On May 9, a cowardly crew of masked DHS-ICE thugs arrested Ras Baraka outside Delaney Hall, a privately owned concentration camp operated by DHS-ICE in Newark, New Jersey. Ras Baraka is THE MAYOR OF NEWARK. He, along with three members of Congress, had been demanding that the facility allow for legally required inspections and oversight. They were swarmed by about two dozen federal agents. After security unlocked the gates allowing Baraka in, he was told to leave the front of the building by DHS-ICE. Baraka was accused of trespassing and arrested AFTER exiting the facility’s gates, OUTSIDE on a public sidewalk. Since then, DHS has also threatened to bring charges against the three congresspeople who were with the mayor. 

Watch this video, and think about these three points: 

Three points on this latest outrage:

1. This is fascism. Fascism has direction and momentum. Trump’s MAGA fascism involves attacking and crushing anyone who stands in their way, including their enemies in the ruling class. DHS-ICE has been operating as Trump’s personal political police, arresting and detaining legal residents who conduct political speech that Trump does not like, arresting a judge for insisting ICE follow the law, and now arresting the mayor of a major city and threatening three congresspeople for opposing an ICE concentration camp. A congresswoman described the ICE agents: "They manhandled us… There was just consistently, and across the board—especially with the folks in uniform—no respect for who we were and no respect for the mayor.”

This is NOT the normal disputes among those in power. This is Trump’s MAGA fascists declaring that they are at the same time above the law and that they ARE the law. This is part of Trump’s aim to lock in a different form of rule—THIS IS FASCISM. 

2. If Trump’s MAGA fascist regime can do this to a mayor and three congresspeople, what will this mean for the masses of people? Think about the fact that a white supremacist, woman- and LGBT-hating, science-denying and climate-destroying regime is “clearing the way” of all obstacles to going after everyone and everything they hate. 

Trump has declared his intent to round up millions of non-white immigrants. This ethnic cleansing of the U.S. can only happen by unleashing truly nightmarish, Nazi-like storm troopers and masked thugs disappearing people in broad daylight, or the dead of night. It can only happen with massive, inhuman concentration camps with savage conditions and extreme brutality. It can only happen by ripping up constitutional rights and legal restrictions on the basis of the Trump regime’s absolute authority.

3. The “normal” political process will not stop fascism. The arrests in Newark show that even those in power cannot rely on normal political processes to stop Trump’s MAGA fascism. It also shows that even they can and need to be part of what it WILL take: the decent people from broad and different viewpoints and walks of life, in their tens of millions, overcoming divide-and-conquer, coming together in a fight for the greater good of defeating this fascism. We need to defend the mayor and congresspeople from this fascist attack, build opposition to the operation of concentration camps and the Nazi-like roundups of immigrants, and right now work urgently to take up the call from RefuseFascism.org for nationwide protests May 17 aiming to grow the needed mobilization of millions in nonviolent but determined collective action and self-sacrificing struggle to demand: The Fascist Trump Regime Must Go NOW!

The day after Mayor Baraka’s arrest, revcoms and Refuse Fascism went to Delaney Hall. Watch the video.