Minneapolis is the Whole World! Repression against immigrant proletarians as a testing laboratory for the growth of authoritarianism and the development of the possible use of force against any form of dissent

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Repression against immigrant proletarians as a testing laboratory for the growth of authoritarianism and the development of the possible use of force against any form of dissent

The mass protests against the practices of the immigration police, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE)—this “Trump’s Gestapo”—which in recent days have taken place following the execution of Renée Nicole Good in more than 100 cities across the United States—while in Minneapolis alone more than 100,000 people took to the streets—express a real and profound dissatisfaction among broad layers of the population in the United States with developments in the country: with the generalized terror associated with raids and kidnappings targeting undocumented people, that is, anyone who may appear as such due to skin color or appearance, and with the process of authoritarian restructuring of the American state—that is, a gradual authoritarian turn followed by the militarization of society.

As far as ICE is concerned, 2025 is the most tragic year in more than two decades. Thirty-two people died in the custody of this federal agency, the highest number recorded since 2004. With regard to incidents outside detention, data are more difficult to obtain, since ICE is not legally required to report them; media reports nevertheless speak of 16 shootings by ICE agents, in which at least four people were directly shot dead by agents in the field and at least seven or eight were injured (in some cases including bystanders or family members, including U.S. citizens), as well as two deaths during arrests connected to flights or accidents.

These deaths are occurring at a time of a massive expansion of arrests and deportations. December 2025 was the month with the highest number of arrests. More than 68,000 people are being held in overcrowded detention centers, nearly 75 percent of whom have not been convicted of any criminal offense; at the same time, this month also recorded the highest number of deaths: seven detainees were killed.

The causes of death in detention—heart failure, strokes, respiratory collapse, untreated infections, suicides—point to a consistent pattern: neglect of medical care, psychological pressure, overcrowding, and institutional indifference. Many detainees repeatedly requested medical assistance, but their requests were ignored. Others died shortly after being transferred to hospitals, while legally still in ICE custody. Investigations into these deaths drag on, access to information is denied, and families are left in suffocating anxiety without answers.

A few examples illustrate this reality. Genry Ruiz Guillén, a young Honduran construction worker, repeatedly complained of fainting and breathing difficulties while in detention; he died in January 2025 in a hospital in Florida. Marie Ange Blaise, a Haitian migrant, asked for a doctor several hours before her death because of chest pains—according to her son’s testimony, she was denied assistance. Ismael Ayala-Uribe, a worker from California who had lived in the U.S. since childhood and worked for 15 years at a car wash, fell ill in detention with fever and coughing; he died after being transferred to a hospital. Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado, who spent nearly 40 years working on American farms, died during transport between detention facilities after his health deteriorated in a local jail. Gabriel Garcia Aviles, a father and grandfather who had lived in the U.S. for three decades, was detained by a mobile patrol and died in a hospital after a week in detention; his family was left without information throughout. Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado died in an ICE transport van; José Castro Rivera died after being struck by a car on a highway while attempting to flee agents. Norlan Guzman-Fuentes was killed directly on the premises of an immigration office in Dallas; Miguel Ángel García Medina was shot while shackled in a van outside the same facility.

These are not failures of particular facilities or individual agents. Among other things, agents receive bonuses for each detention, regardless of whether it is justified or not: there is systematic humiliation of detainees’ human dignity, and their lives are treated as expendable. This is structural violence—the breaking of body and spirit, an organized form of punishment without trial.

Official propaganda presents ICE as a force defending society against crime and protecting the borders. In reality, however, the aim of this terror is not to deport the approximately 12 million undocumented people, because without this labor force American capitalism could not function economically in many sectors: it is structurally dependent on millions of undocumented workers.

Agriculture, construction, logistics, hospitality, and care work… all depend on their labor. As many as 50–75 percent of these unauthorized proletarians (8 to 8.5 million people) pay federal taxes, despite being excluded from most of the benefits these taxes fund. Immigrant workers as a whole, regardless of legal status, make up nearly 19.5 percent of the total workforce.

The goal is to intimidate this section of the proletariat, to subject it as much as possible and make it easily blackmailable, while simultaneously pitting it against “native” workers. This strategy has a clear class logic: to create a mass of labor power that fears illness, fears striking, is unable to defend itself, and thereby pushes down wages and working conditions for the entire proletariat. This strategy strengthens employers’ positions and fully serves capital. Repression against unauthorized immigrant proletarians is therefore an attack on the entire working class.

The methods employed by ICE—masked raids, arrests without judicial warrants, militarized operations, stripping of legal protections—are increasingly being extended to broader layers of the population. According to an internal statement that has leaked to the public, ICE has been authorized to enter homes even without a judicial warrant.

Repression against immigrants thus functions simultaneously as a testing laboratory for the growth of authoritarianism and the expansion of the ruling class’s capacity to use force. Protests against ICE are suppressed through police violence, the deployment of the National Guard, and threats of military intervention. Acts of solidarity are criminalized and prosecuted. Filming arrests is treated as “interference” with the activities of state authorities. Legal safeguards are weakened in the name of security and order.

The way undocumented proletarians are treated today will gradually be applied to other sections of the population as well—above all to the proletariat whenever it rises up against its working and living conditions. We are witnessing with our own eyes how the state apparatus is systematically preparing to suppress discontent on a much broader scale. And this future is not far off.

The aforementioned Renée Nicole Good—a 37-year-old mother and driver—commited no violent act in the area of the ICE raid; she merely failed to obey the agents' orders to remain on the spot and began slowly driving away. She was murdered by three shots fired by an experienced ICE agent—through the windshield and the open side window. After the shooting, no agent provided medical assistance; on the contrary, they prevented local residents and emergency responders from the community from doing so.

On January 24, another killing occurred during an ICE operation: an agent shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse who was filming the operation. After a scuffle between a police officer and a demonstrator, he attempted to help the assaulted woman, was sprayed in the face with pepper spray, and while lying on the ground being beaten by several officers, was shot at point-blank range.

Developments in the United States are not some temporary “aberration,” but a normalized authoritarian form of rule that has gradually evolved over years through the erosion of legal constraints, the normalization of emergency measures, and the concentration of power in the hands of the executive. All of this is a response to the sharpening contradictions of capitalist society and the weakening of the U.S. position as a global imperialist power.

The rise in detentions, the increase in deaths, the arming and militarization of repressive forces, the impunity of state violence, and the breakdown of legal guarantees—this is all happening right now, and it is not accidental. This does not mean the immediate replacement of bourgeois parliamentary democracy with an outright dictatorship—the parliamentary illusion that the working class wields real power through the ballot remains an important factor for the ruling bourgeoisie and the stability of the capitalist regime—but rather the normalization of so-called emergency state responses (COVID-19, immigration, etc.), making repression an omnipresent reality and a routine form of governance. It would be naïve to believe that the Democratic Party, even if it wins the next election, would relinquish these “gains” achieved by the state amid intensified international economic and military tensions between imperialisms, thereby restricting the capitalist state’s room for maneuver in the event of economic or wartime crisis.

The repression embodied by ICE is a warning of what awaits the entire working class if this trajectory is not confronted.

Marches for human rights and dignity, however massive; appeals to democracy, the constitution, or the rule of law; the involvement of so-called civil society organizations, religious groups, and NGOs providing humanitarian aid; expressions of moral condemnation—all of this is mere scenery that offers no alternative to the advance of total repression. It is equally illusory and demoralizing to seek protection in the political sphere, namely from the Democratic Party, which presents itself as an opponent of Trump’s authoritarianism. In reality, this party is precisely what enables the entire process of growing authoritarianism. Its role is limited to criticizing “excesses” and “insufficient standards” in raids against immigrants. After all, it was Obama who took the decisive step toward strengthening and streamlining ICE. With Democratic support, budgets for DHS and ICE pass through Congress, and detention centers continue to operate as before. In “Democratic” states, governors deploy police forces and National Guard units against protesters. Disagreements between the Democrats and the Trump administration concern tactics, not substance.

An equally negative role is played by the leadership of official trade unions committed to class collaboration. While individual workers participate in protests, union leaderships actively block strikes and channel resistance into harmless symbolic gestures. Contractual commitments not to strike outside the framework of collective bargaining (so-called “no-strike clauses”) are used to keep workers on the job and working, even as repressive measures escalate.

Without a break from these political patterns imposed by bourgeois circles, any actions are reduced to theater—moments of releasing social pressure that ultimately change nothing and hinder the development of an independent class movement by diverting attention from the necessary terrain of struggle: class confrontation with capital and its state. A strike conducted with class-based methods and means is a weapon of struggle for workers; it is a lever by which they can enforce their demands against the bourgeoisie and directly affect the functioning of the machinery of the capitalist profit-making drive.

The repression embodied by “Trump’s Gestapo” is a warning of what awaits the entire working class if this trajectory is not confronted. The only effective response is the independent organization of protests, agitation, and the mass mobilization of the proletariat—transcending all the divisions into which the capitalist regime categorizes it (nationality, origin, legal status, race, gender, etc.)—and the revival of its open struggle as a class with its own interests, opposed to those of the oligarchy and the bourgeoisie as a whole. This means a break with the political, trade-union, and ideological forces that bind the proletariat to the existing order; the development of proletarian struggles on the economic terrain and class-based organization—using the means and methods of class character; and entry onto the terrain of political struggle with a clear opposition to the foreign operations of one’s own imperialist state, to its armament in preparation for a future imperialist world war, and with the defense of equality among all components of the class against the policy of “divide and rule.” The alternative is therefore not a return to an idealized and false democracy, but a conscious struggle against the capitalist system itself. Only on this basis can the working class confront the most powerful bourgeoisie in the world, defeat it, and set out on the path leading to liberation from the shackles of oppression, exploitation, capitalist wars, and catastrophes.

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