After the shocking videos showing ICE "agents" in Minneapolis murdering protester Alex Pretti went viral - just weeks after the murder of Renee Good, also caught on camera - Trump withdrew some of his most rabid dogs from the city. But not all of them, which has led to growing protests in Minnesota and across the US.
As Trump's approval ratings plummet (-15%), he doesn't want to be seen backing down on his government's anti-migrant policy. The swamping by ICE of Los Angeles, New York, Aurora {Colorado}, and Chicago continues, targeting anyone with darkish skin. This is a terror tactic aimed at the poorest sections of the working class - an "old" strategy of divide and rule.
Trump's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, passed in July, tripled the immigration enforcement budget to $170 billion. Over the past year alone, ICE has more than doubled in size, hiring 12,000 new deportation officers trained in just 42 days. Recruitment ads such as "Which way, American man?" - a reference to a white supremacist book and "Destroy the flood", borrowed from a video game about invasive alien parasites, are designed to attract trigger-happy, racist thugs.
However, the US ruling class has a long history of recruiting such forces to terrorise the poorest layers of society. At the turn of the 20th century, industrial bosses hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to murder striking workers. For much of the 20th century, the Ku Klux Klan lynched and terrorised Black workers, especially the most militant. The London Met's Special Patrol Group played a similar role. In Southall in 1979 Blair Peach was killed during an anti-racist protest. In Brixton, black working class youth were targeted when they rose up against saturation policing. Today, Home Secretary Mahmood's proposal for a national police and counter-terrorism force, aspires to mimic US national enforcement agencies and relaunch local "SPGs".
The targeting of immigrant workers is just the beginning of a renewed attack on the whole working class, which the capitalists require to preserve profits in the face of ever-worsening crisis.
As they and their politicians turn nastier, the working class also needs to get nasty. And prepare to use one of its most effective weapons, namely, the "all- out", general strike, as a first defensive step.