Labor Goes All In for Kilmar

ALTHOUGH MAY DAY IS A SMALLER HOLIDAY in the United States than abroad—since, for complicated reasons, the U.S. has its Labor Day in September—the trade unions still celebrate May 1 with rallies and gatherings. But this year, in addition to focusing on the aspirations, grievances, and accomplishments of working people, the unions took time to remember Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who remains unlawfully detained in a Salvadoran prison.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler highlighted Abrego Garcia’s case as well as that of Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk in a statement, while condemning President Donald Trump’s unlawful overreach.

“The Trump administration also has illegally targeted our fellow workers—union members like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was separated from his family in Maryland and sent to a prison in El Salvador without due process, and Rümeysa Öztürk, detained while walking to dinner in Massachusetts and thrown into a detention center thousands of miles away, despite neither of them having committed a crime,” Shuler said, before invoking a well-known labor slogan. “An injury to one is an injury to all. When Trump targets immigrant families like Kilmar’s and Rümeysa’s, he targets all workers.”

The American Federation of Teachers, an AFL-CIO affiliate with 1.8 million members among 3,000 local affiliates across the nation, released a slick video about Abrego Garcia that begins with a familiar quote:

“‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,’” the AI-generated narrator’s voice intones. “On March 12, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was arrested by ICE and illegally sent to a brutal Salvadoran prison, violating a 2019 judge’s order that forbids his deportation to El Salvador. He was separated from his wife and kids, who are U.S. citizens, without a hearing or due process. Originally even the Trump administration admitted deporting him was a mistake, but they refuse to follow court orders demanding his return.”

The video concludes with an appeal: “This isn’t just about one man. It’s about who we are and what kind of country we want to be.”

(Courtesy CASA)

The push by major unions to rally behind Abrego Garcia’s cause comes as the Democratic party—long the home for the labor movement—remains divided on how aggressively to advocate on his behalf. It also places those unions at odds with Trump, who has made direct overtures to several unions in an effort to make gains with blue-collar voters.

But labor leaders are riding a wave of opposition to Trump’s second administration, especially his economic and immigration policies. After an April 17 call among 1,400 advocates and union members to discuss plans for May Day rallies in Chicago, New York, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Raleigh, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, among other cities, organizers said they could tell the energy and enthusiasm was larger than in recent years. And indeed, huge crowds came out on Thursday for a combination of “Stop the Billionaire Agenda,” “Stop the Deportations,” and “Bring Kilmar Home” messaging.

For an event in Lafayette Square in front of the White House, organizers expected 3,000 attendees to listen to speeches from Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, as well as union leaders and advocates. The actual turnout, they said, was more than 5,000.

But rallying against Trump’s economic agenda and immigration policies in the abstract is one thing. Taking up the Abrego Garcia cause specifically is another. Jossie Flor Sapunar, the communications director for CASA, an organization representing working-class minorities that helped organize the Lafayette Square event, said unions were stepping up for Abrego Garcia not because he is unique but because he represents many other “people being grabbed without respect for their constitutional rights, including U.S. citizens and children.”

And Abrego Garcia is a member of organized labor—an apprentice in the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, known as SMART.

“Polls show there is a line Trump is crossing that people are not okay with and the Kilmar situation seems to be the tipping point,” Sapunar said.

In the left image, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, can be seen in the back row, second to left, before she came to the lectern to speak. (Courtesy CASA)

As Vasquez Sura addressed the assembled crowd at Lafayette Square, she spoke about her husband’s ordeal in El Salvador and her family’s ordeal in Maryland. She was flanked by representatives of the American Federation of Teachers, the Service Employees International Union, the AFL-CIO, UniteHere, the National Education Association, and SMART.

I thought her remarks were powerful and wanted to share this part:

Despite the Trump administration’s continued attempts to break my fighting spirit, I stand before you today with my head held high, demanding justice for my husband, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. On March 12, 2025, my husband, Kilmar, was illegally detained, abducted, and disappeared by the Trump administration through what they admitted was an error. I want to repeat that: My husband was illegally detained, abducted, and disappeared—thrown away to die in one of the most dangerous prisons in El Salvador, with no due process—because of an error!

It has been fifty days of pain and suffering. Fifty days of uncertainty. And as we finally saw proof that Kilmar was alive, my children and I had to watch the Trump and Bukele administrations taunt and ridicule our pain. This pain is indescribable. My children have been left to live in the silence of their father’s absence. They miss him more than anyone can imagine. The highest court in this nation ruled that Kilmar should be returned home, so why are we still waiting? Enough is enough. Stop playing political games with my husband’s life! . . .

Through all of this pain, I continue to find strength in my faith and immense support from our community. My brothers and sisters from CASA, members of the SMART union, allies, faith leaders—all of you continue to lift me up in the darkest of times. Kilmar, if you can hear me: I love you, know that your children and I are still fighting for you. And we will never give up.

National Education Association President Becky Pringle spoke after Vasquez Sura, declaring, “We know this administration is scapegoating immigrants—and at times abducting and disappearing them like they did with Kilmar Albrego Garcia—to justify cruel and callous policies. We know, and the public is beginning to see, that Trump and his enablers have gone too far.”

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Regular readers of this newsletter will remember that last month, Sean McGarvey, the president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, demanded Abrego Garcia’s immediate return and called him “our brother.” His comments remain some of the most powerful on behalf of Abrego Garcia, where he began by saying that billionaires like Elon Musk don’t build data centers—builders do: “That means all of us, all of us, including our brother SMART apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who we demand be returned to us and h