How immigrants and labour set the stage for protests in LA

Los Angeles is a city of immigrants. It is also a city of unions. And in California, those two constituencies have essentially melded into one.

- LYDIA DEPILLIS

So it should come as no surprise that federal immigration raids on workplaces around Los Angeles County this week set off the largest protests to date against President Trump's immigration crackdown.

On the first day of the protests, David Huerta, the president of the California chapter of the Service Employees International Union and the grandson of Mexican farmworkers, was arrested and hospitalised for a head injury after being pushed by a federal agent. Officials said he was blocking law enforcement carrying out an immigration raid, and his detention touched off a series of mobilisations nationwide.

At a rally in front of the Justice Department in Washington on Monday, some of the labour movement's top brass passed around a microphone to decry immigration enforcement operations and demand his release.

"Our country suffers when these military raids tear families apart," said Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO, standing in a cluster of signs reading "Free David." "One thing the administration should know about this community is that we do not leave anybody behind!" Mr Huerta was released on bail later in the day and still faces charges.

It wasn’t always this way in American unions. Historically, they often viewed immigrants with suspicion, likely to undercut wages and to be unwilling to stand up to employers. While those attitudes still exist, union leadership has aligned itself with immigrants’ rights — and placed itself squarely in opposition to the Trump administration's agenda of mass deportation.

Immigrants are now so heavily represented in many unions that even when nearly all have legal work status, deportations are keenly felt because many workers have undocumented family members.