Sawant Stands in Solidarity With Los Angeles Metro Drivers Fighting Back Against Trump’s ICE
By Kshama Sawant, independent socialist antiwar pro-worker candidate for Washington state’s ninth Congressional district
Workers Strike Back and I stand in solidarity with Los Angeles Metro public transit drivers Sean and Jaime, who are fighting back against ICE and their horrific raids on buses and who are facing retaliation from the Metro administration. I urge working people in the LA area to join the rally on Thursday, September 25, 2025, 9:00 AM.
Sean, Jaime, and their fellow drivers have been committed to standing up for immigrants and working people in their community against the ICE raids. As Sean has said, “If ICE agents tried to come on the bus with masks on, I won't stop or open the door. The people on my bus rely on me as their driver to keep them safe.”
In an egregious act of retaliation, the LA Metro Board fired Sean and Jaime, claiming that they violated company policy.
But the workers have refused to back down. Sean and Jaime are rank-and-file members of SMART (the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers) Local 1607. Union members with SMART 1607 and also with the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1277 passed resolutions demanding the reinstatement of Sean and Jaime, calling for a rally against the ongoing attacks on union members and the immigrant community in LA, and calling on supporters to speak out at the LA Metro Board public comment to demand reinstatement of these workers facing retaliation and an end to LA city’s cooperation with Trump’s ICE.
Under pressure from the workers and their unions fighting back, the Board was forced to walk back the firing and is now imposing a 60-day suspension without pay. This shows that when working people fight back, we can force the hand of the bosses! Let’s get a big turnout at the Thursday rally to force the LA Metro Board to back off from any and all retaliation against Sean and Jaime! Demand that LA Metro withdraw the suspension and drop all charges against Sean and Jaime, give them their full back pay, and implement a Metro-wide proactive safety policy against ICE raids and arrests.
The LA Metro Board is composed mostly of Democratic Party officials, including LA Mayor Karen Bass. Far from protecting working people and the immigrant community from the brutal attacks by ICE under Trump, Democrats like Mayor Bass are cracking down on workers who are courageously organizing against Trump’s attacks. More than 160 people protesting against ICE have already been arrested by the LA Police Department under Mayor Bass. All this comes on top of Mayor Bass and Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, and other California Democratic Party politicians overseeing arrests and crackdown last year on antiwar protestors speaking out against the Israeli state’s genocide in Gaza, a holocaust that is being bankrolled by both Democrats and Republicans.
We need the labor movement to break with the Democratic and Republican Parties. We need a new party for working people that will stand with all working and oppressed people against the warmongering billionaire class and their political representatives. We need to build independent mass movements to win victories for the working class. That is why I’m running as an independent socialist for the U.S. Congress. My campaign is demanding a stop to all deportations, and fighting to shut down ICE and the detention centers.
We need independent working-class fighters who are willing to organize working people and rank-and-file union members against the Democratic and Republican Parties, including the politicians who sit on the LA Metro Board, and expose them for being anti-union, anti-immigrant officials hostile to working people. That is how I won historic working-class victories during my decade as a socialist on the Seattle City Council. Seattle’s working people and I won the nation’s highest minimum wage, a tax on Amazon to fund social housing, and historic renters rights. That same fighting strategy is needed now to stop the attacks on immigrants and unions.
The labor movement has a crucial role to play in fighting back against these attacks on union members and immigrants because an injury to one is an injury to all. We need other unions to join SMART and ATU members who are already building for the rally and public comment. Crucially, unions also need to be calling for strike action to shut down the profit machine in cities like LA, demanding an end to the deportations, an end to the attacks on the labor movement including the cancellation of federal employee union contracts, and an end to all U.S. military funding to the Israeli state. We urgently need to get organized and fight back to bring down Trump, the billionaires, and both their parties.