President Donald Trump’s racist immigration policy escalates a venerable ruling-class tradition of scapegoating and terrorizing immigrant workers. In addition to officially banning workers and refugees from six majority Muslim countries, the Trump administration has promised to increase deportations and detention of undocumented workers—an ambitious goal, given that Barack Obama’s administrations formally removed a record 3.1 million immigrants (Migration Policy Institute, 1/26).
The Department of Homeland Security is expected to double the number of people held in immigration concentration camps, to 80,000 a day. The asylum division of DHS has reported locating 20,000 beds for indefinite detention for asylum-seekers, a 500 percent increase over current capacity (MSNBC, 3/3). Meanwhile, 30,000 Haitian migrants are stranded at the U.S.-Mexico border, waiting to cross (UPI, 2/28).
The Clintons’ Terror Campaign
U.S. bosses have banned and persecuted migrants since the 1790s, when the rulers feared French immigrants influenced by the French Revolution. But today’s racist anti-immigrant hysteria descends from legislation created by the Bill Clinton administration in 1996. As Clinton starved thousands of children and tore citizen families apart through mass incarceration, he also expanded the grounds for jailing and deporting immigrant families (including permanent residents) for minor, nonviolent convictions. The law also made it much more difficult to gain asylum (Salon, 4/27/16). Beginning with the Clinton era, every president deported explosively more than his predecessor.
Smash racist deportations! Black immigrants are deported at five times their number in the undocumented population, and they are twice as likely to be detained for a criminal conviction (Time, 9/30/15).  This is the legacy Trump is advancing.
Ruling-Class Terrorists Divided
The U.S. rulers are divided over the best way to discipline their own class and the working class in a society headed inevitably toward a broader global war. Trump’s intensified anti-immigrant rhetoric has served to divide the working class and distract many workers from the capitalists’ wholesale thievery and exploitation.
But as Trump funds an expansion of the fascist Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) apparatus, the administration’s anti-immigrant racism poses a conflict for the U.S. war machine. To defeat their Russian and Chinese imperialist rivals (see Egypt editorial), the rulers needed a committed, patriotic military. When Trump initially ordered a blanket ban on refugees from seven largely Muslim countries, 100 former government officials signed a letter opposing it. Among the signers were Madeleine Albright and Susan Rice, both of whom played significant roles in murdering masses of workers in the Middle East during the Clinton and Barack Obama administrations. The finance capital wing of the ruling class is signaling the unreliable Trump to curb his blatant racism that hurts U.S. chances at building a reliable army.
Fight the Fear
Immigrant workers have a long history of fightback. The only response to Trump’s massive racist attack must be to organize. The only safety for undocumented workers can come from a united working class fighting the capitalist state. Many of the greatest leaders in the historical communist movement in the U.S. were immigrants, including Louis C. Fraina, Claudia Jones, Otto Huiswoud, and Claude McKay. The Progressive Labor Party will carry on the practice of fighting in the interest of the international working class. While competition and division are inherent to capitalists, the world’s working class is naturally collective. Forward to a world without borders!