I took April off from writing. I am in grad school, and April was the last month in my spring semester. That meant final papers. I needed to focus on my coursework, not From the Deckplates.

I cannot submit blog posts as essays, but this project is related to the program. My program is in “Work and Labor Policy.” Part of any public policy program is reading the news. I read a lot of news. An unhealthy amount of news. I have been processing the news by writing. I have always found that putting information in my own words helps me retain it. Obviously, the news cycle didn’t slow down just because I took a break from blogging. There are a lot of things I want to write, but I doubt I will find the free time or emotional bandwidth to catch up. Oh well.

I do want to share one of the things that has been keeping me up at night, though. Many union members have been abducted in the last month. Kidnapped. Human trafficked. The infamous scab and, unfortunately, President Donald Trump has begun using Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target union members like you and me.

Apprentice tinknocker and SMART¹ Local 100 brother Kilmar Abrego Garcia has gotten the most media attention. Garcia has been illegally detained overseas since March 15. The Trump administration has admitted this was an “administrative error.”² The Trump administration also defied a unanimous Supreme Court order to facilitate his return. Instead, the Trump administration has begun a smear campaign to cover up its mistake. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen had to fly to El Salvador just to confirm Abrego Garcia was still alive.³ In retaliation, the Trump administration doxed Abrego Garcia’s family by posting court documents including their address. His wife and children have since relocated to a safe house.⁴

This should scare the hell out of BIW workers. Our union would not exist without immigrants like Abrego Garcia. John Green immigrated from Scotland in 1923. He founded IUMSWA while working as an immigrant in American shipyards. Like Abrego Garcia, Green was a tinknocker.⁵ Green became involved in organizing the shipyards a decade after immigrating to America.⁶ I have read letters from the 1930s that prove his personal involvement in the organizing drive at Bath Iron Works.⁷ Many of our union siblings are immigrants to this day.

We had a Democratic President when Green founded IUMSWA, but a Republican was in charge when he immigrated to the United States. If Calvin Coolidge approached immigration the same way as Donald Trump, BIW might not have a union today. Like Trump, Coolidge was tough on immigration. In his 1923 State of the Union Address, Coolidge declared “America must be kept American.” At that time, Congress had capped the number of immigrants who could enter the country after Ellis Island proved unable to handle the new boatloads of arriving Europeans.⁸ Green managed to slip through anyway. Fortunately, Coolidge never went so far as mass deportations. If he had, Green wouldn’t have been around to found IUMSWA in 1933 let alone organize BIW.

Who knows how Abrego Garcia might have gotten involved if Trump just left him the hell alone to complete his apprenticeship. Who knows what kind of positive change he might facilitate now, if only Trump facilitates his return? What is certain is where all this is all headed. Coolidge’s biographer David Greenberg noted:

After the Holocaust of the 1930s and ’40s, the [1924 immigration] bill would come to be seen as a betrayal of the nation’s promise of an open door—one that, along with its other unfortunate effects, helped consign millions of European Jews to death.⁹

Another steward was upset when I compared the Trump administration to Nazi Germany. “What about Soviet Russia and the Bolsheviks? Mao China? Castro? Pol Pot? How about Imperial Japan? Serbia?” he demanded. Great examples. “You’ve just given us another six case studies,” I replied. “History shows where this is heading.”¹⁰ We have a duty to speak up on behalf of all our union siblings, not just the white American citizens.

ICE is not limiting its attacks to people of color, either. The Irish Times and The Guardian both reported that SEIU¹¹ member, US green card holder, and Irish citizen Cliona Ward was held in ICE custody for 17 days following a trip to see her gravely ill father.¹² The Guardian story linked to several other cases that lend weight to the advisories many countries have issued against traveling to the United States:

• A German tourist was held for six weeks, including eight days in solitary confinement.
• A British artist was “shackled” and detained for three weeks.
• A Canadian worker here on business was held for two weeks in freezing cells without any communication with the outside world.

The list goes on and on. One day, you might be on it, too. ICE would have deported John Green without any regard for his skin color. We are lucky they weren’t around back then. ICE is colorblind. It’s time you were colorblind, too.

Citizenship doesn’t make you safe, either. Trump has admitted he is exploring ways to “deport” citizen dissidents.¹³ The Trump administration has already removed US citizens, including a four-year-old with Stage 4 cancer.¹⁴ ICE arrested a 40-year-old, native-born citizen in Florida. All because he didn’t speak English very well.¹⁵ As of last week, The Washington Post has verified over a dozen cases like this.¹⁶

What is most troubling is what one UFW¹⁷ organizer characterized as “the appearance of targeting publicly pro-union work leaders.”¹⁸ The AFL-CIO has also condemned ICE for targeting union members.¹⁹ According to its own internal documents, ICE is supposed to be neutral in labor disputes.²⁰ Judges have held this internal policy to be legally binding.²¹ But immigration law no longer matters, and ICE is already targeting union organizers. On March 25, ICE abducted 25-year-old farmworker organizer Alfredo Juarez Zeferino, also known to the community as “Lelo.” Another farmworker and activist, Rosalinda Guillén, reported:

[Lelo] tried to defend himself by not speaking to them and refusing to get out of the car, and they broke his car window. He doesn’t have a criminal record, and we think that they stopped him because of his leadership, because of his activism. We’re trying to get him out.²²

Mark Medina is a union organizer who worked with and looks up to Lelo. In a podcast interview, he said:

[Lelo] is a very soft spoken, very thoughtful type of person. And yeah, I think that the labor movement owes him a bit of a debt now. It is time that we as a whole stand up for him.²³

Lelo’s story is not unique. Two weeks ago, “federal agents in unmarked cars and bearing no agency insignia pulled over a bus in Albion, New York.” These ICE agents abducted 14 workers trying to organize with the UFW. This was the culmination of a multiyear battle with their employer to prevent them from unionizing. The Intercept reported ICE showing up with a list of the workers they wanted to abduct.²⁴ In Massachusetts, ICE targeted a group of workers who have been organizing local seafood processing plants. A widely shared video shows an armed agent abducting Juan Francisco Mendez after smashing in his car window with a sledge hammer.²⁵

Last Friday, the White House announced plans to “increase the enforcement and removal operations force of the Department of Homeland Security by no less than 20,000 officers.”²⁶ The Trump administration nabbed its first elected official later that evening. Newark mayor Ras Baraka was protesting a new immigration detention center in his city. Members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation were attempting to enter the facility when Baraka asked to join them. When agents denied their request, Baraka returned to the protest. Video shows Baraka was on public property when agents grabbed a hold of him and dragged him back. Then, they claimed he was trespassing and arrested him. “There was yelling and pushing,” an activist said. “Then the officers swarmed Baraka. They threw one of the organizers to the ground. They put Baraka in handcuffs and put him in an unmarked car.” “They didn’t arrest anyone else. They didn’t ask anyone else to leave,” Baraka’s wife added. “They wanted to make an example out of the mayor.” Fortunately, Baraka was released that night after several hours in custody.²⁷

The Philadelphia Inquirer recently ran a headline, “‘the crazies’ who wanted to abolish ICE were right!” I used the words “abduction,” “kidnapping,” and “human trafficking” in this post on purpose. “Arrest” and “deportation” are not accurate ways to talk about what ICE is doing. The Trump administration keeps saying illegal immigrants have no right to due process.²⁸ Without due process, how do we determine who is “illegal?” Ward and Abrego Garcia share one thing in common besides their union membership. They have a legal right to be in this country. BIW workers do, too. Yet Trump has threatened to outsource our shipbuilding jobs. He’s already shipped our gulags overseas. One day, you might be building ships there.

1. Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers Union ↩︎
2. Ben Finley, “An ‘administrative error’ sent a Maryland man to an El Salvador prison, ICE says,” AP, April 1, 2025. ↩︎
3. Mary Clare Jalonick and Yolanda Magaña, “Maryland Sen. Van Hollen meets with Abrego Garcia in El Salvador amid court fight over US return,” AP, April 18, 2025. ↩︎
4. Alex Woodward, “Wife of wrongly deported Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia forced into safe house after government posts address online,” Independent, April 23, 2025. ↩︎
5. “John Green, Former Marine Union Head And C. I. O. Vice President, Dies at 60,” New York Times, February 21, 1957. ↩︎
6. David Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards: Union Strategy in Three Northeast Ports, 1933-1945 (Cornell University Press, 1998). ↩︎
7. These letters are contained in the University of Maryland’s IUMSWA archives. ↩︎
8. David Greenberg, Calvin Coolidge, Time Books, 2006, 82-83. ↩︎
9. Ibid, 84. ↩︎
10. In texts with author, April 1, 2025. ↩︎
11. Service Employees International Union ↩︎
12. Keith Duggan and Vivienne Clarke, “Cliona Ward, Irish woman held in US detention centre after family visit, released,” The Irish Times, May 8, 2025; Rory Carrol, “Irish woman detained by US immigration released after 17 days in custody,” The Guardian, May 8, 2025. ↩︎
13. Brian Mann, “‘Homegrowns are next’: Trump hopes to deport and jail U.S. citizens abroad,” NPR, April 16, 2025. ↩︎
14. Madeline Halpert, “Three US citizen children, one with cancer, deported to Honduras, lawyers say,” BBC, April 28, 2025. ↩︎
15. Gisela Salomon, “A U.S. citizen was held for pickup by ICE despite proof he was born in the country,” PBS, April 19, 2025. ↩︎
16. María Luisa Paúl, “Here are the U.S. citizens caught in Trump’s immigration crackdown,” The Washington Post, May 3, 2025. ↩︎
17. United Farm Workers of America ↩︎
18. Quoted in Noah Hurowitz, “‘They Actually Had a List’: ICE Arrests Workers Involved in Landmark Labor Rights Case,” The Intercept, May 5, 2025. ↩︎
19. Liz Shuler, “AFL-CIO President on International Workers’ Day: ‘An Injury to One Is an Injury to All,’” news release, May 1, 2025. ↩︎
20. Peter Edge to Assistant Directors et al, May 10, 2016, in ice.gov. ↩︎
21. Staughton Lynd and Daniel Gross, Labor Law for the Rank & Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law (PM Press, 2011). ↩︎
22. Quoted in Eilís O’Neill & Gustavo Sagrero Álvarez, “ICE detains leader of farmworker union in northwest Washington state,” KUOW, March 26, 2025. ↩︎
23. Mia Wong, host, It Could Happen Here, “How ICE Kidnapped a Farmworker Union Organizer,” April 8, 2025, 9:00. ↩︎
24. Noah Hurowitz, “‘They Actually Had a List’: ICE Arrests Workers Involved in Landmark Labor Rights Case,” The Intercept, May 5, 2025. ↩︎
25. Luis Feliz Leon, “ICE Sets Its Sights on Massachusetts Immigrant Workers,” Jacobin, April 17, 2025. ↩︎
26. White House, “Establishing Project Homecoming,” news release, May 9, 2025. ↩︎
27. Jake Offenhartz and Claudia Lauer, “Mayor Baraka of Newark, New Jersey, arrested at immigration detention center he has been protesting,” AP, May 9, 2025. ↩︎
28. Luke Broadwater, “Trump Says Undocumented Immigrants Shouldn’t Get Trials Before Deportation,” The New York Times, April 22, 2025. ↩︎