On June 9, 2025, I attended a protest in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania led by the local SEIU union (Local 32BJ).

The protest, which was quite peaceful I should emphasize, was organized primarily to protest the arrest of SEIU California President David Huerta who was gravely injured and then apprehended by police in Los Angeles in response to his observing and protesting an immigration raid by ICE which targeted workers.

While Huerta, a U.S. citizen born in the United States, was ultimately released on a $50,000 bond, he is still facing felony charges stemming from his exercise of his right to peacefully protest and to pay witness to ICE operations.

Similar peaceful protests in support of Huerta were organized around the country by SEIU.

The mistreatment of Huerta underscores one of the key issues being ignored by much of the coverage of the L.A. protests which have undoubtedly been at least partially marked by violence, property destruction and looting.

That is, while President Trump has justified his immigration crackdowns as a move to go after criminal gang members who have entered the country illegally, these operations instead have cast a very wide net, catching hard-working, tax-paying immigrants, and sometimes even citizens like Huerta, in its grasp. The ICE raids have in turn been violent and heavy-handed, often separating parents from their children.

In numerous instances, the ICE raids have resulted in the summary arrest, detention and deportation of individuals—even sending some to a notorious, brutal prison in El Salvador.

They have occurred in defiance of the U.S. Constitution which provides due process protections even for undocumented immigrants. Indeed, the Fifth Amendment provides due process for any “person.”

The Supreme Court has made it clear that “person” includes citizens and non-citizens alike.

The point is that the current ICE raids do not appear calculated to maintain law and order, but rather to subvert both and to spread fear amongst the population at large.

And indeed, as a number of commentators have opined, this campaign, now backed by the National Guard and U.S. Marines who have been activated and sent to engage in police operations in Los Angeles—another questionable move under the Constitution—seems actually calculated to elicit the very violent responses we are witnessing.

And why would the Trump Administration want to trigger such violence? The answer seems clear.

Since Trump’s first term in office, he has teased the possibility of invoking the rarely-used Insurrection Act of 1807 which would give him the prerogative to use the U.S. military to suppress whatever he deems to be “civil disorder,” including perhaps protests in support of Palestine and against the major social program cuts that Trump’s “Big Bill” currently contemplates.

In short, this would allow Trump to impose a form of martial law which would greatly cut back on our legal and Constitutional rights as well as on progressive social and labor movements.

In terms of the targeting of the labor movement, the arrest and beating of David Huerta points to the fact that Trump appears to be intentionally aiming his crackdowns upon union workers, many of whom are immigrants and many of whom are actually here legally.

A very good article in Naked Capitalism makes this point, noting that “[n]ot only is the Trump administration not going after the employers of undocumented labor, but it is instead targeting union members who were legally living and working in the US. Team Trump is doing so by cancelling humanitarian parole, revoking the visas of many graduate student union members, and other ICE actions that target individuals in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong skin color and potentially the wrong outlook on capital-labor relations.” (emphasis in article).

As Naked Capitalism concludes, “[w]hile militarized ICE agents sweeping into communities across the country might appease some of Trump’s MAGA supporters and provide the illusion of doing something about the exploitation of foreign workers, a closer look shows that it is part of a coordinated attack on all of labor.”

Sadly, most people do not realize these facts, and because of this, they are more likely to go along with Trump’s crackdowns. Indeed, polls seem to bear this out. Thus, a poll taken during the period from just before until the very start of the unrest in L.A. shows “that 54 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s deportation policy—higher than his approval ratings on the economy (42 percent) or inflation (39 percent).”

At the same time, the same poll shows that “[w]hile over 50 percent of Americans say they support Trump’s overall goals on deportation, 56 percent disapprove of how those goals are being carried out. Asked who the administration is prioritizing for removal, 53 percent said ‘dangerous criminals,’ while 47 percent believe the focus is on people who are not dangerous.”

What this poll seems to show is that if more people knew that working people and union members who are lawfully here are being targeted for raids and deportations, they would be less likely to support such actions. In addition, I would assert, people would be less likely to support these actions of Trump if they did not believe that those being targeted, or those protesting the raids for that matter, were criminals.

Therefore, it is my view that it would be important for the left and the labor movement to (a) put their efforts in educating the public about the true nature of Trump’s crackdowns; and (b) avoid playing into Trump’s hands by either carrying out violence in the process of protesting or by condoning or excusing such violence when it takes place.

While there is a temptation to romanticize violent uprisings against the repressive tactics of the State—and I see such romanticization all over social media—the fact is that this violence, especially when it seems untargeted or badly targeted, will repel the popular support which is both readily available and also necessary to counter the repression.

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