Late last week, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California President David Huerta was arrested while serving as a community observer during a wave of raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Los Angeles. Huerta’s arrest was caught on camera in a harrowing video that shows officers shoving him to the ground; Huerta sustained multiple injuries and was later hospitalized. He has since been federally charged with felony conspiracy to impede an officer, despitenumerous witnesses noting that he was there as an observer, which is perfectly legal.

Police have a long history of reacting to shows of labor solidarity with violence, and their treatment of Huerta on Friday was no exception. In this case, the immigrant workers Huerta risked his safety to defend were being targeted for their political value as scapegoats. The Trump administration is using immigrant workers as a political distraction to keep working people from zeroing in on the real problem: the ultra-wealthy individuals and corporations who are concentrating power and hoarding resources while the social contract erodes for the working class. The raids are designed to instill fear, divide communities; this is a dynamic that the labor movement understands well, and Huerta’s actions suggest that they are prepared to counter it with worker solidarity.

That this particular incident took place in California is also noteworthy. A markedly higher share of union members in California were born outside of the United States compared to the national average (Figure 1). Foreign-born union members have remained exceptionally prominent in California even as the foreign-born share of the labor movement has increased in the US as a whole over the last several decades. Between 2021 and 2024, about a quarter of California’s union members were foreign-born, a rate exceeded only in Nevada and New York (Figure 2).

Figure 1

Figure 2

California’s labor movement has long been a multicultural coalition. The state was the starting point for the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), a predecessor of the United Farm Workers (UFW) and one of the first major labor organizations to place immigrant and Latino workers at the center of its mission. And today, SEIU, UNITE HERE, the United Farm Workers, and others have made it clear that they will stand with their immigrant members.

President Trump wants to convince the public that immigrant workers are the problem. While he initially claimed that he would focus narrowly on dangerous “illegal” immigrants, his regime has made it clear that their aims have little to do with protecting public safety. Instead, Trump and co. have been rapidly expanding the “illegal” category by revoking protected status for Haitians, Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, cancelling student visas, and refusing to honor the US’s obligations to asylum seekers under international law. ICE has also made a sport out of disregarding the due process rights of those they detain. The regime’s actions make it clear that ICE’s immigration raids are not about public safety or legal order. They are political theater. But the real threat to economic justice comes from the wealthy benefactors who have invested wholeheartedly in Trump’s decidedly anti-worker regime. Huerta’s brave stance demonstrates that California’s labor movement cannot be distracted from standing with workers when it matters. In California, and increasingly throughout the rest of the US, Trump’s escalating plan to terrorize and scapegoat immigrants will struggle to find mass purchase because immigrants are not outsiders – they are valued members of their communities and their workplaces, and they are not alone.

The arrest of a union leader for defending immigrant workers is a test. In California, the labor movement is passing that test. It understands that when one group of workers is made vulnerable, all workers lose power. And it understands that the only way to stop the heist is by standing together.

This first appeared on CERP.

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This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.