'Militant Mobilization' Only Way to End Immigration Arrests under Trump: US Activist

“What is most important for the movement resisting Trump’s attacks is this: he can be beaten. And how did we beat him? By broad and militant mobilization,” Joe Iosbaker, a member of the United National Antiwar Committee, told the Tasnim News Agency.

He added, "...there is tremendous fear, and it is justified because the deportations are happening. But the way to conquer fear is to unite and struggle against the attacks". 

Following is the full text of the interview. 

Tasnim: As you know, US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that imposes a 90-day entry ban for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia, blocks refugees from Syria indefinitely, and suspends all refugee admissions for 120 days. Recently, the US Justice Department said Trump will replace his executive order halting travel from seven mainly Muslim countries "in the near future”. What is your take on this?

Iosbaker: The latest news came in Trump’s press conference on Thursday, Feb. 16th, when he said that he’ll issue a new executive order on immigration next week. I agree with the Washing-ton State Attorney General who said that Trump’s announcement is a concession that the Muslim ban executive order was unconstitutional.

What is most important for the movement resisting Trump’s attacks is this: he can be beaten. And how did we beat him? By broad and militant mobilization. Before January 28th, no one had ever tried to shut down an airport, let alone all the international airports in the country. The call for that protest in Chicago came from the Arab American Action Network, which had the imagination to see that under these new conditions, new tactics had to be tested.

Tasnim: As you know, US federal immigration agents have arrested hundreds of immigrants in at least four states in the past two weeks in what officials call “routine” enforcement actions. It seems that fear is running high among immigrant communities since Trump's inauguration. What is your take on the new wave of arrests? Kindly elaborate your opinion.

Iosbaker: Yesterday, again tens of thousands took to the streets around the country, and many more immigrants stayed home from work and school. In Chicago, there was a march of 4000 people, organized in two days. It was termed A Day Without Immigrants. The protests were a condemnation of the order from Trump allowing ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers to detain and deport people without trials.

Yes, there is tremendous fear, and it is justified because the deportations are happening. But the way to conquer fear is to unite and struggle against the attacks. We must always remember that we, the working people and the oppressed people of this country and the world - are the vast majority of humanity. Trump and the ruling class are afraid of us, and we will learn that when we come together and fight.

Tasnim: President Trump has excluded Saudi Arabia and certain Persian Gulf states in his order. Back in July 2016, the US government released 28 pages of a congressional report on the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which show the Saudi government may have had a hand in the attacks. “While in the United States, some of the September 11 hijackers were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi Government…there is in-formation, primarily from FBI sources, that at least two of those individuals were alleged by some to be Saudi intelligence officers,” reads part of the report. What is your take on this?

Iosbaker: Trump’s assault on Muslims and refugees is targeting a familiar list of countries. What these countries have in common is not only that they are majority Muslim. They are countries that have resisted US imperialism and Zionism.

Let’s start by recognizing that presidents Trump and Obama before him have continued the assault on the Muslim and Arab countries that began under George W. Bush. What Bush called the War on Terror was a military campaign to put the US corporate ruling class back on the top of the world economy. Bush tried to accomplish militarily what Wall Street failed to do through other means: to return the US to profitability on the level it had in the 1950s and 60s.

While there are many challenges to US domination of the world economy, since the Second World War, the imperialists have again and again resorted to war against poor and developing countries. These former colonies have been the source of super profits for the rich nations, and Washington and the capitals of Europe and Japan want the arrangement to continue.

Of course, countries want independence, nations want liberation, and oppressed people want revolution. This has been the main trend in the world for 70 years. In 2001, Bush II thought he could turn back the hands of time, and was willing, like his father, to kill countless Arabs and Muslims to accomplish that.

Obama came in with a different approach, as the US occupation of Iraq was a defeat for imperialism. His approach was not to get on the side of history and support the rise of independence and economic development for the countries of the Third World. Obama’s approach was still war, but using new tactics: drones, special operations, color revolutions, and most famously, proxy armies as in Syria.

Why did Trump exclude Saudi Arabia from the list of countries affected by the ban? Because Saudi Arabia is an ally of the US in its wars to maintain the empire.

Tasnim: Trump’s stance on global trade, the Paris climate deal, and the Iran nuclear deal threaten to unpick key elements of global governance. His back-and-forth on NATO is deeply worrying for the future of European security. And his travel ban has sown chaos, undermining the international management of the refugee crisis and fanning the flames of extremism. What do you think? 

Iosbaker: Contradictions exist within the rulers in the imperialist system.

Global free trade deals was a major issue in Trump’s campaign. He played on the anger of working class people whose lives have suffered from the deindustrialization that has taken place in the US.

There has long been a section of US capitalists whose investments are mainly domestic, who have not benefited from the system of international finance and trade. Ross Perot’s campaign in the 1990s, and later Pat Buchanan’s, spoke for that section of the capital. These politicians, like Trump, have appealed to working people to support them against the politicians in both parties that favor the free trade deals.

Of course, now in power, Trump has no intention or plan to bring good paying jobs back to the US.

Climate change denial is a point in the right wing program. This is based on the fossil fuel corporations and their drive for profit. For the rich, they don’t fear destroying the environment because they think that they and their families will be able to move somewhere that the air and water isn’t polluted. They think their fortunes will guarantee no harm will come to them from rising sea levels and monster storms.

Trump’s opposition to the Iran nuclear deal reflects his alliance with the wing of imperialists that supported George W. Bush’s massive invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. This wing represents many in the Pentagon, who want to increase military budgets and contracts for the war profiteers, who then hire retired generals.

Obama favored making a deal with Iran to avoid a major war in the Middle East. I believe Obama was motivated in that mainly by his determination to counter China’s growth as a world economic power rivaling the US. So Obama is no peace maker: he simply had a different strategy.

Bush’s war strategy in Iraq was called Unilateralism, as opposed to Obama’s Multilateralism. One of the features of the Unilateralist approach was the downplaying of the importance of US allies. Remember, for example, that Bush went to war in Iraq in 2003 without involving NATO and without the support of the UN.

And so you have Trump’s denunciations of NATO. Trump’s attitude to-ward NATO is linked to his interest in Russia. There are a number of causes for his friendly attitude. Perhaps first among them is the prospects of splitting Russia away from its current alliance with China.

Again on the Muslim ban. The US has a war on Muslims, much the same way that the country had a war on Communists 60 years ago. At that time, the socialist bloc, led by the Soviet Union, was the main challenger to unbridled US imperialism. The Cold War and repeated wars in the Third World (Korea, Vietnam, Angola, and Central America) were US response to the threats it faced in dominating the world.

Today, the main challenge to US imperialism is coming from those coun-tries in the oil-rich Middle East. I think the US anti-Muslim campaign is a domestic reflection of the imperialist wars we are fighting in that part of the world.

And your final point, fanning the flames of extremism. The US has been using extremists and fascists to do their dirty work for a century and more. You can see that the strategy of the imperialists is to achieve their objectives by any means necessary.

In Syria it has become the most clear: the US has embraced Al Qaeda in Syria. Obama has known all along that ISIS has been recruiting from the other right-wing rebel factions, getting weapons from the US, and getting intelligence from the US. When Russia’s air force entered the war in Syria in 2015, the speed with which they took out the ISIS oil transport system exposed that the US has been allowing ISIS to fund their operations.

Trump used the fear of ISIS to get support for his campaign. He also used it to whip up hatred of all Muslims. Trump has agitated against Obama’s war strategy in Syria, and even insinuated for an alliance with Russia in Syria.

I believe that Trump’s plan for Syria will be in line with the objectives of the preceding administrations. Imperialism wants to crush any government that resists the dictates of Wall Street. All other concerns take a back seat to that.