By VALENTINA SALGADO and MAURICE M.

The recent detention of Guillermo Medina Reyes by ICE agents in San Jose, Calif., is a direct attack against immigrants and against the entire working class of this country. His arrest is part of a state offensive that combines immigration repression, the criminalization of protest, and a detention apparatus that clearly serves the interests of the ruling classes.

Guillermo’s case cannot be understood outside the concrete functioning of the capitalist state—a set of institutions (police, courts, legislatures, national and local executive bodies, prisons, ICE) designed by the boss class to control, divide, and discipline the working class, particularly its immigrant sectors.

Guillermo was born in Mexico and arrived in the United States at the age of six. His entire adult life unfolded in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he became a tattoo artist, a worker, an artist, and a community organizer deeply committed to the defense of immigrants. This trajectory explains why the state targets him: because he has demonstrated that immigrants not only have the right to live here but can also organize, fight, and challenge the very structure of immigration repression.

From a young age, Guillermo faced a system of punishment that left him marked in the eyes of the government. At 16, he was convicted as an adult of attempted homicide and served over 12 years in prison. After completing his full sentence, instead of reclaiming his life in freedom, the state transferred him directly into ICE custody. This practice constitutes a form of double punishment imposed on immigrants after their release from prison.

But Guillermo’s criminal record does not nullify any of his rights. No offense or crime justifies deportation, persecution and surveillance, or immigration-related incarceration. Immigrants, regardless of their past, possess fundamental rights, including due process, the right not to be arbitrarily detained, and the right to organize politically. Workers Voice defends these rights and organizes all workers to win the full and unconditional right to citizenship for all immigrants.

In 2022, Guillermo was detained at the Golden State Annex immigration detention center in California, which, like 90% of all immigration detention centers, is run by corporations that profit from suffering, in this case the GEO Group. There, he organized his fellow detainees through a hunger strike and a work stoppage and participated in a class-action lawsuit against ICE and that corporation for abusive conditions and retaliation. Through this, Guillermo demonstrated that collective organization and struggle can emerge even under the most adverse conditions. That experience made him a leading figure in the fight for immigrants’ rights and a target for persecution.

Finally freed in 2023, Guillermo “turned [his] life around” from his teenage years. But this did not end the persecution, and Guillermo continued to draw ICE’s ire as he participated in protests, stand in solidarity with other detainees, and publicly denounce the repressive and exclusionary immigration system.

In May 2025, he faced a misdemeanor vandalism charge related to a mental health episode. ICE attempted to use that incident to imprison him again. A federal judge issued an order preventing that arbitrary arrest. Subsequently, a court issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting ICE from detaining him without judicial review.

In August 2025, Reyes was arrested again and accused by Alameda police of attempted carjackings. Reyes has said that the arrest occurred following a mental health episode caused by the stress of the deportation proceedings. The community in San Jose has continued to rally behind him, supporting him at immigration hearings through late January 2026. But on Feb. 13, the judge issued a decision ordering his re-detention without bond.

The following day, federal agents violently apprehended him outside his home in San Jose. He was transferred to the California City Detention Center, where hundreds of immigrants await deportation in degrading conditions. This detention is part of ICE’s deployment as a political police force, reinforced by the current administration with astronomical budgets, dozens of new private detention centers, and a model of repression that seeks to prevent any form of organization among immigrants, workers, students and communities.

Guillermo’s persecution highlights the political nature of immigration detentions. It is no coincidence that those who lead strikes, protests, or speak out, like Guillermo, are the first to be targeted by repression. The state seeks to sow fear, discourage resistance, and isolate activists.

But our response cannot be fear. The recent experience of the working class shows that where there is organization, there is strength. In Minneapolis, in January  2026, 50,000 protesters brought the city to a standstill and drove out 700 ICE agents. The recent massive and militant strike at the JBS meatpacking plant in Greeley, Col., demonstrates the power of workers’ joint action across national boundaries: there, 3000 immigrant workers managed to launch a joint action against their employers despite speaking more than 57 different languages.

Such mass actions are capable not only of halting repression, but also of demonstrating that the working class has the potential to dismantle the tools of the state and win all kinds of rights when it acts in unity.

The struggle for Guillermo’s immediate and unconditional release is part of a broader battle for the rights of the working class. This includes defending all immigrants, securing the full and unconditional right to citizenship, and building a multinational workers’ movement independent of the capitalist parties. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are allies in this struggle. Both have built and financed the repressive apparatus that today detains, deports, and imprisons.

Our task is clear. We must unite unions, community organizations, and popular movements in a national campaign capable of confronting the state and securing the freedom of Guillermo and all the regime’s immigration and political prisoners.

Immediate and unconditional freedom for Guillermo Medina Reyes!

Full and universal right to citizenship for all immigrants!

Abolish ICE!

Workers’ organization to defeat immigration, labor, and political persecution and exploitation!

The post Freedom for Guillermo Medina Reyes! first appeared on Workers’ Voice/La Voz de los Trabajadores.

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