It’s no secret that Trump’s attack on immigrants threatens all workers and their right to organize for better working conditions. Bob Reiter, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, said Border Patrol agents questioned striking laborers on Chicago’s Southwest Side and accused ICE Commander Gregory Bovino of “coming to our picket line to chill union activity.”
ICE Commander Bovino often appears as the public face of Trump’s deportation campaign. On Dec. 16, he – along with a squad of masked agents – pulled up to a Teamsters Local 705 picket line in Chicago and asked a worker if he was a U.S. citizen. The union was on strike at Mauser Packaging Solutions to demand decent pay.
Nicolas Coronado, an attorney for the Teamsters, said that the Mauser workers had been trying to negotiate immigration-related protections in their next contract, including a stipulation that the company would not allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on the property unless they had a judicial warrant.
“We know in many cases, the feds. … they come in with just an administrative warrant and try to muscle their way in,” he said. “We saw it as a way to partner with the company to safeguard [workers’] rights. The company wanted none of that.”
The U.S. National Labor Relations Act stipulates the right to act with co-workers to address work-related issues. This includes talking with co-workers about wages and working conditions and participating in a concerted refusal to work in unsafe conditions. The Act states: “Your employer cannot discharge, discipline, or threaten you for, or coercively question you about, this ‘protected concerted’ activity.”
Union attorney Coronado said: “It was very clearly protected concerted activity, and [agents] took it upon themselves to start asking [the workers] and interrogating them about their status.”
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson claimed Bovino was telling the workers that it was not the boss but their co-workers who were to blame for starvation pay.
In this ridiculous and racist response, the DHS claimed that the union’s characterization of the encounter was “not true. During immigration enforcement operations in Cicero, the U.S. Border Patrol. DHS said that Chief Bovino engaged in a cordial conversation with them, explaining how ‘illegal aliens’ actually lower American wages. Nobody was interrogated or laughed at. In fact, no arrests were made.”
It certainly wasn’t cordial to ask for proof of citizenship and then attack those who might not be able to provide it. In fact, it was more than just menacing. The DHS statement becomes clearer with a closer look at ICE Commander Bovino.
Bovino himself could be part of the laughing stock of the Trump regime if its crimes weren’t so grave. He often appears on television and in news interviews to promote Trump’s crackdown on immigrants. He speaks out to provoke attacks on immigrant workers and defend the brutal ICE raids across the country.
Bovino arrived in Chicago in September with ICE’s “Operation Midway Blitz.” Thousands of arrests were made, fueling terror in immigrant communities. Resistance from the community was met with rubber bullets, chemical weapons like pepper balls, and car chases. Since it began, federal agents have shot at least two people, killing one.
Activists in Chicago have been fighting back against the ICE raids for months with massive protests. They roused their neighborhoods with whistles and shouts, at times wrestling neighbors back from the clutches of ICE. Demonstrations were held at ICE headquarters every week after Operation Midway Blitz began.
The protests grew, and the immigration raids were set back. They were noticeably subdued, with fewer confrontations.
Bovino left Chicago in November to command raids in New Orleans, Louisiana, and North Carolina. On Dec. 15, Bovino and the other agents were seen taking photographs of license plates and knocking on doors in Kenner, a town close to New Orleans.
Then, in mid-December, Bovino returned to Chicago. At a news conference, activists said they will continue to defend immigrant communities. They said 15 people, including day laborers and a tamale vendor, were detained on Dec. 16 in the city’s Southwest Side and in suburban Berwyn and Cicero.
“We are tired but we are not weary,” said Illinois State Sen. Celina Villanueva. “Every single time that they come, we are going to show up.”
Victor Rodriguez II, a lifelong resident of Little Village, said he helped a woman when her husband was detained after a “caravan of masked agents began terrorizing our community,” including using pepper balls in neighborhood streets. Rodriguez accused Bovino of “targeted political theater.”
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