
‘There’s got to be the political pushback in terms of broad-based, deep organizing…What we really need is a movement…there is at this point no coordinated national movement [but] there will be. …We have to go on the offensive in the broadest sense…we have to be much more affirmative about what our vision is.’
Editor’s note: The People’s Tribune on Jan. 17 interviewed attorney Camilo Pérez-Bustillo to get his take on what is happening around immigration. He is former executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and still an active member of the NLG, a member of the leadership group of Witness at the Border, and a co-founder and advisor to the binational People’s Movement for Peace and Justice. Below is an edited transcript of the interview.
Bob Lee: It seems clear that the effort to attack immigrants and toughen up the regulation of the border transcends Democratic and Republican administrations for a number of years now. Is there a broader agenda behind this than what’s being publicly stated?
Camilo Pérez-Bustillo: That’s a really important point. There’s an immediate expression of that, which was a bill that went through the Senate this morning, this Laken Riley Bill. That’s a really key example of what you just described, which is, 10 Democratic senators rolling over and voting with the Republicans to promote this really outrageous historically unjust bill, which basically has the potential to criminalize just about anybody who has the wrong immigrant status and is either arrested or charged with a crime, not even convicted of a crime. There’s half dozen crimes that are listed [in the bill]. It’s basically minor offenses, you know, because immigration law already makes it very difficult for folks if there are more serious criminal offenses. And that’s of course the whole “migrant crime” rhetoric that, that we’ve been hearing so much. But the bottom line is this expands the criminalization of migrants to a much broader group, including things like shoplifting.
We don’t have the bill yet in a final form, but the key thing, going to your question, is that this reflects how within the Democratic Party, there’s this increasingly visible shift, from supposedly what was a sense of the Democratic Party being somewhat more sympathetic or aligned with immigrant rights. Those days are long gone. And that was evident, of course, in the recent presidential campaign. And all of the wrong lessons, of course, are being drawn, sadly, from the Harris defeat. And among those “lessons” is that the Democrats were being punished for being soft on the border and soft on immigration policy. So it’s the Democrats bending over backwards now, to say the least, to move the position closer, to “the center” by kowtowing, surrendering to the worst impulses that are reflected of course in the incoming administration.
Many of us in the immigrant rights movement and in broader progressive movements for years and decades have had concerns, to say the least, about the Democratic Party at multiple historic moments, going back to the 1960s. There’s a long story behind this, but it’s especially evident right now, as, as the crunch comes, so to speak. As probably the single most anti-immigrant administration in recent history gets ready to take power, the Democrats are in retreat in very dangerous ways. Because of course, this sends important signals symbolically, because beyond the fact it’s just a terrible law. And it’s almost certainly going to be successfully challenged in the courts, you know, to one degree or another. There will be further developments as this law and its application evolves. And it’s probably unconstitutional. There are a million things we could say about the problems with the law. But the important thing is that it’s symptomatic of something deeper. It’s not just one bill, it reflects a real narrative that the Democrats have bought into.
Like one that’s a recently elected senator who’s immigrant origins – he’s half Colombian, half Mexican – Ruben Gallego from Arizona, who may be perceived as a progressive on other issues, but on this one….the bottom line is he was one of the 10 who caved. And when you look at somebody like him who theoretically represents maybe a different potential within the Democrat wing of progressives, and if people like Gallego are giving up, it makes things even more concerning, you know?
BL: What are the corporations and big business trying to achieve with the attack on immigrants? Are they looking for some kind of immigration system that’s going to better suit corporate needs? Or is this just about trying to keep people divided so they can impose some kind of fascism on the country? What’s the agenda in that sense?
CPB: I think it’s a really important question. We have to think about it more deeply. There’s lots of layers. There’s a debate within the, the ruling faction, let’s say. There are divisions. There’s always been a part of, let’s say, Wall Street, in the most classical sense, including literally the Wall Street Journal, that has been basically promoters of what they conceive of as open borders for obvious reasons. You know, sort of an extension of free trade. And, like we saw in the case of the European Union, the idea of freedom of movement as part of freedom as to the flows of capital, right? Applying the same principle to flow of people. I mean, it’s problematic for us who look at this from the left, because it’s like they end up talking about the stuff that we always get accused of promoting, you know, the idea of open borders. So there’s some, there’s some real contradictions and ironies there. That’s on the one hand. So there’s, some core of that that emerged in the last few weeks, including like Ramaswamy and Musk as sort of key extra-official actors and players in all of this who said, well, you know, we do need skilled workers, and so we need to expand, essentially guest worker programs, you know, specialized visas for like high high tech.
Because that’s who they are, right? That’s who they represent. So there’s definitely some very concrete material interests at play there. Silicon Valley needs more technical visas of that kind. So that’s one layer to it. And you can think about other niches in the economy as a whole like that. And again, the ways in which that’s consistent with capitalist interests in terms of free trade, right? So there’s all that, but on the other hand, what’s clearly worked for the group that’s about to take power, which is a coalition, basically, is to appeal to the worst. I mean, there’s never been a mainstream party that has campaigned as openly as this one did – the Trump version of the Republican Party – on this incredibly powerful brew of racism and xenophobia.
I mean, I’m talking like going back to the 1850s, right? The Know Nothing Party in the 1850s is probably the closest similar example. There’s always been, of course, racism and xenophobia in US politics and in US policy. This is not anything new in that sense, but this is something different within that broader spectrum. And for example, the way in which they explicitly campaigned on the basis of the migrant crime theme narrative, you know, going back to Laken Riley and all that, but also on mass deportation specifically. You know, all the signs that you could see at the Republican convention and so on explicitly promoting mass deportation. And I don’t think there was a single major speech or rally where Trump didn’t headline mass deportation as an absolutely top item on the agenda.
And so there’s definitely some payback here. There’s a mandate that they conceive of themselves having that explicitly includes mass deportation. And that’s why many of us are still waiting to see between now and let’s say Tuesday, right after the inauguration, how much of this comes down immediately and in what ways. And the details will matter, but in some ways, it doesn’t. Although the details matter, the reality is that the narrative’s set, and that’s not going to shift. I mean, they might deport a hundred thousand, a million, 5 million, you know, whatever the number is. Yes, the detail matters a great deal to the families and communities affected, including my own family and my own community. But it’s way beyond that because what they’ve done is shift the discussion, they’ve captured public opinion, and, you know, Musk through X, all the stuff we know, it’s absolutely clear that this is a global agenda.
We could quibble, you know, theoretically about what version of fascism this is, but fascism is the right frame. It’s a neo fascism, right? I mean, we have to be conscious of historical comparisons and their limits. It’s not the same as the Nazis or whoever people are thinking of, Mussolini or whatever. But the bottom line is, what is clear is that there are movements around the world who have seized on the same narrative and the same politics, and they look at each other as allies, and several of them are going to be special guests in Washington on Monday, including the party running in Germany that’s running number two right now in the opinion polls, which is explicitly a neo-Nazi party that Musk has explicitly supported, right? This isn’t exaggeration. I’m not speculating. It’s stuff that he said about who he sympathizes with in the UK, in France, in Italy, in Spain, in Hungary, in Greece. There are plenty of examples that go around, but there’s a global dimension. There’s a national dimension, but the bottom line is, always present is racism and xenophobia at the core, in addition to the most rapacious, savage, neoliberal, authoritarian version of capitalism, of course.
‘What happened in Kern County within the last few days is definitely a foreshadowing of what’s coming.’
BL: What do you anticipate the Trump administration might actually do? If there are true mass deportations, what would be the impact of that both in this country and elsewhere?
CPB: This is the question we’re all asking ourselves. Our families and communities are experiencing this moment, you know, and this sense of uncertainty and fear and real terror. What happened in Kern County and the Central Valley in California, in the region around Bakersfield, you know, within the last few days, is definitely a foreshadowing of what’s coming. The Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol have said in the last few days that this was an independently previously planned operation that has nothing to do with what’s coming from the Trump administration. And of course, it’s in the waning hours or days of the Biden administration. But I think that’s just the cover story. It’s very clear from the way in which these operations were carried out, you know, a series of convergent raids and indiscriminate harassment, questioning, interception of people and the detention of dozens of people, maybe hundreds. I mean, we still don’t know. I mean, people are still trying to figure out what went down. But the bottom line is, and there are testimonies coming out on, in media, both in, in Spanish and in English. There’s video. The bottom line is this was a massive operation, which has all of the characteristics. It’s a microcosm, kind of like a laboratory sample of what is intended to happen.
The incoming border czar, Thomas Homan, who was previously in ICE and in the Border Patrol, and Kristi Noem, who was nominated to be the secretary of Homeland Security, what they’ve said they’re going to do is what went down in Kern County in the last few days. So whether or not it’s connected, it clearly serves them and serves us as a relevant example. So what happened there was fear has been struck into the heart of probably the single largest concentration in the US of farm worker communities, of immigrant farm workers. This is a very vulnerable community, in terms of their standing and rights, by definition, but also like a real good example. I would be surprised if it was simply a coincidence that this was in California, not just in a very important center for agribusiness and for farm workers, but I think there’s also something else at play here, which is revenge against California, so to speak.
And of course, it’s related to what’s been going on around the terrible devastation of the wildfires in LA, and all of the back and forth between Trump and Newsom and so on. So all of this is foreshadowing again. It would not be surprising if immigrant communities in California were targeted precisely because they’re in California, because California is in terms of state law, a “sanctuary state,” in fact, and because there are many leading concentrations of immigrant communities in major cities like LA, like San Francisco, like San Jose, etc., that are very likely to be targeted for simply being in the wrong state at the wrong time, let’s say. This is in addition to whatever’s going to go down in Chicago, which has been similarly targeted, you know, Homan has talked about targeting Chicago and Mayor Brandon Johnson. But New York, it’s sort of for the opposite reason, because Eric Adams is an ally [of Trump], right? So they feel like they can get away with shit in New York.
So while we don’t know which executive orders will be signed on Jan. 20 and what they say, there’s some foreshadowing of that. There’s already been clear direction given in terms of reviving this so-called remain in Mexico policy, which was in place under the previous Trump administration. So we have some sense of specific policies like remain in Mexico, like family separation. Those have come up in the hearings with Kristi Noem and with Pam Bondi, the nominee for attorney general, because she’s going to play a key role in this. And she already has a record in Florida. Florida, like Texas, has been the model for anti-immigrant policy recently at the state level. And Pam Bondi played a big role in that. So just like Kristi Noem brings an agenda, Pam Bondi brings an agenda to the Department of Justice, and that’s a very dangerous combination of Homeland Security and Department of Justice. And those are just examples. The other thing, and this is really important, is looking at all of this, not just from the narrow perspective of what will go down or not within the physical bounds of the US, but to look at it across borders.
And so the most important battleground, really, I mean, of course, there’s the border as such, and Texas. [Texas] Gov. Abbott with Operation Lone Star, that has been looked at as and defined as the template, the model for what’s going to happen nationally, right? What already went down in Texas in the last four years – we’ve been documenting that, you’ve been documenting that. But the other thing is what has been going on on the ground in Mexico, which is the systematic persecution and terror against migrants through the collaboration between the US government and the Mexican government. Despite the fact that the Mexican government is a relatively progressive government, on the scale of governments in the region or in the world, on this issue it has cooperated extensively with the US.
And so a lot of what will come down will be not just on US territory, but the spillover effects throughout the region, throughout Latin America, wherever, you know, key countries of origin come into play, whether it’s Venezuela or Cuba, for obvious reasons, because they’re being politically targeted. So Marco Rubio, the incoming Secretary of State, it’s very clear that Cuba and Venezuela are on his hit list, but among the reasons that they are priorities for the incoming administration is because they’re the source of important incoming immigration. There are very significant flows from both places, for similar reasons, because of the impact of US sanctions and aggression. There’s all kinds of reasons for this administration to focus on Cuba and Venezuela, but migration is one of them. And then Mexico, because it’s the route, it’s the path, and also the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama. And of course, that’s where the Panama Canal comes in. And so one of the things Trump has said when he’s spouted rhetoric about retaking the canal, is he says, well, one of the reasons we want to do that is to stop the flows through the Darien Gap. So it’s all interconnected.
So I think those are examples of specific things we’re looking to, like, for example, will there be an executive order in effect restoring what was called zero tolerance, which is what precipitated family separation? Looks like there will be one essentially reauthorizing the remain in Mexico approach, the approach of the so-called migrant protection protocols, and that’ll be dependent on collaboration and cooperation between the US and Mexico – what we would argue is complicity in terms of serious human rights violations against migrants and their freedom to move through Mexico. And sadly, already under the first Trump administration, Mexico caved in, kind of like the Democrats are caving in. And of course it’s because the US has all of these weapons that reflect the structural inequality between the US and Mexico, right? Obviously the results of free trade and neoliberalism and so on. And so there are all kinds of ways in which Mexico is vulnerable to US pressure, including the threat of tariffs and the whole architecture of free trade. And so there’s all kinds of ways that the Trump administration is going to put the squeeze on Mexico and on every other pressure point in Latin America.
This is where we have to combine history with this sort of nuanced analysis of what’s going on now, which is that, you know, for 200 years since the Monroe Doctrine, and then Manifest Destiny, and you know, on and on it, it’s been clear that the US has a hegemonic agenda, a neo-colonial, neo-imperial agenda in Latin America. That’s not news to anybody who pays attention. But the difference is that migration is playing a bigger role in that agenda than before, a much bigger role, and it becomes sort of like a driving force. Because among the issues as to US control of the region is US containment and repression of migration flows. It used to be the Cold War rationale, like in the case of the Cuban Revolution of course, or Nicaragua.
But now of course there’s a rivalry, you know, with China and a rivalry with Russia, and that’s relevant. But even beyond that, it’s that from the perspective of this agenda, this racist, xenophobic agenda at the core, there’s simply too many migrants from the wrong countries. The “wrong” countries, meaning countries that are not the right color, race or ethnicity. So there’s an ethnic cleansing dimension to all of this too. I mean, that’s also what mass deportation means, bottom line, you know? Because who are the migrants? The greatest proportionate number of migrants, of course, are of Latin American and Caribbean origin, but also mostly indigenous, mostly of African descent, etc. So there’s definitely that dimension of both implicit and explicit racism, in addition to imperialism and hegemony.
‘The reality is, ICE and the Border Patrol can do what they want, wherever they want.’
BL: Do you have a sense of what’s the mood of people both among advocates for immigrants and among immigrants themselves and just people in the community?
CPB: I think there’s a mixture of things. On the one hand, what many of us have been participating in is community based initiatives to prepare communities that are very likely to be impacted and that have already begun to be targeted, like the farm worker communities in the Central Valley that we just talked about. Here in the Bay Area, in the case of Oakland or San Francisco, these are notable sanctuary cities and San Francisco is in the process of reaffirming its sanctuary policy. And similar things are being done in San Jose and so on, and in L A, once the emergency passes as to the fires. But the bottom line is sanctuary’s not enough. And, you know, similar discussions have been taking place in Chicago, in New York and elsewhere, that are also sanctuary cities, or that operate in that mode where there’s going be non-cooperation by local authorities.
But the reality is, ICE and the Border Patrol can do what they want, wherever they want. And this administration can do what it wants. I’m a lawyer, I’m a human rights person. It’s always relevant, you know, when we talk in those terms to say, well, this is beyond the line. This is beyond the pale. This is something that can be challenged in court. This is something that we can bring to international tribunals and authorities and so on, and denounce as a human rights violation, but they can do what they want, of course, and they feel empowered to do so. And I think that’s what was evident on the ground in Kern County in the last few days, the Central Valley. Whatever the scope might have been of the operation that was planned, which was supposedly focused on human smuggling as they described it, the reality is they were stopping people, essentially in a random way, on the highway, at a gas station, on the street, in their homes, at their workplaces, in a much broader sweep, let’s say at the same time as there was a core operation that was more specific.
And so that’s the kind of stuff we have to get ready for, in terms of all of those layers of legal defense and at the most basic level of rapid response. And so that’s what’s going on is the creation of rapid response networks all over the country. And I’m sure that’s true in Chicago as elsewhere, but the bottom line is there’s never enough of that, and there’s never enough in terms of the legal resources that are needed. There’s a lot of things you can do in those initial moments, hours, days when an operation like this happens, you know, when a sweep takes place, a raid, whatever. But the bottom line is, sooner or later people are going to need a lawyer in immigration court or in criminal court depending on what’s going on.
Because of course, what zero tolerance was about, that led to family separation, was about prosecuting people for illegal presence, so to speak, on US territory, or for having “illegally” crossed. And so it was criminalizing basically the status of being a migrant. And that’s where we’re going as well. So, some form of that we’ll see in the executive orders that are coming and in the activation of the quote “Department of Justice” and the Department of quote “Homeland Security” and all that. And that’s the machinery that’s in place. So it’s never going to be enough to focus or mobilize simply the legal resources that are needed, in a more defensive mode. That’s critical, but clearly insufficient. There’s got to be the political pushback in terms of broad-based, deep organizing.
And there’s a series, of course, of mobilizations around the country. There’s one here in San Francisco on Saturday, the 18th, tomorrow. The bottom line is, there’s all kinds of ways in which communities are fighting back, and there’s been similar mobilizations in New York and elsewhere. But I guess where I’m going is what we really need is a movement, and we don’t really have that at this point. Unlike, say, the 1980s, with Central America solidarity and sanctuary and all that – there’s nothing close to that. Or to the sixties, again, if we’re thinking about high points of mass mobilization. Or, you know, the George Floyd summer, there’s nothing like that. Or the spring of 2006, which was against one of the first attempts to criminalize immigrants on a national level, you know, through a federal law that was called the Sensenbrenner bill that was adopted in December 2005.
Then there were these huge marches between March and May of 2006, and kind of periodically since then around Mayday and so on, you know, A Day without Mexicans and all that. Again, there are fragments and pieces and important history and lessons from all of that, but there is at this point, no coordinated national movement. There will be, like we saw when the Muslim ban was first imposed in the early days of the first Trump administration, we’re probably back to something like that, where there was a huge upsurge of resistance, but it couldn’t be sustained. And then there was another surge in response to family separation, you know, in the summer of 2018, but there was no real continuity. So I think we have to be self-critical about that in terms of like, where we are as defenders of the most basic human rights, and the kind of challenge that we’re going to face in these next few days, weeks, and, and months.
It’s a really difficult moment for the communities that are affected, because there isn’t that broader mass movement that we can rely on. And, this gets into a bit of the legal technicalities, but I’m sure many of the folks that you’ll be drawing to what you’re publishing will understand, is that the mere fact that somebody has quote “legal” status, has a quote “green card,” does not protect you. Essentially that status is always revocable for whatever reason the government conjures up at a particular moment. Of course that happened with McCarthyism in the fifties, it was where anti-communist and anti-immigrant forces converged, right? Or the first red scare in 1919, that kind of thing.
‘We have to be much more affirmative about what our vision is, and that includes the abolition of the Border Patrol, of ICE, of immigrant detention, the abolition of borders themselves.’
People who look at the history or take the history seriously, understand that. But we’re in a new version of that now. And also all of this is converging at the same time. I think we have to really rise to the occasion, so to speak, and make our organizing much deeper. And one thing I think is really important for us all to be talking about is that what the Trump administration is threatening is very radical. It’s not unprecedented in terms of US history. You know, there were mass deportations in the 1950s that they’re using as a model, what was called Operation Wetback under Eisenhower, 1953-54, which by the way, of course, was at the height of McCarthyism, the Cold War, and also the 1930s, and again, 1919 like I mentioned. But this seems to be even more dangerous in its potential and its implications. We’ll see, we’ll see how it plays out, but that’s how it looks right now.
And so, just as the threat we’re facing is more radical than ever, I think we have to be more radical than ever in our response. And that’s what a lot of us have been discussing, is that it’s not enough for us just to be in this defensive crouch, which is important, and to defend our rights every step of the way, but to also understand that we have to go on the offensive in the broadest sense. And that what many of us think is that we have to be much more affirmative about what our vision is, what our alternative vision is, and that includes the abolition of the Border Patrol, the abolition of ICE, the abolition of immigrant detention, the abolition of borders themselves, the redefinition of what we understand by citizenship and by nations. That’s where we need to go, you know, how we get there. And we have to make the connections between that and more immediate things. But I think we do have to have a deeper political vision as well as a historical vision.
BL: Is there anything you wanted to add to that in terms of the vision of what would be a proper immigration policy?
CPB: I think one way we think about it is, there’s been all this discussion about trying to address the root causes of mass migrations. You know, the root cause is ultimately capitalism, imperialism, the global system itself. The root cause is ultimately injustice and inequality. And so unless you address all of that, people will continue to come. And so one thing we say in that mode is, okay, what we affirm is this – it’s almost as an intermediate step between baseline defense and a broader vision of transforming the society and the world – a space in between is that wherever people are being denied the right to a dignified life, wherever people are being denied, what we would refer to in human rights terms as economic, social, and cultural rights, you know, the right to health, education, to housing, to a decent job, etc., wherever that’s happening, people have the right to move. People also have the right to remain and people should have the right to return. Let’s think of Gaza, right, and Palestine. But the bottom line is that there are structural conditions that make a sustainable life impossible in much of the world because of the injustice, the global system, and labels like capitalism, imperialism attached to it. And so what that means in practice is you can’t have it both ways. In other words, as long as those conditions are driven by US policies, you know, neoliberal policies imposed by the IMF and by the World Bank and by US interests, then people will come and the US has a responsibility to receive people, in effect. There’s sort of a compensatory dimension to this.
So there’s a way in which migration is a form of rebellion and decolonization, basically. And so the US has a debt and it owes that debt to the world, right? And, and sooner or later that debt comes due. That’s what Martin Luther King said in the March on Washington that people don’t usually remember when they honor him, that there was like a promissory note that was never fulfilled. And that’s where we are. It’s payback. There’s this historian, Juan Gonzalez, who’s written about this, a Latino journalist who is now based in Chicago, and, you know, one of the founders of the Young Lords and so on. Anyway, he wrote this book called Harvest of Empire, about the history of Latinos in the US, and he describes it in very concrete terms. Every single major Latino immigrant group in the US comes from a country that has been dominated by the US, invaded, intervened, etc. It’s not rocket science. It’s very clear if you look a little bit more closely at the history, so it’s no surprise. Just as in the UK or France, it’s folks who came from the former British and French colonial empires, and so on. And so there’s a cycle that’s present, and I think that’s why the struggle for immigrant rights is or should be explicitly anti-imperialist because we have to make those connections.
BL: Is there anything I haven’t touched on that you might want add?
CPB: It’s all about liberation and solidarity, and so we just need to build that movement, and it has to be a movement without borders, just like the vision that drives us is without borders and the realities that led us here are without borders. The struggle has to be without borders too. And this is, again, nothing new, right? Of course there’s deep internationalist traditions that many of us relate to as, as critical in our own sense of the world and identity. So, I think you just dig a little bit and we can find the inspiration we need. But I think these are very dark times, and it means that, again, we have to be even more visionary than ever, and more radical. Radical hope, I guess.
Bob Lee is a professional journalist, writer and editor, and is co-editor of the People’s Tribune, serving as Managing Editor. He first started writing for and distributing the People’s Tribune in 1980, and joined the editorial board in 1987.