Read our editorial on mass deportations here, and the ongoing struggle against it here.
In an attack on immigrant and workers’ rights in Knoxville, TN, worker organizer and immigrant activist Alejandro Guizar Lozano was detained by ICE during a routine check-in with ICE in Nashville on October 15.
Lozano is 32 years old, a construction worker, former member and organizer with the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), and has lived in Knoxville for almost 20 years since immigrating from Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico, when he was 12 years old. Lozano is currently being transferred from Putnam County Jail in Cookeville, TN to an ICE detention center in Louisiana, as of 3 AM on October 16. Local activists reported that they had no further information about where he was being transferred.
In June 2025, the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office was the first in Tennessee to join ICE’s 287(g) Task Force model, which allows state and local law enforcement agencies to use immigration authority during law enforcement activity, meaning state and local agencies carry out functions of deportation under the direct supervision of ICE.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol’s participation in this program is what made the massive raids and arrests of over 200 immigrant workers on Nashville’s roads in the early hours of the day on May 4, 2025 possible.
Since age 18, Lozano has been organizing for better conditions for immigrants and workers across Tennessee. Local activists in Tennessee believe that he is being targeted, like Lelo Juarez, Jeanette Vizguerra, and many before him, for his work organizing immigrant workers against the increasingly harsh working-conditions imposed on them by the capitalist class. Lozano is a former member of the IUPAT and was working as a household appliance technician before being abducted.
Tennessee’s construction industry represents some of the worst conditions across the country, and is expected to expand by 16.55% from 2022 to 2032, with immigrants employed through subcontracted work in this expansion forming the lower strata of construction workers in terms of pay and rights. In 2021, there were 2,819 child laborers working in Tennessee. In 2023, Tennessee ranked third in the top states in the number of construction worker fatalities in the country.
Tennessee Democratic House Representative Gloria Johnson made it clear that the Democratic Party mafia is not the friend of the working class. After attempting to visit him at the Putnam County Jail the morning of 10/16, she stated that “President Obama deported more people than Trump, but he did it legally, with due process”. Democrats care about optics, not about stopping the terror of deportation.
The abduction of Lozano is yet another example of the imperialists’ interests in dividing the working-class, dividing foreign and native-born workers, and “good” and “bad” immigrants in a desperate attempt to resolve the crisis of imperialism, which also involves terror to drive down wages and working conditions, and to strip workers’ rights. Fighting against the extreme Right’s agenda of stoking jingoism requires revolutionary internationalism and breaking with the opportunism of the Democratic Party mafia.
The organization Allies of Knoxville’s Immigrant Neighbors, with which Lozano works, is collecting donations for his legal defense and for his mother here.
Image: Alejandro Guizar Lozano.
The Worker is an entirely volunteer-run revolutionary newspaper free from and radically antagonistic to corporate influence. We rely on the support of our readers to sustain our editorial line in service of the working class and the reconstitution of its party, the Communist Party. Make a one-time or recurring donation to our newspaper today:
Make a one-time donation
Make a monthly donation
Make a yearly donation
Choose an amount
Or enter a custom amount
Your contribution is appreciated.
Your contribution is appreciated.
Your contribution is appreciated.
DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly
