Since the xenophobia-fueled presidential re-election of Donald Trump, calls have been growing on social media for a pro-immigrant labor strike beginning on January 11, days before Trump is to take office. The emerging movement’s goal is to highlight the social, cultural, and economic importance of immigrants in the United States. The Trump campaign’s racist rhetoric — targeted at Latin Americans and Caribbean Islanders — is an urgent threat driving the need to speak out against his proposed immigration policies — such as the plan to conduct mass deportations.

Led by members of the Mexican and Chicano communities (the largest Latino population in the U.S.), the hope is to motivate many other communities to participate in sending a message to the Trump White House. Proposals by the authors of Project 2025 and members of Trump’s team such as Stephen Miller and Tom Homan specifically seek to target immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, as their hateful Latinophobia suggests. This has left many in various immigrant communities living in fear and uncertainty about their futures.

One of those at the forefront of this new movement is Sam Ruiz, who is using his platform on TikTok with more than 146,000 followers to spread awareness. Many have heeded the call and are now picking up on his message and advocating for the labor strike. While most of the social media posts are in Spanish, others who are bilingual are breaking that barrier and reaching English-speaking audiences.

“Here we are once again, trying to lift the voice of our community, for the migrant community in the United States,” Ruiz told Unicorn Riot. “We were hoping Kamala Harris would win the presidency but unfortunately, the outcome of this election and the attacks targeting our community has left us no choice. This is a movement pushed by the community. We’re individuals, not part of any organization. This is the migrant community trying to send a message to the United States saying we deserve to be recognized — to be treated with dignity and respect.”

Mass Incarceration

Many in Trump’s orbit have suggested that incarcerating migrants is the larger motivating factor behind mass deportations. Considering that the U.S. must have repatriation agreements in place with countries before sending migrants back, the absence of such arrangements with countries like Venezuela and Cuba means that migrants could be held in detention facilities indefinitely until those agreements come to fruition. Immigrants held in detention centers are often forced to work for next to no pay, enriching private for-profit actors in the process.

It’s an idea Project 2025 co-author Mike Howell finds joy in:

Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum recently told Trump she would gladly accept Mexican repatriations, saying that she is working on an agreement with the president-elect that would “send people who come from other countries to their countries of origin” — a decision that all but ends the possibility of his administration sending migrants back across the border as it previously did with the so-called ‘Migrant Protection Protocols’ (Remain in Mexico policy). This also shines a light on the increasing possibility of indefinite migrant detentions.

Bounty Hunters

Exacerbating tensions for migrants is a proposal by a Missouri state lawmaker that seeks to put bounties on immigrants and reward residents for finding and detaining immigrants who would presumably then be handed over to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Recently elected Missouri Senator David Gregory’s proposed bill would offer $1,000 bounties to residents who turn migrants over to the state highway patrol.

“Our community is also in fear because all this targeting is putting a price on our heads to encourage people to hunt us down like we’re animals,” said Ruiz.

“When my community speaks, it says it feels like they’re trying to make migrants look like the new modern slaves. So we’re planning a strike 10 days before Trump takes office. A week without work to see if they can turn around and look at our community and how we contribute to this country. We’re stopping as many people as we can. We have truckers, construction workers, field workers, restaurant workers, and hospitality workers. In Las Vegas, we’re creating a pretty big movement and It feels bigger than what happened in Florida with Ron DeSantis after SB1718 was passed.”

Sam Ruiz

Far-right narratives normalized by the mainstream corporate media portray Latino migrants as criminals for simply crossing the U.S. southern border — a legal process for seeking asylum — while ignoring the diversity of nations represented, helping drive a narrative that implies mass deportations are necessary. However, those who agree with proposed roundups of immigrants ignore, or embrace outright, the inherent inhumanity of such a project. 

This cannot be separated from the incremental cruelty that has become a major part of U.S. border policy over the last several decades. At least 10,000 people have died attempting to cross the border since 1994 when President Bill Clinton rolled out the Prevention Through Deterrence policy, with the actual number of lives lost estimated to be closer to 80,000, according to Human Rights Watch. 

Dehumanizing Rhetoric

Year after year, anti-immigrant policies are implemented that disregard the human costs. Legacy news media bias helps solidify racist and xenophobic thinking about who is crossing the border while also villainizing entire communities over the actions of a few. Oftentimes, anti-immigration hardliners use wholly invented narratives like those about Haitians eating people’s pets in Ohio and Venezuelans taking over entire apartment complexes in Colorado — both of which were entirely untrue. Unicorn Riot covered a press conference and the mass eviction of one of the apartment complexes in Aurora, CO.

Today, many of these narratives are thriving despite being flat-out lies. Meanwhile, not a word was said about Europeans overstaying their visas or Ukrainians receiving all the benefits they claimed Latin Americans and Caribbean Islanders receive as they were tossed on the streets of major cities by Latinophobic governors like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida.

“It’s sad and unfortunate that they attack our community based on the color of our skin,” Ruiz continued.

“This is racism, this is an attack toward brown people. I encourage other minority communities to stand with us in unity. It’s a peaceful protest. It’s a peaceful way of saying we matter. We need to be treated with respect. The whole purpose of this movement is to stop and prevent mass deportations. To stop family separations. I know they threatened our families with whole families being deported. This man, Tom Homan, we all know he was responsible for family separations, thousands of migrants were separated from their kids, and thousands of our kids were never found, never reunited with their families.”

Sam Ruiz

Family Deportations

Family separations are another major issue driving fear among mixed-status families where many are U.S. citizens married to non-citizens. In this situation, Trump’s pick for border czar, Tom Homan, told 60 Minutes that the solution is to deport entire families including citizens and native-born children of immigrants in violation of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 

Trump also reiterated this idea in an interview with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press on December 8. Trump continued to spread many lies and was barely challenged about those lies. Instead, Trump voters celebrated his interview as if he “owned” Welker. Despite his continued lies, he even stated that the United States is the only country in the world with birthright citizenship without being challenged. This is not true as more than 30 countries have unrestricted birthright citizenship while dozens more have some restrictions.

While Welker attempted to challenge Trump on some of his statements, the interview highlights how Trump succeeds in driving false narratives by getting the last word and making it seem as though he’s right and the news media is wrong. However, the interview also exposes how legacy news media too often lets misleading statements and outright lies go unchallenged. Fact-checking has little to no impact on those who believe the falsehoods due to their implicit biases and outright contempt for Latino immigrants.

It’s such a problem that when discussing immigration, people automatically think of Latinos.

“For us, in a country where we’re considered expendable, we are necessary,” said Ruiz.

“We are the backbone of the country. We’re not criminals — a very small group got in from gangs, they had the opportunity to walk in with legal papers. They’re not illegal migrants. It was a legal process that they went through. To ignore the people who have given their lives to defend this country, our sons and daughters participate in the military and all branches of government. Not being seen as equal hurts, and it’s time to stand up and speak. We cannot take another 40 years of promises. We are part of the community whether they like it or not. We are the American people. We are America. We built this country side by side with every other culture and every other ethnicity. It’s time for a change. It’s time for this hate and this MAGA movement of hate to stop. It’s sad because people now feel more empowered to attack our community. We’ve seen racist attacks on our community and we have to put a stop to it. We need to be recognized. We built this country. We defend this country. We defend the freedom we get to enjoy in this country. We don’t want to send our kids to school so they can be discriminated against because of the color of their skin. This is the year 2025, it shouldn’t be acceptable anywhere in the world.“

Sam Ruiz

The issues highlighted by Ruiz and a growing number of others on social media speak to why a week-long labor strike could be a catalyst that sends a message to the incoming administration that many are unwilling to take their policy ideas lightly nor will they be quietly accepted. As social media campaigns about “the resistance” to the administration grow, Ruiz and others believe what those lack is a unified message about Trump’s immigration policy leaving migrant families to feel isolated from and villainized by broader U.S. society.

This labor strike might be just what migrants in the U.S. need to send a message.

“In a country that speaks about freedom and justice, we too deserve freedom and justice,” said Ruiz.

Organizers have offered workers a template form that can be used with employers to protect them from potential retaliation. This document is being shared with migrant workers who plan on taking part in the strike from Jan. 11 through Jan. 18:

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Cover image: Immigrant rights march for amnesty in downtown Los Angeles, California on May Day, 2006. Photo Credit: Jonathan McIntosh, Creative Commons 2.5.

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