American Labor Needed Unity. Then Came Trump’s Immigration Crackdown. |
Federal agents slammed California labor leader David Huerta, 58, into the Los Angeles sidewalk. They had already sprayed him with tear gas. Huerta could barely open his eyes as federal law enforcement officers dragged his body away, the crowd screaming in protest. He spent three days in federal custody before being released on charges of obstructing an ICE raid on an apparel store.
That was June. In the months since, labor unions have been galvanized against President Donald Trump’s deportation machine, challenging the president in the streets, the courtroom, and at the ballot box — and helping an American labor movement historically rife with divisions over immigration and race to coalesce.
“In their attempts to silence me, they gave me a louder platform,” Huerta, the California president of the Service Employees International Union and also president of SEIU-United Service Workers West, said in an interview with The Intercept. “[People] saw, if this could happen to a labor leader, a prominent leader, it could happen to anyone.”
Related
Unions Sue to Stop AI Surveillance Powering Trump’s “Catch and Revoke” Deportation Scheme
Since Huerta’s arrest, labor unions — including SEIU, AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Union of Southern Service Workers — have helped lead thousands of demonstrations against Trump’s immigration policies, which they argue have largely targeted the working class, including many in their unions. The energy has spread far beyond the LA storefront where Huerta was arrested — spanning across cities like Seattle, Boston, and New York. Huerta’s arrest and the surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids across the country have injected renewed fervor in an organized labor movement that has been in decline since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, and now faces an existential threat from Trump’s anti-labor agenda.
The labor movement in the United States used to be “very anti-immigration,” said Jacob Remes, a labor historian and a professor at New York University. But that’s changed, particularly as immigrants have come to........