Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members came out to support a September 24 rally in San Francisco against attacks on Temporary Protected Status (TPS) workers, packing red flags, posters, and communist flyers. Most importantly, we came with a clear message: the racist assault on Haitian, Latino, and TPS workers from 17 countries (see Box) is part of capitalism’s attack on the international working class. Workers don’t need the empty promises of politicians or more court battles. We need to build a revolutionary movement capable of ending the system that profits from our exploitation and divides us by nationality and immigration status.
At the rally, PLP members distributed flyers connecting the Haitian Revolution of 1791 with workers’ struggles against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), deportations, and capitalist wage slavery. The response, especially from younger workers, showed that this history can speak directly to today’s struggles. Workers recognize the injustice of a system that threatens workers with expulsion after they have spent years building lives, raising children, and doing the labor that keeps society running, often in the most dangerous conditions.
Racism and reformism: The bosses old playbook
The fight over TPS is not just an immigration dispute. It is an attack on Black and Latino workers, and an effort to make the whole working class more fearful and easier to exploit. The government grants temporary permission to remain, and then uses the threat of taking it away to keep workers insecure. Workers who organize, demand better conditions, or simply try to live with dignity are forced to contend with the possibility that a change in government policy could separate them from their families or send them back to danger.
The Trump administration’s termination of TPS put an estimated 330,000 Haitians at risk of deportation. Haiti continues to face widespread violence and a humanitarian crisis, yet the U.S. government has moved to send people back. More than 450 people had been deported to Haiti since July, with flights increasing from about once a month to once a week. (Human Rights Watch, September 21).
Without valid work permits, TPS holders lose their jobs, income, and ability to support their families. In August 2026, U.S. Immigration Services admitted that Salvadoran TPS holders still had pending work-permit renewal applications ahead of the September 9 termination date. These workers had followed the renewal process but still faced losing authorization to work because HSS (Dept of Homeland Security) refused to process their work permit renewals. TPS holders have also paid Social Security and Medicare taxes through their wages, without being eligible for benefits.
The economic consequences extend beyond U.S. borders. Remittances to El Salvador reached approximately $10.1 billion in 2025, equal to 27.5 percent of the country’s GDP, according to World Bank data. Since January 2026, the U.S. government has also imposed a 1 percent tax on many remittance transfers, including those made with cash and money orders. (IRS, January 1). These figures demonstrate how deeply Salvadoran families and their country’s economy depend on workers’ earnings in the United States.
These attacks disproportionately threaten Black, Haitian, and Latino workers, using immigration status to make them more vulnerable to exploitation and family separation. Racism also encourages workers to blame immigrants for low wages, unaffordable housing, and inadequate health care, rather than unite against the system producing these problems.
As the Trump administration carries out these attacks, liberal politicians are trying to distract workers with pitiable reforms. Democrat Representative Ayanna Pressley pushed to merely extend Haitian TPS for another three years, leaving their future dependent on another temporary status that politicians can revoke at any time.
Workers need to defend one another against deportations now, but lasting security requires more than temporary protections: it requires building a movement capable of ending the racist exploitation and divisions that make immigrant workers vulnerable in the first place.
Pierre Damas Bel: The human cost of state terror
The death of Pierre Damas Bel shows how devastating these policies can be. Bel was a 20-year-old Haitian immigrant and student in Springfield, Ohio. After the termination of TPS, immigration authorities placed Pierre under electronic monitoring with an ankle device. His father said Bel felt humiliated and was bullied over the monitor. Pierre’s family and immigrant-rights advocates correctly blamed the US immigration policies for his death. (CBS, September 2).
Bel, like all workers being attacked by this capitalist system, should be remembered as a person with a life and a future who was loved and needed by their community. He was made to live under the threat of removal and the humiliation of being made to wear a device used for criminals. His death demands that we confront the human cost of a system that terrorizes immigrant workers and their families in order that all workers live in fear of fighting back.
A speaker at the TPS rally described how these costs were being felt by Salvadoran families. She said that more than 150,000-192,000 U.S. citizen children have at least one Salvadoran relative with TPS, and that roughly 52,000 children came to the United States with TPS parents but lack legal status themselves (Immigrations Policy and Research). Her message was clear: when the government targets immigrant parents, children pay the price. Some risk being separated from their families, left with relatives or in foster care, or being forced to leave the country alongside their parents.
For children, a parent’s immigration status is not a statistic. It can determine whether they sleep in the same home tomorrow, whether their family can pay rent, and whether a parent who has cared for them for years will be there when they come home.
From Haiti’s revolution to communist revolution
The Haitian Revolution showed the world that enslaved people could overthrow a ruling class that seemed invincible, inspiring rebellions throughout the Caribbean and the Americas. That legacy belongs to workers fighting ICE terror and racist deportations today. Just as enslavers used racism to divide and control people, capitalism uses immigration status to make Haitian, Latino, and other workers more vulnerable to exploitation.
We cannot rely on politicians, court battles, or temporary protections to end this system. We must turn solidarity at rallies like this one into organized working-class struggle in our workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is fighting to build the revolutionary communist movement needed to overthrow capitalism and end the exploitation and divisions that terrorize and threaten all workers.
From Haiti’s revolution to today’s fight against deportations, the lesson is that workers can change history when we unite across national borders. Join PLP and fight for a communist world where workers everywhere stand together against racism and exploitation!
