The Migrants’ Anti-Establishment Role

This editorial by Raúl Zibechi appeared in the June 13, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier leftist daily newspaper.

The US government’s hunt for migrants, even chasing them through the streets, entering their homes, and abusing many of them, is further proof that democracies have ceased to exist, even in theGlobal North, where they were born. What’s truly new are the responses being given by both migrants and many children of migrants who were born in the US and have no legal problems.

Migrants may be becoming like the Christians of Ancient Rome. They were persecuted but played a prominent role in the transformation and also in the fall of the empire, as they refused to participate in official rites. It’s not the same now, but it may be a symptom of the growing decomposition of the “essential nation.”

Something has changed, and that change fills us with hope in the darkest moment of capitalist domination. For those of us who wish for the fall of imperialism and capitalism, this is an important moment.

Let’s call a spade a spade: this is a war of capitalism: against migrants, against people of the color of the earth, against Indigenous and Black peoples, against those who are different. Although it is waged in the name of democracy, it is totalitarianism. The philosopher Giorgio Agamben defined modern totalitarianism as “a legal civil war, which allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries, but of entire categories of citizens who, for whatever reason, are found unintegrable into the political system.”

Of course, this isn’t a war against all migrants (it’s never “against all”), but against that portion of young people who say “enough!”, who don’t give in, who stand up and resist. What’s remarkable is that they’re growing in number and have a clearer awareness that their situation isn’t the result of a government or a governor, but rather the result of a global system called capitalism that attacks them in California, Mexico, Europe, Wall Street, or wherever they find themselves.

The ongoing protests echo those thousands of young people staged in 2024 in support of the Palestinian people, a solidarity that continues and tends to grow at this time. The protagonists are the same young generations who have no future in the system. But they are also linked to the long history of struggles in the state of California, both among migrants and the Black population, which arose when a jury acquitted the police officers who beat Rodney King in 1991, leaving more than 50 dead.

Now undocumented migrants, the children of legal immigrants, and many whites are coming together to express their pent-up anger over decades of neoliberal policies that favor only the wealthy. The ongoing protests expose the harsh reality faced by millions of people in the United States.

First, they reveal the true face of the system, which mobilized 2,000 National Guard troops and then 700 Marines to contain the protests, although the Governor claims the number is now at 4,000. The brutality of the heavily armed uniformed officers, the abundant use of tear gas and stun grenades, demonstrates what the much-vaunted democracy of the superpower is all about. The militarized response to contain the people demonstrates that there are increasingly fewer differences between the global North and South. Second, the protests opened an institutional rift, as the Governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles rejected militarization. 

It’s normal for protests from below to open cracks in institutions, especially in a state like California, which clearly speaks out against Trump. We’ll see how far the institutional fissure will go, although we can expect little from it. Most importantly, however, migrants have lost their fear. Since the Trumpist policy of expulsions began, many have locked themselves in their homes for fear of being discovered, detained, and deported. Now they not only take to the streets, but are unafraid to confront the armed forces of the most powerful country in the world.

Something has changed, and that change fills us with hope in the darkest moment of capitalist domination. For those of us who wish for the fall of imperialism and capitalism, this is an important moment. Not because I believe its fall will happen overnight. We know that we are facing a historical process of sharp struggles between the top and the bottom, which will take decades, will be prolonged, and tortuous.

What encourages us is the realization that the rebellions have not been silenced, that what is happening in Gaza will not go unpunished, and, above all, that the most diverse struggles are connecting. Finally, for those of us who believe that the fall of an empire occurs both from within and without, the mobilizations in California and other states show us that we are facing an unprecedented possibility: the continuation of the struggles in the United States, since until now there have been great flare-ups that have been extinguished in a few weeks. Apparently, we are facing a new reality.