Want To Stop ICE? Go After Its Corporate Collaborators

ICE can’t function without help from the private sector. So we should force the private sector to stop helping.

By Eric Blanc, Claire Sandberg, and Wes McEnany, Labor Politics

The Trump administration announced this week that it will cut up to $10 billion in federal childcare and social services funding from five Democratic-led states, citing fraud uncovered in Minnesota as justification for a sweeping action that advocates and Democratic lawmakers say will punish families with no connection to the misconduct.

ICE relies heavily on the private sector to help carry out its Gestapo-like crusade against immigrants and their allies. Without the logistical, financial, and political support of business, its capacity to terrorize our communities would crumble.

Over the past week, activists around the country successfully pushed Avelo Airlines to stop running deportation charter flights, and workers in Minneapolis pushed a local Hilton affiliate to stop renting rooms to ICE agents. But these wins are just a fraction of what could be achieved if the millions of people who are outraged by ICE’s thuggery organize to pressure all companies to stop working with ICE.

Trump’s Pillars of Support

Anti-authoritarian scholars and organizers stress that the most important thing for pro-democracy movements to do is to peel away a regime’s “pillars of support.” Even the most despotic of regimes can’t rule without the backing or consent of powerful external institutions. Businesses are society’s most important non-state institutions, and most of the biggest ones in America are collaborating with Trump, making themselves a very steady pillar of support for his rule.