In an extraordinary press conference held Thursday afternoon at the Customs and Border Patrol station in Brownsville, Texas, President Joe Biden issued a right-wing appeal to ex-President Donald Trump to join him in supporting previously negotiated multibillion-dollar anti-immigrant legislation.
President Joe Biden delivers remarks during a visit to the southern border, Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024, in Brownsville, Texas, as Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, looks on.
Speaking in front of a row of Border Patrol agents, Biden, who has spent several years campaigning against Trump on the basis that he represented a unique and unprecedented threat to American democracy, called on “Mr. Trump” to “join me” in supporting “the toughest most efficient, most effective border security bill this country has ever seen.”
Adopting the Republican claims that there is a “border crisis” and that the United States is a nation under siege, Biden began the press conference stating, “It’s time to act, it’s long past time to act. I just received a briefing from Border Patrol at the border, as well as Immigration and Enforcement Asylum officers. ... They need more agents, more officers, more judges, more equipment, in order to secure our border. Folks, it’s time for us to move on this. We can’t wait any longer.”
Biden then called on Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to “reconsider” the legislation, which, as Biden himself reiterated, has been supported by a host of reactionary organizations, including the Border Patrol Council, the Chamber of Commerce and the Wall Street Journal, a leading mouthpiece of the parasite class.
Turning to the ex-president, who has adopted outright Nazi language in denouncing migrants as “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood of our country,” Biden said, “I understand my predecessor is in Eagle Pass today, so here is what I would say to Mr. Trump. Instead of playing politics with this issue, instead of telling members of Congress to block this legislation, join me. Or I will join you, in telling the Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill.”
Less than a week after Trump and his neo-Nazi allies described in detail their plans for mass deportations at the fascistic CPAC conference, Biden added, “We can do it together.” Concluding his statement Biden said, “If there is anything we should be working together on, it is this.”
Biden has an overriding purpose in this degrading and reactionary spectacle. He hopes, by reaching an agreement with the Republicans on border policy, entirely on their terms, to obtain support in the Republican-controlled House of Representative to pass his $95 billion supplemental military spending bill, of which $60 billion is allotted to the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.
The reality is that the only “crisis” on the border is the plight of the migrants themselves, who are risking death by heat exhaustion, drowning, hunger and thirst, as well as state and vigilante violence. They are driven to seek asylum and economic survival in the United States by the poverty and savage oppression they experience in their own countries, primarily as a result of American imperialist domination of Latin America. But all this is a closed book to the two parties of big business and the corporate media, which has gone out of its way to sensationalize the influx of migrant workers and demonize them as a threat to the American people.
The SEP launches its campaign for a socialist alternative in 2024 to Biden and Trump, the corporate candidates of war and dictatorship! David North, the national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US) announced today the selection of Joe Kishore and Jerry White as its candidates in the 2024 presidential election campaign.
It was notable that while Biden appealed to “Mr. Trump,” the Republican was denouncing him as “Crooked Joe Biden,” describing the border crisis as “a Joe Biden invasion,” and vilifying migrants as “columns of fighting-age men” being brought in to “overrun” the United States.
Trump was speaking at his own anti-immigrant rally in Eagle Pass, Texas, roughly 325 miles northwest of Brownsville, where he was welcomed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Brandon Judd, head of the Border Patrol union, and Texas National Guard General Thomas Suelzer.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump walks during a visit to Shelby Park on the U.S.-Mexico border, Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024, in Eagle Pass, Texas. At front left is Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
The fascist ex-president toured a tactical operations center manned by dozens of guardsmen, who have been mobilized by Abbott, along with state troopers, in an illegal and unconstitutional usurpation of federal authority along a stretch of the US-Mexico border.
Trump demonstrated his support for Abbott’s neo-Confederate claims of state’s rights, taking briefings from the soldiers about the various “illegals” they were “tracking across the border.” He strutted in front of concertina wire and rows of troops armed with M16s in his best imitation of a president-dictator, which he aspires to be after the election.
Delivering a truncated version of his campaign speech, he began by thanking the various political, police and military officials present, singling out General Suelzer, saying he “was always right there and understands this Texas Military Department. ... I think he understands war because that’s what you have, you are in a war.”
Referring to Governor Greg Abbott’s defiance of federal border authority, Trump said, “Texas has done an amazing job in short period of time ... the operation which they showed me is nothing less than incredible.
“It’s a military operation,” Trump gushed. “We have a military ... this is like a war. It’s a military operation.”
Donald Trump speaks as he arrives for a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border, Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024, in Eagle Pass, Texas [AP Photo/Eric Gay]
As both Biden and Trump seek to broaden the bipartisan assault on the democratic rights of immigrants and further expand the border police-state, Socialist Equality Party candidate for vice president, Jerry White, issued a statement on Twitter/X denouncing “the anti-immigrant police-state measures of the Trump and Biden administrations.”
White wrote that he and SEP presidential candidate Joseph Kishore “demand an immediate end to all deportations, border wall construction and the removal all deadly barriers, including miles of concertina wire and sawblade-equipped buoys, which have killed and injured hundreds of people, including many children.”
White continued, “These attacks on immigrants are an attack on the entire working class. The ruling class seeks to pit workers against each other along nationalist lines so they do not focus on the real enemy, the capitalist system.”
Trump and “Genocide Joe,” White said, are “seeking to divide workers from their class brothers and sisters across the river from Matamoros, Mexico. In 2019, some 70,000 maquiladora workers went on strike against the sweatshop working conditions at plants in Matamoros, many of which supply the US auto and electronics industries.
“During those mass strikes, conducted in defiance of the stooge corporate-controlled unions, workers marched to the border in Brownsville and called on their US counterparts to join in the strike: ‘Americans, wake up!’
“This powerful appeal, based on the international unity of the working class against their capitalist governments, is the progressive answer to the anti-immigrant chauvinism of Trump, Biden and the nationalist trade unions which put workers against each other in a race to the bottom.”
White’s statement concluded, “The Socialist Equality Party fights for the international unity of the working class against capitalism and an end to the nation-state system. We oppose the attacks on immigrants by both the Democrats and Republicans and their crude and racist attempts to blame them for the crisis of the profit system.”
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One year since more than 70,000 maquiladora workers in Matamoros, Mexico, organized wildcat strikes and mass marches behind the banner “The companies and trade unions kill the working class,” another wave of wildcat strikes began last week in the border city to shut down the plants—largely involved in the production of auto parts and electronics—as the coronavirus pandemic spreads.
The latest Covid-19 count in Mexico is 94 deaths and 2,143 confirmed cases, with both numbers widely seen as underreported because of the lack of testing. Milenio found that 63 percent of fatal victims are younger than 60, with the World Health Organization (WHO) specifically warning that Mexico’s incidence (50 percent) of diabetes and obesity could drive up deaths.
In Matamoros, which is located across the border from Brownsville, Texas, the earliest confirmed case was on March 12, and the total of cases across the state of Tamaulipas has risen to 41, with two deaths. Despite the enormous industrial capacity of the state, there are only 277 ventilators for its 3.5 million residents. Without strict measures to shut down all nonessential production and provide incomes for families to remain home, hundreds of thousands of lives across Tamaulipas and Mexico are being placed in danger.
Workers down their tools on March 31 at VDO [Photo by Mia Sophia]
The new wave of wildcat strikes across Matamoros began last Tuesday, when workers at VDO and Novalink walked out. The next day, Autoliv workers downed their tools and those at Edemsa struck, refusing an order by management to attend “talks” with groups of 20 people at a time to convince them to return to the line.
On Thursday, workers at Tridonex and Parker also struck and were followed the next day by Tyco and Kwalu. Yesterday, strikes were reported at Kongsberg and Kwalu, where the company agreed to closing the plant and paying 80 percent of their salaries.
The government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), however, is doing everything possible to let companies continue extracting profits, endangering the lives of workers and their families. At the same time, the government is posturing as a defender of workers in order to prevent another social explosion.
On March 30, the government announced a “health emergency” ordering the closure of all nonessential activities until April 30. However, the measure is deliberately vague in its definition of “essential activities” and includes exceptions for activities “essential for the functioning of the economy” or “of public interest.” When pressed about when companies should close, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard made it clear the government would not interfere with the prerogatives of the corporate owners. “What we’ve found in the private sector has been solidarity and support,” he said, adding, “When it becomes indispensable to take such a measure of suspending nonessential activities, in that moment, we’ll have to close ranks.”
At the same time, while “ordering” closed companies to continue paying 100 percent of the salaries, the Secretary of Labor Maria Luisa Alcalde effectively confirmed that this will not be enforced. “The general obligation should be to pay the full salary, based on the understanding that there could be circumstances that force both parts to reach certain agreements.”
The SEP launches its campaign for a socialist alternative in 2024 to Biden and Trump, the corporate candidates of war and dictatorship! David North, the national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US) announced today the selection of Joe Kishore and Jerry White as its candidates in the 2024 presidential election campaign.
The agreements include deals reached by corporate-controlled unions to pay workers half of the salaries (200 pesos or $8) per week at auto-parts company APTIV and other US- and European-owned component factories. Due to price gouging, a worker commented on social media that one can’t even buy two cartons of eggs with 200 pesos.
The deliberate vagueness of the decrees has helped the trade unions enforce the companies’ mandates. The head of the Metal-Mechanic Auto Industry Trade Union (SITIMM), Alejandro Rangel, said he wasn’t even discussing temporary closures since “there was no categorical declaration and clear suspension of work at companies in general by the health authorities.”
Management have cited the government’s decree to coerce workers to remain on the job. At Robertshaw, a supervisor was recorded saying “the majority of our clients sent us letters saying that ‘you are an essential company’” and told striking workers to “read the document well and then we’ll discuss.” However, workers continued to strike and compelled management to close the plant and pay the full wage. “We, the workers, achieved this because, if we had not struck, the union would have done nothing,” commented a worker on Facebook.
At least 20 companies with 12,000 workers have been furloughed with an average of 50 to 60 percent of the salary, according to the local trade union leader Juan Villafuerte. Acknowledging that workers would shut down the plants if management did not, these companies hope to starve workers into submission to force them back to work.
A handful of maquiladoras were compelled to pay 100 percent, but several will undoubtedly use the threat of layoffs to compel workers to return to the line as soon as possible. As explained by the president of the Maquiladora umbrella organization Gerardo Vázquez Falcón, “We solidarize ourselves with workers, but that has a limit. Every company has a limit in how much it can keep paying wages. After that, the law establishes another mechanism—how to give severance payments.”
Dozens of plants, however, remain open. At Tridonex, a striking worker sent an audio to the WSWS of management arguing, “The decree says that there should be no firings, well for people not showing up to work, but not for those fighting in the line, not for those who don’t want to work… The virus has nothing to do with lack of discipline.”
At Schumex (Schumacher), a worker explained to the WSWS, “The manager tells us that we make essential products just like at all other plants in Matamoros and Reynosa, even though we make car battery chargers.” She added, “I suffer hypertension and, since I don’t have the medical file from the state insurance, they didn’t let me leave to protect myself, even though I had notified the medical department when I began working here. Many people with that record keep working under the risk due to COVID-19. The threats that they’ll fire us if we leave are everywhere.”
At the Easy Way plant, which produces blankets, the plant will remain open and switch immediately to producing facemasks since it has the equipment and material necessary. But even in this particular case, management is under pressure to cut costs, acknowledging that profits may fall and minimizing the importance of providing safe conditions for workers. “The health of workers is very important but keeping the source of our jobs is equally important,” a manager explained during the announcement.
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The American ruling class sees continued manufacturing in Mexico and the flow of billions of profits as crucial to restart US production itself, especially as it fears a strengthening of China’s economic influence as a result of its faster containment of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Trump administration and Wall Street are pushing to force workers back to the plants, regardless of the human cost and, as noted by the Council on Foreign Relations last year, “Dozens of US companies, including General Motors Co., Honeywell International Inc., Nordam Group Inc., and Medtronic Plc, depend on the speedy delivery of Mexican-made components to keep their operations running in Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina and Oklahoma.”
The struggle of US, Mexican, Canadian workers and beyond against the efforts of the global corporations and capitalist governments to sacrifice lives of workers for the sake of profits, is one and the same.
In Matamoros, various political forces, including those tied to AMLO’s Morena Party and the American AFL-CIO union federation, intervened last year to chain workers to the trade unions and prevent them from building independent rank-and-file factory committees to fight for a cross-border fight against the thousands of firings that followed the strike wave last year. Today, the unions and their apologists share the responsibility for the suffering, sickness and potential deaths, which will result from workers being coerced through layoffs and reduced wages to work in infected factories.
On January 16, when workers were appealing to their brothers and sisters internationally to expand the wildcat strikes, lawyer Susana Prieto, partnered with Morena, the “independent” unions, the AFL-CIO and pseudo-left outlets like La Izquierda Diario, showed up in Matamoros and declared, “You organized yourselves alone. But this is why they have so much power because you can’t authorize a strike if it’s not through a union… You must pressure, to begin with, the union. You can’t free yourselves from Villafuerte for now.”
Villafuerte is the General Secretary of the Union of Workers and Contractors of the Maquiladora Industry (SJOIIM), an affiliate of the gangster-controlled Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), which Matamoros workers rebelled against.
Even now, Prieto, her new “independent” trade union, and their partners are calling on workers not to show up to work while insisting that they must remain beholden to the trade unions and the capitalist system, which threatens the very lives of workers and their families.
A response to the COVID-19 crisis that prioritizes the needs of workers requires the building of authentic rank-and-file organizations, including factory, workplace and neighborhood committees. This is inseparable from the struggle for socialism, that is, the taking of political power by the working class to place all production under the democratically and scientifically developed plan to serve social needs and save lives, not corporate profits.