Unite and fight against Trump’s Militarized immigration attacks and fascist terror

The International Migrants Alliance (US) and the Resist US-Led War Movement echo the peoples call, from the migrants inside and across the U.S. region resisting their detention at Guantanamo bay, and the 50,000 Cubans protesting outside to condemn use of the illegal decades-long occupation of Cuba in Guantanamo Bay by the US military, amidst the slew of fascist immigration executive orders since Trump came into office.

Militarized immigration enforcement and fascist terror

The Trump administration has used US military bases and the so-called "whole of government immigration crackdown" to put shackled immigrants on U.S. military planes for deportation fights and sent at least 127 migrants in February to the U.S. lockup at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The former/recent detainees described "small, windowless cells, constant lighting hindering sleep, inadequate food and medical care, and verbal and physically violent abuse from staff," labeling the conditions as "a living hell."  The executive order of the President aims to prepare Guantanamo Bay to expand its capacity to transfer 30,000 migrants there. The Trump administration has also expanded federal agents’ arrests of people in the U.S. without documentation and abandoned programs like Temporary Protective Status (TPS) or the asylum process that gave some permission to stay.

Just like his previous term, Trump inherited an immigration system used by both Democrats and Republicans for terrorizing and tearing apart migrant families to advance their profit-driven political projects. While this current moment recalls the horrors of voice recordings of crying children after being torn away from their families during Trump’s first term, or the images of migrant children being kept in literal cages inside warehouses, it must be remembered that this policy has been documented since at least US President Clinton’s mass deportation campaigns. Past President Biden deported around 1.5 million people, Bush Jr. deported around 2 million, while Obama deported a staggering 3.2 million, earning him the name “Deporter in Chief.” Conditions in detention facilities have been kept nightmarish by each of these Presidents as well, with over 50 deaths reported between 2017 and 2021 alone (and many more likely to have been not reported), and migrants suffering disease, starvation, and abuse by detention staff.  Now Trump plans to expand ICE detention capacity to 151,500, with overall mass deportation plans that could reach a cost of $27 billion in its first year. Truly, Trump’s war on migrants is a war launched against the people long ago, but from his campaign threats during the election to his actions in his first month in office, it’s clear that things will only get worse, with the Guantanamo Bay detention of migrants signalling the worst..

Trump's openly fascist immigration policies target migrants and left-leaning movements equally as "enemies of the state," wielding repression and criminalization as militaristic tools to build up a narrative aligned with the Bush and Obama era’s "War on Terror" doctrine. Trump's targets, lumped into the category of "terrorists," have included everything from student activists fighting for Palestine, migrants at the border, loosely identified “Marxists” and “woke radicals,” and drug cartels operating within Mexico itself. Deploying ICE and CBP but also DHS, FBI, DEA, and ATF agents to round up migrants and other scapegoats, the War on Terror policy continues, with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth describing the base at Guantanamo Bay as “the front line of the war against America’s southern border.” Using the racist trope of "guarding against an invasion," the US is using the Southern Command of the US military to deploy forces, with an overall border program that is estimated to exceed $1 billion. Since Trump’s second term began and he immediately declared a “National Emergency” and closed the border, about 6,500 new active duty forces have been ordered to deploy to the southern border. Before that, there were about 2,500 troops already there, largely National Guard troops on active duty orders, along with a couple of hundred active duty aviation forces.

In fact, Trump's "Whole Government Immigration Crackdown" is part of his shock and awe policy scapegoating immigrants for falsely causing the economic crisis that is underpinning the racist and xenophobic attacks of his administration and everyday Americans suffering the failure of both parties’ neoliberal, neoconservative, and fascist policies.


A history of torture, intervention and impunity

From Guantanamo Bay, the US spent the last century surveilling its hemispheric neighbors, plotting overseas coups, and torturing hundreds of “War on Terror” suspects. Since inception, the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay has faced ongoing legal, political, and international scrutiny regarding its operations. In the wake of Spain’s defeat in the 1898 Spanish American War, the US promised Cuba its freedom; it came with heavy caveats, including access to the 45-square-mile military base. Established in 1903, Guantanamo Bay has been under U.S. control for over a century, despite its location on Cuban soil.

The US held Haitian asylum seekers in Guantanamo Bay starting in the early 1990s, being picked up by the US Coast Guard, and held without due process in the detention facility. Guantanamo Bay gained international notoriety in the early 2000s as a detention center for terrorism suspects. Numerous reports have documented human rights violations within its facilities, including long-term isolation, inadequate medical care, and documented torture. In addition, many people imprisoned there were found to have been detained indefinitely without trial.

The cost of the Guantanamo Bay detention center has amounted to half a billion US dollars a year, pulling from what could have been spent on much-needed revenue for government services for the people. Such is the cost of the “War on Terror” forcibly paid for by taxes of people in the US, including undocumented immigrants.


Militarism and forced migration are a cycle caused by imperialism

War and militarism contribute greatly to forced migration. In the first 9 months of 2023, over 100 million refugees were displaced by war and conflict throughout the world, and this was before the genocidal Israeli war on Palestinians in Gaza even started. US imperialism and imperialist countries continue to wage and prepare for wars while subjecting the people of their colonies and neo colonies to policies of economic plunder that put their people into poverty. Local reactionary and fascist rulers wage war against their own people, often at the behest of these same foreign imperialist interests who provide them weapons, training and a cut of the future profits to enact brutal counterinsurgency wars. War devastates local economies and forces people and whole families to migrate for better opportunities abroad, fleeing violence, climate crises, and political repression as well, leaving them with no real choice - either starve or die at home or gamble on highly exploitative jobs far away from their family with still little chance of maintaining a sustainable livelihood.

Forced starvation through blockades and sanctions has been a favored tactic of US imperialism - in Venezuela, Cuba, Afghanistan and many other countries. In Venezuela alone, these sanctions caused the people to be deprived of food and medicine, led to the death of over 100,000 and forced thousands to flee the country. The US is retaliating against Venezuela for asserting their sovereignty. Not only do they prohibit US-Venezuela trade, they coerce the entire world economy into ceasing exchange as well. But the Venezuelan people have frustrated attempts to break their sovereignty and continue to struggle to build a nation free of US imperialism in spite of crushing sanctions.

One migrant, José, was detained in Renton, WA and recently transferred to Guantanamo from a detention center in Texas, alongside others deemed a “high-threat.” Contrary to the Trump administration’s blatant lies about the migrants being transferred to Guantanamo, José is a beloved father, husband, brother, son, and friend who fled violence from his homeland and supported his family and migrant community in Washington state. The Trump administration has cowered to the collective people power and removed all Venezuelans from Guantanamo Bay on Thursday, February 20th including José. He was then deported from Guantanamo Bay back to Venezuela. His family, IMA, and a community of migrant activists have been fighting alongside him for his freedom every step of the way.  The fight is not over, we need to demand justice for the atrocities that José has had to live through at the hands of the US imperialist state. JUSTICE FOR JOSÉ!

Many migrants and refugees from war are suffering fates similar to the “War on Terror” detainees at Guantanamo Bay and other US Black Sites around the world. In the end, war makers and fascists will always need a scapegoat to falsely lay blame on, subject to unimaginable torture, and, when no longer needed, disappear into the world where their fates become unknown. Such is the inherent relationship between militarism, forced migration, detention and mass incarceration, and fascist rule under the imperialist system.


Who profits from these attacks?

Who profits from this violence? The private prison executives that want the prospect of lucrative new detention center deals, since Trump's mass deportation plans would massively expand the largest immigration detention system in the world. Over 90 percent of all people detained by ICE in the U.S. are held in private detention facilities today. Who else benefits? The use of Guantanamo for Trump's mass deportation program gives the US the excuse to maintain its military outpost in the Caribbean after over 2 decades of “War on Terror” imprisonment, using the military base to stake out US influence over resources and riches to extract from the Caribbean and across the continent.


Struggling to end the illegal military occupation and shut down Guantanamo Bay

Where there is systematic oppression, there will always be peoples’ resistance.

The enduring occupation of Guantanamo Bay has been a source of mass opposition, with Cuba asserting its sovereignty and the US maintaining its military presence. Though the US maintains around 750 military bases throughout the world, Guantánamo is a base in a sovereign nation whose government has described US presence as an “illegal military occupation.”

For more than half a century, the government and people of Cuba have been demanding the return of the occupied territory in Guantanamo and an end to military activities in the area. They argue that the US military presence on their territory is not only illegal under international law but also violates the principles of self-determination of peoples. The mass protests of 50 thousand Cubans last month to demand the US withdrawal and oppose the US government's ongoing interference against Cuba's sovereignty are a powerful show of the people's willingness to struggle against the US’s fascist anti-migrant agenda and its illegal military occupation. 

There are growing mass protests across the US of migrant communities rejecting the militarized ICE enforcement in their communities, at the border, at detention centers, and all the way back to our homelands. This growing resistance shows that both in the host countries and in their home countries, migrants will struggle for an end to the US intervention in US colonies and neo-colonies.  The people of the world have had enough of the policies that subject their people to the neoliberal plunder that forces their people into poverty and compels them to migrate.  Migrants, survivors of detention, and all other peace-minded people will continue to fight against the abuse, detention, family separation and exploitation of Trump’s fascist agenda.

In this way, the migrant justice and peace movements must be arm in arm, united in the struggle for a bright future out of the hands of the war profiteers and fascist strongmen!