Since the huge Women’s Marches in protest of Trump’s policies the day after his inauguration, there have been almost daily demonstrations against his policies as they are effected. The latest includes rallies against his stepped up raids and deportations of undocumented immigrants.

In one week leading up to February 10, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested nearly 700 people in raids in at least eleven states, including Arizona, California, New York, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri and Wisconsin.

Trump tweeted after the raids, “The crackdown on illegal criminals is merely the keeping of my campaign promise. Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!” This is a falsehood, like most Trump tweets.

An executive order by Trump expanded the group of immigrants prioritized for deportation to include anyone found guilty of any crime, as well as those accused of crimes but not convicted.

An example was Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, arrested on February 8 and deported to Mexico, leaving a husband and two teenage children behind. She had been living in the U.S. for 21 years. Hundreds of supporters protested her removal by surrounding the van carrying her away. Her “crime” was a felony conviction in 2008 for using a false social security number to get a job.

Her 2008 arrest was by the notorious racist Arizona Sheriff Joseph Arpaio, known for his mass roundups of undocumented workers, subjecting them to humiliating public treatment and having them deported. Arpaio raided the facility where she worked. She wasn’t present but he confiscated the company records and found her false social security number, and arrested her at home.

After her conviction, she was required to check in with ICE annually, which she did. But she was allowed to stay in the U.S., work and raise her children with her husband for all these years. She had gone to ICE for her yearly check-in February 8 when she was arrested and deported because the 2008 felony was on her record, and under Trump’s new rules was eligible for deportation.

After her deportation, Guadalupe’s husband, Aaron, said on Democracy Now, “Back in 2008 …my son, he was around eight years old. He saw how his mom was taken away from him, handcuffed. Now, that’s traumatizing for a kid that is eight years old who doesn’t know what’s going on. Why is police going into their house and took their mom away?....We’ve been suffering a lot, and now we’re suffering because of Trump. We’re victims of Trump…We think about our kids…. They’re not going to have any trust in police, with the sheriff, with ICE.”

Undocumented workers, by definition, have no documents to present to employers to obtain employment. So the great majority – millions – have to use false documents of one kind or another. Others are hired at low wages “under the table.” All who use false documents are guilty of felonies. Moreover, all the 11 million undocumented are guilty of felonies for coming into the U.S. “illegally.”

Moreover, the “War on Drugs” has resulted in millions of felony convictions, as can be seen by the mass incarceration in the U.S., way disproportionally of African Americans and Latinos. Many convictions are for “crimes” such as use of marijuana. This is another way that Mexicans and other Latino undocumented workers can be convicted felons, and be subject to deportation.

As one of the protesters trying to block the deportation of Guadalupe said on TV, “Stop the kidnapping of Lupita [Guadalupe], so she can be back with her family. I’m here because it’s Lupita, tomorrow it may be my mom, and the next day it might be your mom. We need to stop the deportations, because there are eight million people at risk …who are a priority for the Trump administration, in the Trump deportation machine.”

Her daughter Jacqueline said at the demonstration, “I’m going to keep fighting for my mom and for the other families that are going through the same thing, because this is unfair.”

Her son Angel added, “We want her back, back in our arms. We want her back over here where she belongs. She belongs with us. And we’re going to keep on fighting. We’re not going to stop.”

ICE says these raid are “routine” and put in place by Obama. They have a point. Obama did create the machinery for what is happening. But Trump is using that machinery to go much further. While Obama deported two million people, more than any previous President, earning him the title of “Deporter in Chief,” Trump vows to up the ante and go him more than one better.

One favorite line by all the Democratic and Republican politicians who have favored criminalizing the undocumented is that they “should have played by the rules, and come into the country legally.”

But it is almost impossible for Mexican and Central American workers fleeing the economic ravages caused by U.S. imperialist exploitation, and the crime wave resulting from the U.S. “War on Drugs,” to get papers to come to the U.S. The waiting lists to do so are so long it can take 20 years to “play by the rules.”

Even the best proposals of the capitalist politicians of both parties for immigration reform completely ignore any reform of the racist “rules” that make legal immigration impossible for most Mexicans.

This whole setup has for years been useful for important sections of U.S. industries that utilize undocumented workers. Because they have no rights as citizens, and can be deported at any time, these workers are forced to accept sub-standard wages and working conditions. The mass deportations under Obama, and the anti-immigrant hysteria whipped up by Trump have made conditions for these workers more precarious.

California capitalist farmers have warned against carrying Trump’s racist scapegoating of Mexicans for the ills facing American workers too far. They fear they will have to hire workers at higher wages with better conditions if too many undocumented workers are deported or flee in fear. They do like the effects of Trump’s campaign in intimidating their workers, but they want to keep it at “just right” levels – for them.

Barry Sheppard