Afrasianet - The United States is witnessing a wave of widespread public protests against the Trump administration's policies, including mass deportations of immigrants, curtailment of public services, and targeting of civil rights. Public anger has escalated as federal troops have deployed and cracked down on protesters, amid human rights warnings of a serious setback in justice.
The United States has witnessed successive waves of popular protests since US President Donald Trump inaugurated for a second term earlier this year, protesting his administration's policies in the areas of immigration, discrimination and cuts in the budget for public services.
Widespread protests erupted in California against deportations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sparked mass demonstrations in major cities and parts of the country.
The tensions in Los Angeles, California, began after officers from ICE carried out raids on companies suspected of hiring illegal immigrants and falsifying employment records, arresting dozens on immigration violations, leading to widespread protests that turned into clashes between demonstrators and security forces, in which police used violence to disperse crowds.
In an extraordinary move, Trump ordered the deployment of thousands of National Guard members in the city of Los Angeles to control the protests, along with hundreds of Marines, which was widely opposed, and the Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom, expressed his rejection of the decision, stressing that the state authorities are able to control the situation without federal intervention.
Many legal experts criticized the move, considering it a dangerous precedent in the use of military force against civilians inside the United States, and the California attorney general announced a lawsuit against Trump for violating the law and bypassing local authorities in the state.
Migrants outside legal protection
The Trump administration's mass deportations are a human rights violation, mainly targeting immigrant communities and leading to the disintegration of families and the destruction of the social fabric.
U.S. law guarantees everyone living on their territory, regardless of their legal status, a set of basic rights that reflect a minimum of human dignity, including irregular immigrants.
Under the law, irregular immigrants in the United States are protected from arbitrary deportation and have the right not to be stopped or searched unlawfully. Their children are also entitled to attend school up to the twelfth grade and receive emergency medical care.
In this context, since the start of the relentless campaign against migrants, activists of human rights organizations have been organizing community patrols to monitor the actions of ICE and inform the population of their rights, in an initiative that has received wide support within the local community and was seen as a model of community solidarity in the face of repressive federal policies.
In California, community and immigrant advocacy groups have pledged to mobilize to protect those targeted for deportation and have established a range of coalitions to achieve this goal, such as the Community Self-Defense Coalition, which includes more than sixty organizations, and the Los Angeles Rapid Response Network, which runs a hotline reporting on ICE activities and works to connect individuals to legal aid.
The number of irregular immigrants in the United States is estimated at about 11 million, and they constitute an essential part of the renewed labor movement, especially in the International Service Workers' Union, and according to Pew Research Center estimates for the year 2022, irregular migrants represent about 4.8% of the total labor force in the country, with a population of more than 8 million individuals.
Immigrants have played an important role in labor unions over the past few decades, particularly in California, and have had a prominent influence in sectors such as hygiene, health care, and restaurants.
Austerity in basic rights
The decline in civil rights within the United States has not been limited to irregular immigrants, but has extended to various segments of society, where a large segment of the population is suffering due to the sharp reduction in spending on basic services, which significantly affects the quality of life.
In early April, several national and local organizations called for a "Raise Your Hands" campaign, which aimed to organize mass demonstrations across the country to protest what they saw as the government's targeting of citizens' basic rights through an austerity program in federal spending.
The federal spending cuts have included vital sectors and essential services, including health care, Social Security and education programs, as well as layoffs of tens of thousands of federal employees.
Millions of Americans demonstrated at about 1,400 locations across the United States, holding banners with slogans such as "Stay away from Social Security" and "Hands off our rights," and more than 150 national organizations and institutions, including civil rights organizations and labor unions, participated in the events.
Last week, US media unveiled a budget settlement bill proposed by the Trump administration, which includes sharp cuts to social services, including housing, education, health care, food aid and humanitarian services.
These plans have sparked widespread concern among human rights and community organizations, who have warned that these measures would exacerbate the suffering of vulnerable groups, as the cuts directly affect mothers, children, the elderly, low-income workers and people with disabilities.
Veterans Services budget reduction
In March, the Trump administration announced plans to cut the budget of the Department of Veterans Affairs, threatening to reduce services for them, especially in the areas of mental health and medical care.
The decision sparked widespread outrage among the veterans community, who organized protests in cities such as Santa Rosa and College Station, demanding that these plans be canceled and that their rights that they believe they have gained through their sacrifices be preserved.
On the sixth of this month, veterans launched a new round of demonstrations, during which they organized more than 200 events across the United States, and these moves came in rejection of a government plan to eliminate 80,000 jobs in the Department of Veterans Affairs, which provides health care and other services to millions of them, as well as the termination of hundreds of contracts with community-based organizations that provide essential services to this group.
Abolition of the criterion of "indirect effect"
In a move that sparked widespread controversy in the United States, the US government administration decided to abolish the criterion of "indirect influence" or what is known as the criterion of "differential influence" in cases related to discrimination and civil rights, as President Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled "Restoring Equal Opportunity and Meritocracy", which prohibits the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other federal agencies from using the criterion of "indirect influence", considering it illegal.
The "indirect effect" criterion has been an important legal tool for decades, enabling US judicial authorities to hold accountable institutions that may not explicitly discriminate, but whose policies or practices actually lead to discrimination directed at specific groups such as ethnic minorities, women, or people with disabilities.
The resolution condemned many human rights organizations, led by civil rights organizations, considering the abolition of this standard a serious setback in the protection of vulnerable and discriminated groups, especially in the sectors of employment, housing, education and public services.
The widespread waves of protest in the United States reflect the depth of the crisis plaguing social justice in the country, where the escalation of issues such as deportation, discrimination and austerity represents a direct threat to the principles of equality and human dignity, and negatively affects the cohesion of the social fabric.
The abolition of the criterion of "indirect influence" is a step backwards in protecting the most vulnerable groups, and increases the likelihood of continued patterns of discrimination and marginalization, which requires strengthening the supervisory role of human rights institutions and civil society organizations to ensure and protect the principles of social justice.