Anakbayan Los Angeles Demands Abolish ICE, and End US Imperialism!
Anakbayan-Los Angeles condemns the racist and horrific detention, separation, and abuse of migrants and asylum-seekers at the southern US Border. The Trump administration’s so-called “zero tolerance” policy of separating children from their parents means the detention of children under inhumane and traumatic conditions. The executive order in response to the widespread public backlash is scarcely much better in calling for the indefinite detention of families. We also see these not as wholly new cruelties, but as a continuation of US policy which historically has meant the breaking up of native families through boarding schools, the breaking up of black families through slave markets, and even the breaking up of families all over the world - including the Philippines - through forced labor migration.
We understand that US intervention and plunder in Latin American countries historically and presently continues to destabilize countries in the Global South, thereby causing this mass migration crisis. We therefore not only condemn the Trump administration’s recent actions, but also strongly condemn the same US imperial war machine that has devastated peoples globally, including many peoples of Africa as well as the people of the Philippines.
The beneficiaries of US imperialism and the current fascist immigration policy are not the people of the US, but the small ruling capitalist elite. By maintaining global US dominance and oppressed migrant labor, the US capitalist ruling class plunder other countries for their natural resources and secure them as markets and cheap labor pools while simultaneously maintaining a class of cheap labor domestically. The enforcement of this immigration policy and the funding of the US imperial war machine take an ever larger portion of the US budget. Meanwhile, the people of the US, whether citizen or immigrant, struggle to access their basic rights to education, housing, and healthcare.
In particular, we examine the conditions of the Filipino youth and students in the US. By and large, the reason why there are so many Filipino youth in the US is because our families migrated here in search of a better life. The reason again why they could not build this better life back in the Philippines is because of the economic policies pushed by the US that largely underdeveloped the country, all to benefit the elite of the US and their Filipino counterparts. While some Filipino youth do manage to be successful here, many more are stuck in poverty in the Philippines, or struggle day-to-day to make ends meet while studying or working here in the US, usually under crushing student debt.
Therefore, Anakbayan Los Angeles calls on the Filipino youth and students and all oppressed people not only to abolish ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and the cruel immigration policy they enforce, but also to end US imperialism, the root cause of much of the forced migration. This can only be accomplished by mass people’s movements in the US and around the world, such as the National Democratic movement in the Philippines. By taking action to oppose the US imperialists and their puppets in the government of the Philippines and helping build the mass people's movement, youth and students can disrupt the US imperialist stranglehold on power, ensuring that unjust policies such as this inhumane immigration policy end.
Abolish ICE!
End state fascism!
End US Imperialism!
