Read our article Combat and Resist ICE Terror here.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) kidnapped over 1,300 immigrants in an offensive across the Washington, DC area during the first two weeks of August.
“Operation Safe Community – Washington, DC” terrorized immigrants in DC and the surrounding Maryland and Virginia area from August 1 to 14. ICE has claimed that almost 400 of those targeted have criminal charges or convictions. ICE also alleged that some have gang affiliations, despite presenting no evidence. The operation has the same name as a July ICE operation in Atlanta, Georgia, that kidnapped more than 1,200 immigrants.
Many of the operation’s arrests occurred in the suburbs of DC, but the operation extended across Virginia and Maryland. Arrests were reported in Manassas, Alexandria, and Fairfax County, and Hyattsville, Maryland, as well as in Richmond and Chesterfield, Harrisonburg, and Wicomico County.
A local social worker told The Worker that ICE has been targeting immigrant law offices and day laborers’ corners. “They attacked areas like Centreville, Virginia, which is not known for gang activity, but for having a large concentration of day laborers waiting for jobs outside the [public] library,” she said.
During the same operation, ICE agents pointed a gun at therapist Carolina Molina while she was visiting immigration law offices in Falls Church, Virginia. The video of this interaction was widely circulated on social media.
In some of the counties in the DMV area, local governments have passed “sanctuary” policies that claim to block cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Regardless of their affiliation with either the Democratic or Republican mafia, none of these local governments mounted any resistance as ICE carried out its abduction operation.
Across the country, ICE kidnapped 49,571 immigrants in July, the largest single-month total so far under ultra-reactionary President Trump. July beat the previous record, which was set in June, with 6,500 more abductions, a 15% increase.
The federal government has relied on lower-visibility kidnapping operations since the firing of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem in March and her replacement by Markwayne Mullin. Under Noem, mass resistance against ICE operations exploded across the country following the January ICE murders of activists Renée Good and Alex Pretti during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis.
Mullin has shifted away from high-profile operations like Metro Surge or Midway Blitz in Chicago, instead focusing on kidnapping immigrants and workers at courthouses, during scheduled immigration check-ins, at airports, and during traffic stops. This approach is designed to ramp up ICE operations to meet the Trump administration’s deportation quota of 2,000 per day without provoking protests and rebellion.
The Democratic and Republican mafias have tactical disagreements on how best to conduct mass deportations, and they jockey with each other for positions in the state bureaucracy in the upcoming midterm farce. Only the rebellions of the people have succeeded in preventing deportations where they have been most militant and organized.
Image: ICE agents kidnap immigrants as part of “Operation Safe Community”. Credit: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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