SACRAMENTO, CA — The national day laborer network, NDLON, is leading the campaign to “Adopt a Day Labor Corner” to show up on the street corners where day laborers gather to look for work. “Find out where day laborers and other immigrant workers are at risk of harassment and arrest by ICE. Build relationships with our working communities.”
In Sacramento, Camp4Justice at the John Moss federal building has brought a continuing presence to protest ICE. Hundreds of Sacramentans gathered on January 23 to join in a nationwide protest against the ICE occupations of American cities.
On January 30, the American Constitution Society at McGeorge Law School sponsored a “Community Know Your Rights and Engagement Fair” with presenters from NorCal Resist, the local organization which provides mutual aid and organizes support for vulnerable communities, especially in terms of the impact of ICE on people’s lives.
Coming up soon, proposed for the week of February 22, the Sacramento Poor People’s Campaign, NorCal Resist, Indivisible Sacramento, and Sacramento 50501, are moving toward sponsoring a week-long action happening across the country, called “Shine A Light For Minnesota.” These organizations are asking community members citywide, countywide, or throughout the Sacramento region to step outside onto their sidewalks, front porches, and front yards and light a candle or a flashlight to stand in solidarity with immigrants and folks in Minnesota and throughout the country facing ICE in their communities. Stay in touch with the Sacramento Poor People’s Campaign to learn more!
What Is the Trump Regime Planning for Our Communities?
As the nation now knows, in January ICE agents have killed citizens – two in Minneapolis, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, and, on New Year’s Eve, Keith Porter Jr. in Los Angeles.
On February 3, 2026, Renee Nicole Good’s two brothers, Luke and Brent Ganger, testified before Congress. “What a beautiful American we have lost,” were Luke Granger’s opening words. Reflecting on his sister’s being and essence, he described her as a dandelion in sunlight. Optimistic. Growing without permission. Brent Ganger summed up the meaning of these losses: it is “the small everyday deeds” of ordinary people like Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti that “keep the darkness at bay.”
What is that darkness? As described by journalist Caitlin Dickerson, “I really think that we’re looking at a reality, with this more than $170 billion for immigration enforcement, that involves armed law enforcement in the streets as a regular fixture of our lives. Chaotic conflicts in the streets are something that we’re going to become accustomed to and massive detention centers that are going to come up and are going to be built for the purposes of holding people and then getting them out of the country.”
Immigration Laws – Who Wrote Them and Why?
U.S. immigration legislation is essentially written by the corporations themselves, following the ugly grooves carved in our society by white supremacy. Today, we face the reality that governments are making it more difficult to migrate. Automation, robotics, AI – these technologies are reducing the need for human labor, and at the same time a global class of people is struggling with permanent unemployment, displacement, and the climate crisis, all resulting from the rapidly consolidating, world-wide, system of corporate control that transcends boundaries and borders. Migration is the age-old human response to catastrophe.
At the national level, the corporate goal of immigration policy is to keep labor cheap and vulnerable, while reaping the huge profits promised by criminalization of the workforce. This goal also drives the “guest worker” program that imports seasonal workers. The Southern Poverty Law Center has described guest worker programs as “close to slavery.”
Like the notorious Bracero Program of the 1950s, they threaten workers with deportation if they lose their jobs, and they render labor laws unenforceable. The guest worker program has just been vastly expanded by the Trump regime.
Recently, the officers of the UE electrical workers union confirmed that this was the function of immigration policy in a ringing denunciation of ICE: “All working people have a stake in standing up for immigrant workers’ rights. As our union and the rest of the labor movement have learned over the past half-century, the real purpose of immigration enforcement is to maintain a permanent underclass of workers afraid to stand up for their rights — which drags down wages and working conditions for all workers.”
Although U.S. immigration policy has always been about control of labor, its racist political justifications have continually evolved. The label “illegal” started to be imposed in the 1960’s to demonize and criminalize undocumented people, parallel to the way the “super-predator” was and is used in the 1990s to justify the broad repression, the mass incarceration, and the police profiling of the African-American community.
But the ultimate goal of the attack on immigrants is political control of the country itself. According to Nick Estes, a historian at the University of Minnesota and enrolled member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, the shooting and killing of white people on the streets of Minneapolis is “a war on solidarity.” “White supremacy is meant to control white people first and foremost,” he said. “So if they’re not complying with the status quo, and they’re trying to defend immigrant neighbors, I see this as retaliation [against them] for that.”
The Developing Resistance
What shines in the darkness is the scope of the new civil rights movement that is coalescing around opposition to the campaign for mass deportations, the uprooting of communities, the attack on neighbors. “Abolish ICE” is no longer radical. A key step in building this movement are the networks – based in neighborhoods and organizations – that have mobilized uncounted thousands in Minneapolis and across the country.
In that embattled city, opposition has cohered into a highly effective, self-organized, and well-maintained communication system, using the most advanced electronic means to coordinate local action.
On the national level, the organization “Indivisible” has sent out a call for “No Kings III” on March 28, outlining goals, strategy, and tactics. The goal is to stop the fascist regime from consolidating its grip on power; the strategy is to organize overwhelming non-violent people power and foster a culture of mass defiance; as a tactic – one among many – the No Kings rallies will open an “entry point” for millions to get involved in the struggle, “from ICE watch, to mutual aid, to electoral work.” See: Ezra Levin and the Indivisible Team, “Indivisible updates + actions: Do protests matter? (Spoiler: Yes.)” info@indivisible.org.
The “Eyes On ICE” virtual training sponsored in January by the No Kings Coalition brought 200,000 people together days after Alex Pretti was killed by ICE. “Know your rights” trainings have been effective in getting people involved across the country. In Minneapolis, the community organization Unidos trained an astounding 30,000 people in response to ICE’s surge.
The crisis is here. Find your place in local and national movements!
A third “No Kings” rally is scheduled in San Francisco and other communities on Saturday, March 28
