Long live the struggle of Minnesota workers against ICE!

“It is said in military art that whoever surrounds and cuts off the enemy is often cut off himself. In the economy, a similar phenomenon occurs: the more the United States subjugates the entire world, the more it falls under the dependence of t

re world, with all its contradictions and upheavals in perspective.”
Leon Trotsky, Europe and America, 1926

The imperialist offensive clashes with domestic resistance

The US government's offensive against immigrants, launched last year by the Trump administration -an intensification of the policy implemented by the democratic administrations of Biden and Obama-, reached brutal heights in 2026 with the murders of Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in the streets of Minneapolis. This events are added to the escalation of murders of detained immigrants in recent months. Good's death at the hands of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) on January 7 served as a spark for demonstrations in the Midwestern state of Minnesota, which brought nearly 100,000 people to the streets of Minneapolis on Friday, January 23, under a call for a shutdown of activities (“No work, no school, no shopping”).  The subsequent murder of Pretti on January 24 provoked outrage among a broad sector of workers, youth, and even the cultural and sports communities. Friday, January 30, the call for a shutdown spread nationwide, with partial strikes by some unions and student sectors in cities across the country, from north to south, east to west. The situation has escalated to such an extent that imperialist institutions and their parties have sounded the alarm and activated all the mechanisms at hand to try to absorb the people’s unease and turn off the mobilization. However, the conflict is part of a trend toward generalized war that is undermining the internal foundations of US imperialism in its own backyard. The current clashes are preparing the ground for future confrontations between the proletariat and its own State, and are the scene of a programmatic and strategic struggle in the battle for the working class to provide with a revolutionary way out to the crisis of the system.

Trump and the crisis of the postwar status quo

The last to sing the requiem for the so-called postwar “world order” was Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the imperialist summit in Davos. But Donald Trump had already announced it in his first presidency by launching the MAGA (Make America Great Again) program. At the end of last year, it was the US government itself that launched its policy of total imperialist offensive, attacking the political and moral foundations of the European Union, enthroning its unconditional support for Israel, and decreeing the Monroe Doctrine 2.0, inaugurated with its current intervention in Venezuela.
            This crisis, which can be seen in the debacle of international institutions (UN, WTO, IMF/WB, EU, NATO) and relations among States, is only one aspect of a whole. And we Marxists analyze it based on the concept of unstable equilibrium and its combinations, between economic, interstate, and class struggle balances. The breakdown of this equilibrium is being addressed by Trump and US imperialism by means of this offensive line, at a precise historical moment characterized by imperialist decomposition and the need to complete the assimilation of the former workers' States, centrally Russia and China. But this offensive implies a whole series of internal contradictions in the face of the breakdown of this equilibrium.

Imperialist democracy matures amid raids and detention centers

The collapse of all the cynical “rules of international order” established by imperialism itself -in an original attempt to maintain a certain balance to defeat the global working class and the bloc of workers' States after World War II, and now replaced by the imposition of pure and simple power relations based on economic antagonisms, tariffs, and eventually (and increasingly assiduously) by weapons- generates an erosion of the very institutions of imperialist democracy from within. This erosion, which is not new, has taken these institutions beyond their point of maturity, that is, to decomposition. Thus, the mechanisms of domination of the masses historically developed by US imperialism  -which also served as an example to the rest of the imperialist States and also, in a very limited way, to the semi-colonies, with their farce of separation of powers, constitutional guarantees, and “popular will” expressed at the ballot box- are falling apart. This is not a particularly reactionary orientation of the current administration, but rather structural elements rooted in the decomposition of capitalism as a system, which throws an increasingly massive portion of humanity into misery, unemployment, forced migration, war, and genocide (Palestine).

The current imperialist offensive is centered on the establishment of a new relationship between capital and labor; thus, along with the democratic wrapping of the dictatorship of capital, the social balance is beginning to crack. The confrontation between the fundamental classes is set. The current mobilizations and partial strikes across the US against ICE raids and detention centers -and more generally against the brutal repressive internal policies of the US State- must be understood as a preparation for this struggle. For the proletariat, this struggle can have no other aim than the seizure of State power in order to provide a revolutionary solution to the unstable equilibrium in crisis.

The cult of democracy: a waste of valuable time

The current struggle against ICE and its methods of State terrorism is a huge example for workers around the world. Even without being fully aware of it, workers in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and across the US are waging an anti-imperialist struggle, posing a major obstacle to Trump's attempts to advance toward gaining control over Latin America, the Middle East, Greenland, and, ultimately, the entire planet. The methods of street fighting and the organization of self-defense, as well as the setup for a general strike, are key elements in developing a program to confront the imperialist State.
            The struggle has shown such a power that it led bourgeois mediators to act. This is the case of the Democratic Party, which seeks to absorb the mobilizations by bringing them to Parliament, based on negotiations over funds allocated to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the midterm elections in November of this year. As its left wing, the “militant” sectors of trade unionism appear, such as the leadership of the UAW (automotive workers), which calls for organizing a general strike... in 2028! Or the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America), which questions the Democratic establishment, but not only fails to break with that imperialist party, but also offers nothing more than a program of tepid reforms to try to rebuild the rotten US bourgeois democracy.

A revolutionary program and leadership

The fight against ICE has brought to the forefront a new generation of activists who are trying out “anti-capitalist” tactics, focusing their actions on the companies that support ICE and Trump's anti-immigrant policies, such as the Hilton hotel chain that houses immigration agents, the restaurants and stores that feed them, the airlines responsible for deportations, and the airports themselves. They also boycott companies that give away immigrants and lend their facilities for raids. These interesting initiatives, however, would be elevated to the nth degree under the leadership of the unions in these economic sectors. Not to mention the industrial unions capable of striking in the steel, aluminum, oil, and automotive industries, sectors that Trump uses as weapons of mass destruction against workers in the rest of the world with his tariff war and military interventions (Venezuela). Self-defense elements could also be strengthened by being structured by workers' organizations. It is essential for unions to be inserted into workplaces through rank and file representatives and committees elected and mandated by the workers. To do this, of course, it is necessary to reclaim the unions and union federations from the filthy imperialist union bureaucracy, which has stood by and done nothing while its own members have been detained, deported, and even murdered by ICE.

         In Latin America, considered to be Trump's backyard, the best way to support American workers in struggle is to confront our own governments and bourgeoisies, which are trying to push through pro-imperialist reforms such as Milei's reforms -especially the labor reform-, Lula's austerity measures, and Boric's repression which promises to be strengthened by Kast. The same is true in the rest of the countries in our region.

            It will not be possible to confront the imperialist leadership of the unions empty-handed. It is essential to build a revolutionary party of the working class, capable of leading the proletariat in its break with the institutions and parties of imperialist democracy, and which constitutes itself as the American section of the world party of revolution, the Fourth International.

 
Down with the ICE and the entire repressive apparatus!

Imperialism out of Venezuela, the Caribbean, and all of Latin America!

US imperialism out of the Middle East!

For a workers' government, for a Federation of Socialist Republics of America!