During this summer’s record heat wave in the middle of the blazing Sonoran Desert, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have detained at least 50 asylum seekers. Border Patrol encloses the people they catch in outdoor yards of gravel surrounded by barbed wire fences. If the migrants are lucky, they have a piece of cardboard on which to sleep. This grotesque scene is not an anomaly; it is a continuation and expansion of federal policies that weaponize the environment to “manage” undocumented migration for profit.
To be “undocumented” means that a person does not have the proper documentation to live and work in the United States. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) made it illegal to hire non-citizens and people without work visas. Before IRCA, undocumented workers were employed on the books. They could sign contracts with companies and join established unions. They were still exploited and faced poor working conditions, but they were able to engage in collective bargaining alongside workers with citizenship — they could improve their wages and work conditions. If the union had won a wage increase before the undocumented workers became employed, they joined the union and reaped the benefits of those victories. Now capitalists pay these workers “under the table” in cash or hire subcontractors, who do their dirty work for them. As a result, undocumented workers have suffered drastic cuts to their wages, had benefits withheld, and are subject to dangerous working conditions. What’s more, capitalists have cut the wages and benefits of documented workers by threatening to replace them with these easily-oppressed undocumented workers. IRCA, far from ending undocumented labor, gave the capitalists more tools to exploit both documented and undocumented workers.
An asylum seeker can seek authorization to work in the United States based on the claim they would be persecuted if they returned to their home country. Those seeking this status must turn themselves into CBP, who seize their belongings and detain them for months in abysmal conditions, like those in the Ajo, Arizona concentration camp, until a judge hears their case. About 70% of these people are deported. The futility and frequent fatality of asylum-seeking funnels most migrants to enter and work in the United States without authorization. Additionally, the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways Rule that went into effect in May of 2023 presumes that all asylum seekers who enter through California, Arizona, New Mexico, or Texas are automatically ineligible for asylum. That is, migrants who should be legally able to enter as asylum seekers must first prove their claim’s legality, before even going through the cruel processes described above. Although immigrant advocacy groups sought to overturn this rule in August 2023, in the case East Bay Sanctuary Covenant et al. v. Biden et al., various stays in the ruling and appeals by the Biden administration have ensured it remains in effect. Furthermore, although this policy copies Trump’s “entry and transit” bans, legal bureaucracy demands it be litigated over and over again.
The process of getting into the United States and living without papers is treacherous. The federal government strategically builds border walls to channel migrants across the murderous Sonoran desert, where temperatures in the summer regularly exceed 110 degrees and, in the winter, drop below freezing. Or, they’re forced to ford the Rio Grande, which can swallow people whole, drag them down, and drown them. This policy kills thousands of people a year and traps those who do make it across in the US, where, because they must work off the books, are subjected to brutal labor conditions for horrendous wages. Any interaction with the police could land undocumented people in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) internment camp, no different from the CBP camp. Landlords, knowing undocumented tenants are hesitant to call housing code enforcement, refuse to make repairs, and charge exorbitant rents. Likewise, if bosses catch wind of unionization efforts among undocumented workers, they readily call ICE, dashing any hope of unionization through deportation.
Xenophobic hysteria drummed up by politicians and pundits, and abetted by the white supremacist culture in which Americans live, convinces many workers that migrants are to blame for deteriorating wages and working conditions. This racist, divisive rhetoric abets capitalists in fostering a false sense of individualist self-interest to break up the solidarity of their workforce. This is not just a 21st-century phenomenon. In 1882, The American Federation of Labor (AFL) and Knights of Labor (KoL), instead of organizing Chinese workers, who were paid less than white workers, supported the capitalists in Congress banning Chinese immigration to the United States. Chinese workers were replaced by other immigrants and , without the organization of the entirety of the working class, the struggles of these unions saw little progress. “Self-interested” behavior such as that displayed by the AFL and KoL, so adored by capitalists, destroys institutions of working-class power such as unions. So long as the capitalists control the economy, the jobs and protections of all workers, even those who act in “self-interested” ways, are subject to their whims. Capitalists relish individualism and enrich themselves off the bloodshed inflicted by the state in order to maintain this tyrannical order. Indeed, through their donations, their Political Action Committees (PACs), and their influence-peddling, the capitalists ensure the xenophobic politicians get elected. These hatemongers are not only the enemies of undocumented workers but the enemies of every working-class person in the U.S. and worldwide.
Though cloaked in different language, and frequently with different strategies, Democrats and Republicans increase the funding to ICE and CBP year after year. The Obama administration expanded the bureaucratic infrastructure required to locate, detain, try, and deport migrants, earning Obama the dubious prestige of “deporter-in-chief.” The Trump administration shifted funding and focus to high-profile spectacles, such as raids that rounded up hundreds of migrants, and deployed military personnel to the US-Mexico border. These tactical differences still exist. After pictures surfaced of migrants caged outside the Ajo camp, liberals called for an increase to the station’s budget so CBP could more efficiently deport migrants. Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, installed floating razor blades across a section of the Rio Grande that ensnare and dismember migrants trying to swim across. Despite the varying strategies and rhetorical justifications, the goal of both these policies is to intensify the terror experienced by migrants. This terror lays the groundwork for the destruction of labor standards for all workers. We must oppose any and all expansion of these state-managed death-making apparatuses. In order to win even the mildest reforms in our workplaces, much less change our society writ large, it is our obligation to organize undocumented and documented workers in the struggles against our bosses.
