Immigration authorities raided a warehouse last Wednesday in Edison, New Jersey, arresting 29 undocumented workers and injuring three.

Both Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) participated in the raid. At 10 a.m., about 20 masked and armed agents stormed Smart Logistics, a CBP-bonded facility that serves Amazon, UPS, and FedEx, while others blocked the exits.

Workers described chaos as people scrambled to escape. ICE deployed drones inside the cavernous building to hunt those who fled into the rafters. Witnesses said one worker was slammed to the floor and cuffed, another left bleeding, and a third was injured after falling from a stairwell.

Family members, alerted by activists, gathered outside in anguish as ICE interrogated every employee. Those with documentation were forced to wear yellow wristbands before being released from a holding area inside the warehouse.

Amanda Dominguez of the worker advocacy group New Labor, who witnessed the Edison raid, said: “It was extremely violent yesterday. I just really want to highlight how violent this was and that this isn’t just an attack on an immigrant community but on working-class people.”

Smart Logistics’ CBP-bonded status provided the legal cover. Such facilities allow CBP to enter at any time for “inspection,” which ICE exploits to stage raids without judicial warrants. New Jersey and New York City host about 80 of these bonded warehouses, all of them potential targets for similar operations. In July, ICE raided another bonded facility in Edison, Alba Wines and Spirits, arresting roughly 20 workers.

The Edison raid is part of a systematic state policy aimed at overriding constitutional protections and establishing a presidential dictatorship. ICE and CBP’s lawless behavior is central to Trump’s strategy of placing the state above the law, instilling fear, normalizing extrajudicial power, and eroding democratic rights.

This drive was codified in March 2025 in Trump’s order “Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens,” which baldly asserted that “Federal supremacy with respect to immigration, national security, and foreign policy is axiomatic.”

The Democrats are acting as Trump’s accomplices. Governor Phil Murphy, a billionaire “lame duck” leaving office next year, declared after a July raid that his administration “cooperates with [federal authorities] all the time.” Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill has remained silent on the Edison raids. Last year she had criticized Trump’s use of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst for detention operations—not out of concern for immigrant workers, but because it was a “blatant misuse of one of New Jersey’s most critical military assets.”

Representative Frank Pallone, whose district includes Edison, said Trump was “just trying to make a political point.” Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim issued a joint statement calling the raids “performative theatrics” and a “shameful attempt…to distract from corruption.” California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has stooped to childish name-calling.

These statements, presenting a coup d’etat as mere “theater,” serve to minimize the danger of police-state conditions in preparation for dictatorship.

The complicity runs down to the local level. Edison’s mayor, Sam Joshi, admitted that federal agencies had informed the town’s police beforehand, explaining the lack of police presence on Wednesday by citing New Jersey’s “sanctuary” status.

Yet on Thursday in Trenton, local police went further, setting up a cordon for ICE agents trying to detain workers in a house raid. When an activist demanded to see a warrant, she was arrested by the Democratic mayor’s police force. Trenton’s mayor, Reed Gusciora, twisted himself into knots claiming that blocking streets for ICE was “community safety” and not collaboration.

ICE disappeared the Edison detainees into its network of jails without informing families where their loved ones were being taken. The immigrant advocacy group Cosecha-NJ reported that some were transported to ICE’s Newark facility on Frelinghuysen Avenue, while others may be held at the Elizabeth Detention Center or Delaney Hall, where detainees rioted in June over abuse and lack of food. ICE has declined to disclose where the 29 workers will be arraigned.

Workers and activists told reporters that those detained in Edison were from Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Peru. Edison, a city of nearly 110,000, is almost half immigrant, with the majority from Asia. The raids have ripped through a community whose survival depends on low-wage immigrant labor while Amazon and logistics giants profit from Smart Logistics’ role as a supply-chain hub.

The Edison raid is a warning: Trump’s coup requires police-state conditions not just for immigrants but for the entire working class. Already, Trump has deployed troops into Washington D.C. and is threatening to send troops into Chicago and other major cities, especially jurisdictions with so-called “sanctuary” laws.

He claims these deployments are to fight crime, but the arrests so far have almost exclusively targeted immigrant workers. On Thursday, the State Department confirmed that it will subject all 55 million US visa holders to “continuous immigration vetting”—a euphemism for permanent, mass surveillance.

The Democratic Party and the corporate media downplay this danger, insisting Trump’s actions are “distractions” or political “theater.” In reality, they are mechanisms of dictatorship. The Democrats’ real fear is not Trump, but the social explosion that would be triggered if workers fully grasped the significance of his actions.

That explosion is already developing. The Edison raid provoked immediate outrage. In Trenton, neighbors confronted ICE agents directly, despite police repression.

The anger and courage of workers and youth must be armed with a clear political perspective. It is not enough to oppose Trump as an individual or to rely on the Democrats who collaborate in these raids.

Trump’s dictatorship drive is bound up with the needs of American capitalism to suppress opposition at home and prosecute imperialist war abroad. With 2,000 U.S. Marines already deployed in gunboats off the coast of Venezuela, the connection between repression of immigrants and preparations for war is plain.

The Socialist Equality Party insists that the defense of immigrant workers, the fight against dictatorship, and the struggle against imperialist war are one and the same. They require the independent mobilization of the working class, armed with a socialist and internationalist program.