Federal agents slammed California labor leader David Huerta, 58, into the Los Angeles sidewalk. They had already sprayed him with tear gas. Huerta could barely open his eyes as federal law enforcement officers dragged his body away, the crowd screaming in protest. He spent three days in federal custody before being released on charges of obstructing an ICE raid on an apparel store.That was June. In the months since, labor unions have been galvanized against President Donald Trump’s deportation machine, challenging the president in the streets, the courtroom, and at the ballot box — and helping an American labor movement historically rife with divisions over immigration and race to coalesce.“In their attempts to silence me, they gave me a louder platform,” Huerta, the California president of the Service Employees International Union and also president of SEIU-United Service Workers West, said in an interview with The Intercept. “[People] saw, if this could happen to a labor leader, a prominent leader, it could happen to anyone.” Related Unions Sue to Stop AI Surveillance Powering Trump’s “Catch and Revoke” Deportation Scheme Since Huerta’s arrest, labor unions — including SEIU, AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Union of Southern Service Workers — have helped lead thousands of demonstrations against Trump’s immigration policies, which they argue have largely targeted the working class, including many in their unions. The energy has spread far beyond the LA storefront where Huerta was arrested — spanning across cities like Seattle, Boston, and New York. Huerta’s arrest and the surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids across the country have injected renewed fervor in an organized labor movement that has been in decline since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, and now faces an existential threat from Trump’s anti-labor agenda.The labor movement in the United States used to be “very anti-immigration,” said Jacob Remes, a labor historian and a professor at New York University. But that’s changed, particularly as immigrants have come to represent a higher share of the U.S. working class and its union membership. “I think that’s a sign … of understanding that the American working class is not entirely immigrants, but has a lot of immigrants,” Remes said. “And a recognition that we’re not going to solve problems by scapegoating immigrants.”The Trump administration has largely failed to take this into account, and may have “overreached,” Huerta said. “In their deportation of immigrants, by labeling them criminals, and then coming at them by any means,” said Huerta, who is pleading not guilty to his charges which were reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor, “I think it has really created an ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ environment.”Hundreds of workers traveled from North Carolina to Louisiana in late June to call for an end to ICE raids; for Congress not to pass the “Big, Beautiful, Bill,” which injected billions of dollars into ICE and detention facilities; and for Trump to release every immigrant unjustly held in detention. The demonstration culminated in two protests outside of detention centers, in “Detention-alley,” a term for the 14 massive immigration detention centers scattered along the Southeast.“We were standing there in solidarity,” said Nashon Blount, a housekeeper at Duke University and a member of the Union of Southern Service Workers who attended the June protest, “letting them know that we’re here. That we’re going to stand with ya’ll regardless.”“ICE is always going to melt in the South, because we bring the heat.”When the Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Charlotte’s Web in November, surging federal agents into Charlotte and surrounding North Carolina, immigration officials terrorized Black and brown working people just trying to make a “stable living” in places like warehouses, stores, construction, and fast food restaurants, Blount said.“They literally try to antagonize and racial profile them, just because they know it’s an easy target to go to places or stores where they know that these people will be,” he said.But the legacy of racial terror in the South, and in North Carolina specifically, prepared workers in the state to fight back, Blount added. “ICE is always going to melt in the South, because we bring the heat,” he said. “We know how to fight against [oppression].” Related “They Actually Had a List”: ICE Arrests Workers Involved in Landmark Labor Rights Case Protest isn’t the only method that unions have used to push back against the Trump administration. Blount pointed out that local unions have also offered “know your rights” training as a key component of organized labor’s support system for immigrant workers. “So that when [a raid] does occur, you know how to go about it,” he said. The threats facing immigrant union workers aren’t hypothetical. In September, three members of SEIU 32BJ in Boston were detained by ICE after leaving work. According to the union, all three members applied for asylum under a Biden-era policy that granted them work authorization and allowed them to reside in the United States until their asylum hearings were held. Two of the men have already self-deported, while the third remains detained.“They’re just hard-working people who want to help win for their families the American dream, and struggle and improve their lives, improve their families’ lives, they’re escaping, in most cases, pretty horrible situations,” said Kevin Brown, executive vice president of SEIU 32BJ. Related Deportation, Inc. Brown said that the union worked to get the three men legal counsel and has been advocating publicly for the release of detained workers. Their work included the high-profile case of Kilmar Ábrego Garcia, a sheet metal apprentice with the SMART Local 100 union, who was illegally sent to a Salvadoran prison before the administration was ordered to release him in December.Despite growing unity among workers and the large share of immigrant union members, divisions along racial and immigration status lines continue to create fault lines within the labor movement. Conservatives have consistently tried to pit the working class against immigrant rights, arguing that immigration drives down wages, a sentiment that some union members share.Brown said that connecting members with immigrants within the union helped to bridge some of those divides. “It becomes, ‘Well, I work with her or him every single day. I don’t want them deported,’” said Brown. “When it becomes real in terms of their co-workers, things change.”“We firmly believe, from an economic perspective, that immigrant labor actually improves wages and benefits.”Efforts to separate the interests of “working people” and the interests of immigrants are based on faulty logic, argued Brown. “We firmly believe, from an economic perspective, that immigrant labor actually improves wages and benefits,” he said. Although the research is nuanced, experts have generally found that on balance, immigrants boost job growth and the overall health of the economy. “Trump’s war against immigrants is making it harder for working families to get by,” said Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa. “And these raids are enabling employers to abuse labor laws by silencing and exploiting the very workers whose rights, wages, and safety are already most at risk. Our communities deserve a government that doesn’t weaponize fear against people who are just trying to make a dignified living for their families.”Manny Pastreich, president of the New York local SEIU-32BJ, admitted that Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric — pitting the working class against immigration — does make it more difficult to unify his coalition. “Divisions and attacks have been part of Trump’s agenda from the day he arrived on the scene to today, and so that is part of the playbook, and it’s incredibly destructive,” he said. “I would be lying if I said that it doesn’t have an impact.” “Employers do this all the time, trying to divide people by race, by immigration status, by everything else.”However, he said, these are the same forces his union has always grappled with and managed to come through the other end.“Employers do this all the time, trying to divide people by race, by immigration status, by everything else. … Trump didn’t invent division; he’s just taken it to a new level,” said Pastreich. “But working people understand that, particularly when we’re talking about the boss, we’re stronger together.”“For many of us,” said Huerta, the immigration crackdown “has deepened our commitment to this sense of worker justice. How do we broaden the labor movement to fight on behalf of those who are most vulnerable?”The post American Labor Needed Unity. Then Came Trump’s Immigration Crackdown. appeared first on The Intercept.