The military-police assault at San Ysidro
Defend immigrant workers from state violence!
27 November 2018
The Socialist Equality Party (US) condemns the US government’s military operation at the US-Mexico border Sunday as a horrific crime against humanity. The likelihood of another government assault is high. Under the guise of halting an “immigrant invasion,” the Trump administration is preparing a massacre.
All workers, regardless of immigration status, must see the teargassing of immigrants for what it really is: an attack against the entire international working class. Any workers who wonder how the US government will respond to their demands for a better life will find the answer in the footage of soldiers pointing assault rifles at mothers and children begging the government for asylum.
The target of the attack was a working class demonstration. The government launched Sunday’s assault after hundreds of immigrant workers, waving the flags of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and the United States, approached the San Ysidro border crossing chanting the slogan, “We are not criminals, we are international workers!”
The demonstration was comprised of workers from different countries and different professions—agricultural workers, truck drivers, warehouse workers, manufacturing workers—who were too poor to afford a visa and a flight to the US and too afraid to stay in their home countries or travel north alone.
Mexico’s Proceso spoke to many of the workers involved in Sunday’s caravan demonstration. “Antonia, a 56-year-old woman, said she left with her family to escape the gangs who were raping her adolescent daughter. Kenneth, 20, was shot by police during a protest at his middle school demanding school supplies; tens of women were fleeing the beatings…