning the flames of racism and xenophobia.
A New American Gestapo
Among the most concerning Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations are those taking place in urban areas a substantial distance from the border (where ICE has historically had jurisdiction). This isn’t to say that struggles over long-contested borderland territories have ceased. This summer’s battle in Los Angeles—to which we return below—was just such a struggle, raising questions about sovereignty, as Spectre editor Maga Miranda suggested in a recent analysis on our website. ref7 On the ground, this has played out in demonstrations that incorporate strong symbolism. The use of foreign flags—especially the Mexican, and slogans including “no one is illegal on stolen land” and “ICE out of Tovaangar,” the latter a reference to the Tongva name for the region—all quite rightly recognize the terrain of struggle.
The transformation of ICE into a largely unchecked personal police force raises profound questions about American authoritarianism.
In practice, the raids have consistently targeted laboring Latinos, with Home Depot parking lots serving as key sites of ICE “snatch and grabs.” In other sectors, such as manufacturing, service, and agriculture, arrests of essential workers have disrupted the economic and social fabric. These three sectors are central contributors to California’s status as the fourth largest economy in the world. This much Trump knows, which is why, in June, he ordered ICE to stop workplace enforcement on farms and in meatpacking plants, restaurants, and hotels, among other sites. Four days later, he reversed course, with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin proudly proclaiming, “Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.” ref8 Then in September, nearly five hundred Koreans working on a Hyundai–LG plant in Georgia were nabbed by ICE. Rather than resolving the contradiction between capital’s need for migrant labor and his immigrant-bashing policies, Trump has simply acknowledged the problem while continuing to unleash ICE. Though capital’s demand for profitability may force the issue as soon as the next significant economic downturn, Trump’s preferred course of action is to double down on xenophobic nationalism.
After all, his Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) will oversee a tenfold increase in funding for ICE (from $10 billion to $100 billion) and a broader military escalation and expansion. The bill, which has been called “the most massive transfer of wealth upwards in American history,” inflicts major cuts to welfare, including rural hospitals, that will inevitably result in countless deaths, either through direct suspension of resources or through the built-in mechanisms of “workfare.” ref9 Government contracts for ICE and other agencies will fatten the pockets of private sector opportunists, funding what is currently poised to be the largest immigration crackdown in US history. The BBB is, without question, a tool for class discipline and a generalized assault on the working class, the brunt of which is now being felt by immigrants. More broadly, the transformation of ICE—from a border enforcement agency founded just over twenty years into a largely unchecked personal police force of the executive—raises profound questions about the nature of American authoritarianism. The administration’s use of troops and the National Guard in Los Angeles and Washington DC, and threats of deployment to historically Black cities like Chicago and Baltimore, provide uncomfortable answers.
Concentration Camps
Central to the Trump regime is the elevation of cruelty into a public spectacle. There seems no limit to its brutality against migrants. Consider that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has built a large immigration detention facility in the Florida Everglades named “Alligator Alcatraz.” This pre-deportation center is meant to incarcerate five thousand people by locking a few dozen people into each chain-linked cage. One Democratic lawmaker called it an “internment camp” after visiting, noting temperatures in the mid–80s, insect-infested mattresses, inadequate access to toilets, and food rations insufficient for adults. ref10 Another described “feces being spread everywhere” and recalled multiple detainees shouting for help, insisting that they were American citizens.
Predictably, the prison’s construction is shoddy. The facility flooded within a matter of days, and the air-conditioning system malfunctioned with temperatures occasionally climbing into the 90s—extreme heat that oscillated with air as cold as possible when the system was deliberately turned off. This, needless to say, raises questions about where the money to build these prisons is actually going. ref11
“Alligator Alcatraz” was built in the Big Cypress National Preserve on Miccosukee land, and protest leaders have included the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and the Miccosukee Tribe. On both radio and television, DHS has been airing announcements with known puppy-killer Kristi Noem urging undocumented immigrants to “leave now—if you don’t, we will find you and deport you.” ref13 Due to the efforts of the Miccosukee and their allies, a district judge issued a preliminary injunction ordering the US government to wind down operations at the facility within sixty days. Despite these promising signs, both Florida and the Trump administration have appealed the court’s injunction. ref14
Snatch-and-grabs in Los Angeles have also raised the question of whether the people enacting these raids are formally deputized as ICE or members of fascist militias (January 6ers, including Proud Boys and Oath Keepers). Border policing has often drawn on armed civilians to enforce violence on migrants. For example, the Texas Rangers long policed Mexicans moving across the southern border. Regardless of whether far-right, fascist-adjacent, or organized fascist groups are having their thugs formally deputized, their politics form the ideological core of those carrying out immigration raids.
Frontline Resistance
But they are not the only force in the streets. The frontline and rapid response organizing networks in Los Angeles have offered formidable defense and will continue to play a tremendously important role in resisting the Trump administration. Decentralized as they might be, these networks articulate multiple activist strands throughout the city including mutual aid groups organized in response to the wildfires, tenant associations, educators, and others. This highlights the urgency of solidarity against the targeting of activists like Alejandro Orellana, who was hit with federal charges for distributing masks and water at a protest, and Verita Topete, who had her phone seized by the FBI while walking her dog at the park during a raid.
The frontline and rapid response organizing networks articulate multiple activist strands throughout the city.
In a context where city and state sanctuary policies are being actively dismantled and attacked, the Democratic Party establishment is at best putting up a performative fight over immigration. ref15 They will challenge aspects of the immigration crackdown when their constituencies are enraged. For example, at the same time as he condemned the National Guard’s deployment, California Governor Gavin Newsom froze immigrant healthcare access in California. What truly forced immigrant rights onto the political agenda was the struggle on the streets. ref16 That’s why the consensus of both major political parties over the border crisis is being challenged—and why more and more Americans favor pathways to citizenship over ICE raids. ref17
From NYC to LA: Grassroots Organizing Remains the Key
We can see some of the openings for left inter- nationalism on immigration even in electoral politics. For instance, while New York Mayor Eric Adams willfully collaborated with the Trump administration to deport New Yorkers, social democrat Zohran Mamdani’s successful Democratic primary campaign leaned in the opposite direction. Mamdani’s pro-immigration platform relied on a broad coalition which, interestingly, resonates with the rapid response networks central to strategy in Los Angeles. The problem, of course, is how to learn from Los Angeles and best channel some of this coalition’s energy toward the street rather than into Democratic Party electoral politics. The very base of the rapid response networks—tenant unions, immigrant rights organizations, multiracial coalitions, reproductive justice organizations, teachers, unionists, labor—make up Mamdani’s electoral base; it would be a tremendous loss if the limited horizons of electoral politics pushed potentially radicalizing activists and coalitions into becoming defenders of the compromises a Mayor Mamdani will be compelled to make.
We of course embrace the popular support for many of Mamdani’s more progressive proposals. But the structural constraints of office, especially in a financial center like New York City, means that to push through those proposals as mayor, Mamdani would need an independent movement to remain active far beyond election day. Already, he has repudiated his previous support for defunding the police and decriminalizing sex work. ref18 Without sustained pressure we should expect many more retreats.
The resistance in Los Angeles shows that great leaps in popular organization and self-defense are possible.
Might an independent movement be more likely to emerge with Mamdani in office? We think this formulation is precisely backwards: only an unconstrained movement to hold him accountable can keep his campaign proposals on the table at all. This kind of movement must not be conceived as an outcome of Mamdani’s election but should instead be understood as the necessary precondition for any socialist in office to implement their policies. We are thrilled to see Palestine solidarity on the ballot, and we are enthusiastic about a number of his proposals, including a rent freeze, free buses, and free universal childcare. But electoral strategy should never be counterposed to popular politics; the two necessarily go hand-in-hand.
Indeed, electoral intervention should play second fiddle to the dynamics of popular mobilization. The resistance in Los Angeles, for example, is a far better model for generating community self-defense on a mass scale. It is equally a more effective strategy for prying the door open to meaningful socialist victories than one limited exclusively to electoral politics. We likewise hope that the growth of community self-defense will deepen the opposition of labor unions, which, mobilized by the Trump regime’s repressive overreach, are beginning to voice increasingly radical opposition to the administration. ref19 One of the inspiring things the late summer protests in Washington DC was the mobilization of thousands of trade unionists against Trump’s attempts to militarize that city. And the role of the Chicago Teachers Union—and the May Day Strong coalition it has sparked—in opposition to Trumpism lend hope to the prospect of strike action against the authoritarian offensive. Here too, there are global sources of hope, few more uplifting that the pledge of dockworkers in Genoa, Italy, to shut down the ports if Israel attacks the Sumud Freedom Flotilla intent on breaking the siege of Gaza.
At the time of Trump’s reelection, Sara Nelson, president of the airline flight attendants’ union, urged the labor movement to prepare for a general strike. More recently, Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, did the same. “If the Trump administration continues on its course,” said Wolfson, “the only force that could respond to that effectively is a labor movement that is willing to withhold its labor, and in a general way.” ref20
Those may seem heady sentiments in the US context today. But in light of the rise of far-right governments, they are appropriate ones. And the resistance in Los Angeles shows that great leaps in popular organization and self-defense are possible. More than that, they are essential. ×
Notes & References
- DK Renton, “Trump, Fascism, and the Authoritarian Turn,” Spectre (online), April 1, 2025; Todd Gordon and Jeffery R. Webber, “Trump 2.0 and the Crisis of Liberal Rule,” Spectre (online), June 24, 2025.
- Amnesty International, Behind the Veil of Popularity: Repression and Regression of Human Rights in El Salvador (London: Amnesty International, 2023), amnesty.org/en/documents/amr29/7423/2023/en/.
- Rawan Abdelbaki and Rana Sukarieh, “Zionism, or Racism with(out) Borders,” Spectre (online), July 25, 2025.
- “Famine in Gaza ‘A Failure of Humanity Itself’ Says UN Chief,” UN News, United Nations, August 22, 2025.
- Andrew Arthur, “Nearly 1 Million Illegal Immigrants Have ‘Self-deported’ under Trump, Which Has Led to Higher Wages,” New York Post, June 15, 2025.
- Melissa Goldin, “Trump Says He Wants To ‘Deport the Worst of the Worst’: Government Data Tells Another Story,” AP News, July 12, 2025.
- Maga Miranda, “Defend the LAnd,” Spectre (online), June 17, 2025.
- Carol D. Leonnig et al., “Trump Officials Reverse Guidance Exempting Farms, Hotels from Immigration Raids,” Washington Post, June 16, 2025.
- John Nichols, “‘Most Massive Transfer of Wealth Upward in American History’: John Nichols on Trump’s Budget Law,” interview with Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! July 7, 2025.
- Stephen Prager, “‘This Is an Internment Camp’: Lawmakers Horrified by Inhumane Conditions at ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’” Common Dreams, July 13, 2025.
- Jason Delgado, “A good lil storm,” @JasonDelgadoX, July 1, 2025.
- Sara Liese (Twilla), “Seminole Nation of Oklahoma Officials Stand in Solidarity with Florida Tribal Nations against ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’” KOSU, NPR, June 30, 2025.
- “Warning – Domestic,” Department of Homeland Security, video,
gov/medialibrary/assets/video/58918. - Greg Allen, “Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Detention Facility To Be Empty ‘Within a Few Days,’” NPR, August 28, 2025; Spotted Elk, “‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Must Close, But the Fight Isn’t Over,” Grist, August 25, 2025.
- “Justice Department Sues New York City Over Sanctuary Policies,” US Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs (press release), July 24, 2025, justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-new-york-city-over-sanctuary-policies.
- Edgar Franks, “To Beat ICE We Need to Shift the Battlefields from Statehouses and Courthouses to the Streets,” Hammer and Hope, no. 7 (2025).
- “Support Rises for Giving Most Undocumented Immigrants a Pathway to Legal Status vs. Deportations, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; More than 9 in 10 Voters Say Politically Motivated Violence in the US Is a Serious Problem,” Quinnipiac University (poll), June 26, 2025,
qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3926. - Jeffery C. Mays, Dana Rubinstein and Eliza Shapiro, “Mamdani Distances Himself from Democratic Socialists’ National Agenda,” New York Times, August 28, 2025; and Eliza Shapiro, “As Mamdani’s Stature Grows, He Tries to Shed Some Past Stances,” New York Times, September 3, 2025.
- Michael Sainato and Chris Stein, “Labor Unions around US Demand Union Leader Be Released,” Guardian, June 9, 2025; Alice Speri, “‘Everyone Is Coming under Fire’: Students Return to US Campuses Bruised and Changed by Trump’s Assault,” Guardian, August 23, 2025; Mary Harris, “The Sleeping Giant that Could Stop Trump’s Agenda in Its Tracks,” Slate, April 26, 2025.
- Sara Nelson quoted in Mary Harris, “The Sleeping Giant” Slate; Todd Wolfson as quoted by Ryan Quinn, “Higher Ed Alone Cannot Save Democracy,” Inside Higher Ed, August 19, 2025.