On Wednesday, November 5, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) kidnapped over a dozen people in Lane County, Oregon, which includes Eugene, the state’s second-largest city. The terror operation was carried out in broad daylight by unidentified and masked ICE agents in unmarked vehicles with civilian plates.
The tactics and naked brutality of the kidnappings are a continuation of the Trump administration’s campaign targeting immigrant workers around the country. They expand upon the attacks already being carried out in major cities, such as last month in Chicago, where ICE gestapo violently raided a flea market, and in Los Angeles, where a TikTok ICE whistleblower was shot and then arrested.
In Cottage Grove, which has a large Guatemalan population, at least eight people were detained, including one woman who was thrown to the ground in the middle of the street by six ICE agents.
In a video from lookouteugene-springfield taken by a local organizer, the woman is seen pinned to the ground, crying out while the agents assault her. She was later taken to a local hospital for treatment and then released. According to the organizer, the woman is a legal permanent resident.
Off of Norkenzie Road in Eugene, two men who worked as landscapers were torn from their work vehicle by masked ICE agents. A local resident, who wished to remain anonymous for his safety, described the attack: “Three to four vehicles forced a landscaping crew off the road, jumped out, broke the windows, got the guys out in the street. People were honking and yelling.”
He added, “Trump said he was just going to go after the criminals; I don’t think these guys were criminals, I’ve seen them in the neighborhood for quite some time. They’re just working guys like everybody else.”
During the assault, one of the masked agents mockingly waved and blew kisses at the crowd that had gathered in response to the attack.
A family member of one of the kidnapped men stated to the Register Guard, “It’s like we’re being hunted. We saw the news about what was happening in Portland, in Salem, but we didn’t think it would happen to us here. You never think it’s going to happen to you.”
There were multiple reports of ICE in unmarked vehicles pulling over primarily Hispanic individuals around the city, as well as unconfirmed reports of such a raid occurring outside of a local high school. Agents also allegedly blocked off the Delta/Beltline Highway junction, operating an ad hoc checkpoint, which caused delays and unsafe traffic conditions.
A spokesperson for Trans Alliance of Lane County, Elliot Harwell, stated:
“ICE has arrived here, and the scenes that we have seen in Chicago are coming here to Eugene and to Springfield and to Cottage Grove. People need to be prepared to see their community members being taken away and disappeared, and they need to be prepared to fight that to the best of their abilities.”
In an email response to a request for more information from local news station KLCC, Chrissy Cuttita, a public affairs officer for ICE, said only, “ICE is busy conducting routine law enforcement operations across the nation on a daily basis.”
A joint statement from Representative Val Hoyle, Senator Ron Wyden and other state and local Democrats declared, “We are working together with community leaders and local law enforcement to learn more and ensure that all of our constituents are accounted for. Every Oregonian and every person in the United States, regardless of immigration status, is entitled to the full protections guaranteed by the Constitution. We will use all tools at our disposal as representatives of this community to ensure that those protections are upheld for the individuals detained today and for any Oregonian subjected to unjust or unlawful enforcement actions by ICE.”
The statement is a farce, meant to provide political cover for the Democrats’ complicity in the ongoing onslaught against immigrants. It disarms workers to the danger they face, by sowing illusions that Oregon’s status as a “sanctuary” state and the “rule of law” will shield them from the fascistic assaults of ICE. It is an attempt to present the Democratic Party as a “progressive” or “radical” alternative in order to channel genuine opposition to Trump’s fascistic policies back into the straitjacket of the two big business parties.
The brazenness of these attacks, in which federal agents operate with no consideration for due process or constitutional rights, demonstrates the utter contempt of the Trump administration for the lives and livelihoods of workers around the country. Workers and young people feel entirely justified outrage at these police state assaults and disappearances of immigrants and US citizens alike, the deployment of military to US cities and the evisceration of democratic rights.
However, these attacks are not the product of Trump by himself. They arise from clear class interests. They are a continuation and escalation of a bipartisan campaign carried out by the ruling class against the entire working class. The attacks on workers’ democratic rights, their jobs, healthcare and even the basic human right to food are part of a wider campaign by the ruling oligarchs to extract more wealth at the expense of workers the world over.
The path forward for the working class to end the heinous attacks on immigrant and minority workers, to ensure democratic rights, to end the horrors of war and to provide for all aspects of human need, rather than private profit, is through a direct confrontation with the source of these ills—capitalism.
As the only social force capable of this monumental task, the working class must unite internationally, organizing independently from bourgeois parties and politics. This can only be achieved with a clear program and perspective capable of defeating capitalism once and for all, an international socialist program. New organs of workers’ power, in the form of rank-and-file committees, united in solidarity through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) must be formed in every workplace, school and neighborhood.