United States
Broad Opposition to Trump Plan to Use Eisenhower Model and Alien Enemies Act
Banner at New York City march, November 9, 2024
Donald Trump has repeatedly said he would use the Eisenhower Model when it comes to deporting millions of people and the Alien Enemies Act when it comes to targeting whoever is deemed to be the "enemy within." The peoples and their organizations will be the focus of these attacks and they are already organizing to resist and defeat these plans.
It is important to look closely at both the Eisenhower Model and the Alien Enemies Act as both are connected with specifically targeting people of Mexican origin, whether citizens, immigrants, documented or undocumented people. They are also specifically linked to increased use of detention camps and the military, and the imposition of federal authority. These are all part of increasing presidential police powers, necessary for preserving the Union and presidential dictate at home and abroad.
The Eisenhower Model, implemented in 1954, involved deportation of what is officially estimated to be about 300,000 people of Mexican origin, many of them citizens, though Eisenhower (34th U.S. president 1953-1961) claimed it was more than a million. The campaign was designed by a retired United States Army lieutenant general who was head of what was then the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). It utilized "military-style" tactics in targeting workers and communities along with the promotion of racist slurs, criminalization of workers and efforts to divide people. It was part of the post-World War II efforts by the U.S. to undermine the anti-fascist spirit and international unity that had developed during the war and impose anti-communist loyalty oaths and anti-worker, racist laws.
The history.com website writes that during Eisenhower's campaign, "tens of thousands of immigrants were shoved into buses, boats and planes and sent to often-unfamiliar parts of Mexico, where they struggled to rebuild their lives. In Chicago, three planes a week were filled with immigrants and flown to Mexico. In Texas, 25 per cent of all of the immigrants deported were crammed onto boats later compared to slave ships, while others died of sunstroke, disease and other causes while in custody."
It was also not the first time such raids against people of Mexican origin took place. The U.S. deported more than 1 million Mexican nationals, 60 per cent of them U.S. citizens, during the depression in the 1930s "in a program referred to as repatriation to give it the sense of being voluntary." This too was designed to disrupt the many mass struggles taking place among workers, where these workers played a militant and significant role, as they do today.
Besides the aim of depriving so many people of health care benefits, public resources for their families and work-related pensions, a main reason Mexican Americans are being targeted is precisely because they are in the forefront of many battles for rights. Their revolutionary traditions became evident in recent years in organizing to restore May Day demonstrations which focus on rights, not only in California but elsewhere. Trump is not only targeting undocumented workers but providing means to increase repression and disrupt united actions of all workers and all those standing to defend rights.
Using the Alien Enemies Act Against the People
The Alien Enemies Act specifically allows the president to detain, relocate, or deport, during war-time, non-citizens from a country considered an enemy of the U.S. It was first used in the War of 1812 against the British, which also involved Canada, and in World War I against Germans.
It was amended in 1918 to include women and subsequently used in World War II, mainly against Germans, Italians and Japanese. Thousands were forced to register and were detained, including after the two wars ended.
The Alien Enemies Act stipulates:
"Whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government [...] and the President of the United States shall make public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies."
While various experts are saying the Act cannot be used because there is no declared war, they ignore that all the wars since WWII have been declared by the president, not Congress and that the U.S.-led "war on terror" launched after 9/11 has been used to claim that this is wartime and involves all countries of the world. As well, the last time the Alien Enemies Act was challenged, in Ludecke v. Watkins in 1948, the Supreme Court upheld President Harry S. Truman's extended reliance on the law three years after the end of World War II. The Court said that the question of when a war terminates, and wartime authorities expire, is too "political" for courts to decide.
The presidential powers concerning wars and utilizing wartime authorities, such as those establishing Guantánamo, defining "enemy combatants," authorizing torture, "kill lists," legitimizing black ops and more are far greater now than in 1948. And as the case of the Guantánamo prison camp has shown, the president can simply ignore Supreme Court rulings, as Obama and those since him have done. A Migrant Detention Center housing Haitians and others including women and children, has already been established at the Guantánamo naval base alongside the prison camp. Since it is not U.S. territory, this Detention Camp also does not fall within the purview of U.S. laws.
The Alien Enemies Act was part of four laws passed known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Sedition Act made it a crime for U.S. citizens to "print, utter, or publish [...] any false, scandalous, and malicious writing" about the government. Trials were conducted against journalist and government officials and others. While it is no longer law, given current conditions where the presidency needs to repress the growing resistance and justify attacks on "enemies within," be they journalists, government officials, district attorneys, and so forth, Trump could well use the Alien Enemies Act for similar purposes.
The period when the Act was passed was also a period of uprising and struggles. This included those stemming from the revolutionary spirit among the people for independence and rights that required the ruling elite of the day to include the Bill of Rights in the Constitution (1787). In the U.S. and internationally, many struggles of the workers were also taking place at that time, as well as the Haitian revolution and Irish uprising for freedom from British rule.
The Bill of Rights speaks to freedom of religion, press, speech, association and petitioning the government. It is to disrupt the resistance movements today and brand them and those who participate in them as "foreign" or "alien," to be brutally crushed, that the Alien Enemies Act is again being invoked.
Broad resistance is already being organized to block deportations and defend the many protesters already in action for Palestine, in support of immigrants, migrants and refugees, and all those standing for rights.
New York City, November 9, 2024
(Voice of Revolution, U.S. Marxist-Leninist Organization)
This article was published in
Thursday, November 14, 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/ITN2024/Articles/TI54501.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca