The Walls Will Fall Like Dominoes
Scences from the June 14, 2025 No Kings protest in Los Angeles, one week after ICE began its raids across the county (photo credit: Genaro Molina).
SMC Editorial Board Note: This piece is not an official caucus statement, but the opinion of the author.
On June 6, 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents descended upon Los Angeles and initiated the largest mass immigration sweep in the city’s history.
News of the raids spread quickly. A video showing armed, masked men chasing down day laborers in a Westlake Home Depot parking lot was widely shared. As early as noon, community members faced off against ICE in the Garment District, where agents fired tear gas into the crowd. Immigration justice organizations sprang into action and held an ad-hoc press conference downtown, featuring union leaders and all four of DSA-LA’s elected socialist city council members.
A bigger crowd of protestors gathered outside the federal building and courthouse a few blocks over, demanding an end to immigration sweeps. As the crowds converged, they were met with heavy police presence. LAPD deployed tear gas, beat back protestors with batons, and shot at crowds with flashbangs and rubber bullets. Two of my friends were shot and injured at close range. Several hours later at 10PM, the LAPD declared unlawful assembly for the area and ordered protestors to go home or risk arrest. That evening, mutual aid and jail support groups sprang back into action with a determination and at a scale not seen since 2020.
Three days later, Donald Trump mobilized the U.S. Marines 2nd Battalion and the U.S. National Guard to occupy Los Angeles. The attacks continued for weeks in nearly every neighborhood of the city with significant immigrant populations, as well as surrounding areas. They always followed a cycle: ICE would stake out a neighborhood block, spreading fear and intimidation; after a few days, ICE would kidnap workers and threaten witnesses at the scene; protests would follow, with violent police repression.
But in the days following June 6, despite heavy military presence in all corners of Los Angeles, our people became organized.
From Mexico to Palestine, All Our Movements Intertwine
The entity attacking Los Angeles was ICE–the same entity that imprisoned Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, and other pro-Palestine activists. ICE even uses the same surveillance technology as the Zionist occupation: the data firm Palantir.
Before I became a socialist organizer, I was first an activist. Bernie’s first presidential run gave me the vocabulary and framework to articulate my beliefs, but I was radicalized to socialist politics as a youth. My parents are working class immigrants who grew up poor and came to the United States with nothing–I felt that acutely in our household when I was growing up. Outside of my home, I witnessed the destruction of our planet at the hands of corporations. Oil extraction in Los Angeles–which was historically, and continues to be, an oil town–saw a resurgence starting in the 2000s. Without any setbacks between drill sites and homes, Black and brown neighborhoods were faced with a public health crisis. As I got older, I protested this injustice. Over the years the tactics I took became more and more confrontational. From 2019 to 2020, I participated in a series of direct actions to shut down oil production in San Pedro and Wilmington, the latter of which houses the third-largest oil field in the continental United States. We occupied buildings, took over the streets, and blocked entrances to drill sites. In time I became very familiar with risking arrest and the types of action that would invite police response. Though I was rounded up and cited, most times we were left alone, and I was never arrested.
Shortly after Trump deployed ICE in Los Angeles, DSA-LA was approached by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) to participate in a high-profile direct action against Palantir, which has partnered with the Trump Administration to track undocumented people and with the Israeli Ministry of Defense to identify and kill targets in Gaza. I, along with my fellow SMC comrade Mattie K., volunteered to risk arrest. The plan was simple: take over the lobby of Palantir and Thiel Capital’s offices in LA. Dozens of comrades would occupy the building with us, while many more would march outside and hold up signs. We planned for community members to share stories about family members and friends that had been kidnapped by ICE, to draw a clear link between the surveillance technology’s development in our own backyards and its use against our neighbors. It was straightforward and well-planned. Of all the instances of risking arrest, I felt this was the lowest risk.
Comrades gathered outside the building while those risking arrest occupied the lobby (photo credit: Hadley Tomicki).
But on Friday 13 June 2025, one week after ICE began its sweeps in Los Angeles, me, Mattie, and 11 other protestors were arrested, booked, and charged with criminal trespassing. We were taken to the West Hollywood sheriff’s station where we were held without bail, the new tough-on-crime LA County District Attorney intending to hold us through the weekend for a Monday release. Nothing about my previous experience translated. Everything is new, in Trump’s America.
How ICE Attacks Communities
It is difficult to write this piece without feeling overwhelmed by the cruelty of the Trump administration. For decades, working-class Angelenos have resisted the state violence, xenophobia, and racism that define the US. Despite the Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871 and subsequent passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, working-class Asian and Pacific Islanders have re-established neighborhoods that were able to welcome families such as my own. In the 1980s, the immigrant rights movement here led the country in support for the Sandinistas by defeating Contra aid; on May 1, 2006, LA immigrant workers led the most recent general strike in the U.S., which mobilized an estimated one million workers. Our rapid mobilization on June 6 is a testament to the community that Angelenos have built in all our movements: from the Black Lives Matter movement, to the Sanctuary City campaign, to the mutual aid network following the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires.
The path from resistance to victory will be difficult, but our experiences in Los Angeles can help us find the way. ICE works according to a system of fear, confusion, hopelessness, and racism. The fear of being deported can be paralyzing for immigrants and supporters, as they fear fighting back. ICE agents conceal their identities, lie constantly, and enforce the law capriciously to spread confusion about what rights the government will respect and where is safe to go. ICE spreads hopelessness because unpredictable, unaccountable violations of peoples’ constitutional rights create a reality where people have no power. ICE spreads anti-immigrant racism–the idea that immigrants are being arrested because they somehow do not deserve a home here.
This creates a negative feedback loop–as designed–that helps MAGA authoritarians. The more the public accepts these ideas, the more rights we will lose–especially those of us who are working-class immigrants.
How do we defeat ICE’s playbook of fear, confusion, hopelessness, and racism? Through solidarity, direct action, power in numbers, and contesting for state power. I grew out of activism and towards organizing because I realized that systemic, transformative change could only be put in place by the government. And to build a government accountable to everyday working people, candidates need to come from and be supported by a mass movement. I wanted to be part of building this mass movement, so I joined DSA.
We have a chance now to meet the current political moment at National Convention and organize a powerful DSA that’s ready to fight back.
How Communities Fight Back
The Palantir action was not the only anti-ICE action that week, or even that day. All across the city, each day, DSA members were part of the coalition fighting ICE. The resistance coalition quickly built an impressive infrastructure: we helped organize mass protests, anti-ICE community patrols, neighborhood Know Your Rights trainings, canvasses to build the rapid-response network, and more. When Trump sent the U.S. Marines and National Guard to join in the attack, our members developed protest safety training materials and deployed street medics and marshals out to rallies to keep protestors safe.
ICE came to LA with a plan to spread violence. We fought back with a plan to spread solidarity. Four elements made that plan possible: coalition, power in numbers, direct action, and contestation of state power.
First, our coalition is broad and tight-knit. Coalition for Humane Immigrants Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), Union del Barrio, and others have taught DSA-LA how to organize, how to exercise their rights, and how to mobilize. Our coalition also includes tenants’ organizations and unions, such as Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), UNITE HERE, UTLA, Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU), and UAW. Our relationships go beyond inter-organizational collaboration: many DSA-LA members and leaders are also members and leaders in these organizations. The ICE effort to spread anti-immigrant racism in LA was stymied by the breadth of our coalition.
An immigration forum convened by Pasdaena City Councilmember Rick Cole and Vice Mayor Jess Rivas.
Second, power in numbers is the greatest antidote to fear. No event, whether a Know Your Rights (KYR) training or a protest, was too small for a turnout push. Hundreds of DSA-LA members attended KYR trainings where they learned the skills of rapid response to raids, and joined their neighborhood rapid response teams; thousands joined the anti-ICE marches and rallies. Through the Fighting Fascism priority resolution passed at our most recent local convention, DSA-LA already had a plan to use each mobilization to build up comrades’ organizing skills and recruit new members. While DSA’s NPC regrettably viewed the national No Kings protest as unworthy of endorsement, DSA-LA members (like many chapters across the country) saw something different: over 200,000 Angelenos, led by immigrant families, braved the streets to tell ICE, the U.S. Marines, and the National Guard to go home.
Third, we used direct action to shine a light through ICE’s fog of confusion. At every turn, ICE raids were slowed or stymied because the rapid response network showed up to advise abductees of their rights and connect them to legal services. In partnership with NDLON and local progressive community groups, our branches have each adopted at least one Home Depot in the area and developed a unique patrol model to protect day laborers from being kidnapped. Compelling, nonviolent mobilizations showed the public that ICE was in fact breaking the law, and that by exercising their rights, they could effectively defend themselves. Direct actions also showed the public that their neighbors were on their side and that we would not give up on them.
Finally, we had to fight ICE’s worst weapon–the hopelessness that another world, a better world, is impossible. We did so by contesting for state power. ICE tries to create a reality where they wield total control, where their power is inevitable. In Los Angeles, they encountered something different–a reality where DSA members were not just in the streets, but on the city council and the school board. Our socialists in office (SiOs) helped our coalition with vital resources and turned constituents out to trainings and actions. They had previously both crafted and worked to pass LA's Sanctuary City ordinance, effectively severing ICE from local police assistance. Outside of Los Angeles City Council, DSA members elected to local office have set up immigration assistance funds to support the families impacted by raids, or those too afraid to go out and look for work. At every step, our SIOs have helped us show the community that if we build our power, we can go beyond fighting back, and actually transform our system.
From Palestine to Mexico, the Walls Will Fall Like Dominoes
The theory of change I articulated as a budding organizer continues to inform my organizing. If we want to make people’s lives better, we need to build a mass movement and elect more socialists to office. Core to building a mass movement is considering how we grow in power and numbers. Over the next three and a half years, all chapters in DSA must adopt clear organizing campaigns to protect immigrants, move more people onto our side, and win power. Chapters should have a deep understanding of the types of defensive and offensive tactics to take, when, and why. Through coalition, power in numbers, direct action, and contestation of state power, we can fight back against ICE and MAGA authoritarianism. In addition, I believe it is also necessary for DSA to participate in civil disobedience and incorporate large-scale demonstrations into our broader immigration justice strategy. We must send a clear message to the government and the public that the pro-immigrant forces are those who are attempting to live and work with dignity, while the government is using violence to prevent us from doing so. We must, in coalition with community partners and members, communicate to the widest audience possible that pro-immigrant forces are determined, and will persist until we win.
I know that we will win, because I saw firsthand the power of a mass movement that same Friday I was arrested. After we were told we would be held through the weekend–after members of our group were given pillows and transferred into holding cells with bunks–my name was called and my possessions handed to me and I left the sheriff’s department after nine hours in jail. Only then, welcomed by dozens of DSA comrades who waited all that time for us to receive us, did I learn that DSA-LA and ACCE had been waging a pressure campaign, tirelessly reaching out to our elected officials and calling into the sheriff’s department. Despite the county’s tough-on-crime posture, attention to the matter from our elected officials and overwhelming pressure from members forced the DA’s hand. By 3AM the next day, all thirteen of us were able to go home.
Organized people can and will save one another. But we must be clear-eyed about our task ahead–millions of not-yet-politicized Americans must be brought into our movement so that we can build a democratic, liberatory path to freedom for all. This work must be material and measurable. As we build our power, build DSA, and grow our united front over the next two years, we need to assess our political project on the basis of what we’ve accomplished. If we’re talking about building power, then we need to have a clear answer for how we exercised that power. If we’re talking about building the movement, then we need to have a clear answer for what the movement did. I want a DSA that grows far beyond 100,000 members. I want to elect more socialists to office. I want to see us pressure Congress to end the federal governments’ contracts with Palantir and divert arms shipments from getting to Israel.
The actions we take as an organization only matter if they are making a real difference in the lives of everyday, working people. My experience getting booked and those long hours in the holding cell demonstrated very clearly to me how easily innocent people can be taken off the streets without legal recourse. I saw how easily police inefficiencies, indifference, or incompetence could ruin someone’s life. This system can make people disappear and it does—relentlessly. No amount of protesting will change this reality. Until our organization has a clear understanding of who has power, where it comes from, and how to obtain it, we will be stuck in our current cycle of oppression and suffering.
Seizing the Moment
On July 11, a federal judge imposed a Temporary Restraining Order on ICE’s roving immigration patrols; on July 21, Trump withdrew the Marines and National Guard from our city. This temporary reprieve was hard-won through the resistance of working people in Los Angeles. As we regain the space to breathe and reflect, we must also take the opportunity to build upon efforts.
The strategy that we’re developing in Los Angeles must be scaled out across the country. The recent and ongoing efforts to push the U.S. government to end its contacts with Palantir provide the clearest and most immediate opportunity for large-scale mass demonstrations. The NPC should strongly consider endorsing these efforts to build our institutional capacity to participate in civil disobedience.
Not only can we channel our collective anger into a forceful demonstration of people power and solidarity, but we can also meaningfully curtail the harmful effects of surveillance capitalism. As detailed in our priority resolution, From Palestine to Mexico: Fighting Fascist Attacks on Immigrants, we know that current and previous administrations have used law enforcement and surveillance to crush mass movements: Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, freedom from racist police violence, and the Palestine solidarity movement. As democratic socialists, we must affirm and establish–through ongoing political education and counter propaganda–the interconnectedness of these various struggles, drawing attention to the fact that this inhumane and profit-driven immigration system is the response of the ruling class to those displaced by the climate crisis, by war, and by the economic oppression inherent to global capitalism.
In Los Angeles, I’m working with my fellow comrades to coordinate mass calls and regional meetups, but every chapter in DSA must be prepared to fight ICE, which continues its unconstitutional assault on working-class people despite the temporary restraining order. To do so, we need a well-staffed organization with a strong NPC that is ready to seize the moment. We cannot protect our immigrant brothers and sisters until we have an NPC that can build a DSA capable of winning, one where chapters and organizers are sharing best practices and resources, coordinating large-scale days of action against targets like Palantir, building coalitions, and electing more socialists to office.
To defeat Trump in 2028, we must be relentless in building power and growing our movement. Until then, and every day beyond, we must be focused on solidarity over individuality and external organizing campaigns instead of internal strife. We must build a mass movement to be successful. There is power in numbers; we build power through mutual struggle, and a powerful movement will defy the political establishment and one day replace it.
I hope you will join me in voting for me and the rest of the Socialist Majority NPC slate in Chicago. We have the people, vision, and skills to build a mass movement and bring socialism to power in the United States in our lifetime.