As part of the Trump administration’s attempt to establish a presidential dictatorship and overturn what remains of the US Constitution, the government is rapidly expanding its war on immigrants.

Recent developments underscore the advanced state of the crisis and the need for the working class to intervene independently against both parties and their shared anti-immigrant agenda. What is being done to immigrants will soon be used against all opponents of the financial oligarchy.

In response to the shooting of an off-duty Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent Saturday in New York City, Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem threatened to “flood” major cities with ICE agents at a Monday press conference.

Homan declared, “Sanctuary cities are now our priority. We are going to flood the zone ... sanctuary cities get exactly what they don’t want, more agents in the community and more agents in the worksite.”

For the past six months, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents—often masked and backed by police or militarized units—have violently disappeared workers, students and longtime residents as part of Trump and his fascist adviser Stephen Miller’s goal of deporting 3,000 people a day, or 1 million a year.

Bloomberg reported Tuesday that the federal government granted a $1.26 billion contract to Virginia-based Acquisition Logistics Company to build a sprawling tent camp at Fort Bliss, Texas.

The camp will hold 5,000 beds, making it the largest immigration detention site in the country. Fort Bliss, located in the Chihuahuan Desert near El Paso, regularly sees temperatures above 95°F (35°C). Forcing people to live in tents there will lead to immense suffering and death.

Other military bases are also being utilized for domestic repression. A July 15 letter signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved DHS requests to detain 1,000 immigrants each at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey and Camp Atterbury in Indiana and to double the capacity of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp to 400 detainees.

Conditions inside the sprawling for-profit immigration detention network are degrading and deadly.

A recently released Human Rights Watch report, “You Feel Like Your Life is Over,” based on interviews with detainees and families, exposes horrific conditions in three overcrowded Florida centers. At least 11 people have died in ICE custody this year, including five in Florida. Nearly 57,000 are detained nationwide despite ICE’s official capacity of 41,000.

Florida’s Krome North Service Processing Center, the Broward Transitional Center (run by GEO Group), and the Miami Federal Detention Center (BOP-run) are all implicated in abuse.

Individuals interviewed by Human Rights Watch described freezing overcrowded cells, broken toilets and denial of medical care or hygiene.

• Brian and José: Asserted guards violently attacked protesting detainees on April 15, using stun grenades and restraints after disabling a camera.

• Pedro: Said that guards retaliated against detainees who had visitors. “The guard made me get completely naked … turn around, bend down, and get on all fours and cough.”

• Harpinder Chauhan: Said inmates were forced to eat “like dogs” while shackled.

• Andrea and Rosa: Recalled women being denied medications, leading to one diabetic detainee being hospitalized.

• The wife of a detainee has not heard from her husband, Jesus, in over a month. “I don’t know if he’s alive. … My husband has no record here. He’s being held incommunicado.”

• Rosa on solitary confinement: “If you ask for help, they isolate you. … So, people stay silent.”

The recently opened Everglades concentration camp, which was not featured in the report, already faces reports of overcrowded, steaming tents and maggot-infested food.

Importantly, the report notes that one of the factors leading to overcrowding at ICE detention facilities was the passage and adoption of the Laken Riley Act. The Laken Riley Act, rushed through Congress with Democratic votes prior to the inauguration of Trump, mandates detention without bail for immigrants accused of petty crimes.

There is mass opposition to the fascistic attack on immigrants, expressed in many protests throughout the country, including the mobilization of communities against the deportation of workers. Last month, polling by Gallup found that 78 percent of respondents favor allowing undocumented immigrants to live in the US on their way to becoming citizens. 

The same poll found that 85 percent said undocumented children brought to the US by their parents should be allowed to become US citizens, and 79 percent of respondents thought “immigration is a good thing.” Only 30 percent said they thought immigration to the US should be reduced, down from 55 percent last year.

Opposition to the war on immigrants, however, cannot be waged through the Democratic Party or any of the institutions of the state. The Biden administration, and the Obama administration before it, carried out mass deportations and laid the foundations for Trump’s immigration Gestapo. Biden also oversaw the brutal crackdown on college campuses against students protesting the genocide in Gaza, which has continued under Trump with the full support of the Democratic Party.

Democrats are not opposing Trump but are active partners in the war on immigrants. When Trump nationalized California’s National Guard to aid ICE raids, Governor Gavin Newsom sent 800 state police against protesters. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass imposed a curfew and unleashed Los Angeles police on protesters.

Under conditions in which US citizens and legal immigrants are being detained and deported without due process, last week, in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed deportations, while criticizing some of Trump’s specific actions:

If you are a drug dealer, if you are somebody in this country undocumented or has committed a crime, I think most people think, hey, have a nice day, you’re out of here. And I support that.

This followed earlier statements by Sanders that Trump had “done right” in attacking immigrants and “making sure our border is stronger.”

The statements and actions of the Democrats over the last six months underscore that the same party that is responsible for Trump’s return to the White House is incapable of defending democratic rights. This is because the Democrats, no less than the Republicans, are a party of Wall Street and war.

Trump’s fascistic assault on immigrants is aimed at scapegoating the most vulnerable in society to shield the real source of poverty, war, and repression: the capitalist ruling class. The capitalist oligarchy is waging war on immigrants even as it is slashing social programs, public education, workplace regulations and every social and democratic right of the entire working class.

The working class must reject all efforts to divide it along national, racial or ethnic lines. The fight to defend immigrant workers can succeed only through the unified mobilization of the working class as a whole—black, white, native-born, immigrant, documented and undocumented alike.

This means organizing independently of the capitalist parties and building rank-and-file committees in every workplace, school and neighborhood to oppose deportation operations and prepare collective action using the immense social power of the working class.

The defense of immigrants is inseparable from the defense of all democratic rights. To defeat fascism and stop the drive to war and dictatorship, workers must take up the fight for socialism. As Karl Marx wrote in 1848, “The working men have no country.” The solution to national fascism is international socialism: “Workers of the world, unite!”