A radical left-wing group, Unión del Barrio (UdB), is offering "self-defense" training to combat Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. The Latino-focused organization, which models itself on militant groups like the Black Panthers, is also trying to recruit members for daily car patrols to help "expel" ICE agents from neighborhoods.
UdB, an American left-wing revolutionary socialist group was established in 1981 to combat "all manifestations of colonial, imperialist, and neoliberal oppression." The group’s website features a photo of Cuban soldiers holding AK-47s and claims that America is a "violent and dangerous" "empire in decline." And last month, as President Donald Trump was about to take office and launch his promised mass deportations, UdB began offering self-defense trainings. It's also been involved in anti-ICE protests sweeping through Southern California.
"COMMUNITY SELF-DEFENSE! STOP THE ICE RAIDS!" the flyer advertising a Jan. 18 online training read. "Learn how to identify undercover ICE vehicles that are used in ICE raids."
The group also boasted that at least 20 organizations had signed up for a Jan. 25 online training. "Help us defend our communities from ICE!" a flyer for that event read. Two more, this time geared toward educators, were held Jan. 28 and Feb. 4.
An in-person training is scheduled for Thursday in Los Angeles. "We are ORGANIZING to fight ICE raids," a flyer posted to Instagram reads. The caption said over 30 organizations will be present.
UdB has also been involved in the recent wave of anti-ICE protests that have engulfed Southern California in response to Trump’s deportations. Some have led to illegal street and freeway blockades, as well as incidents of criminal vandalism.
On UdB’s website, the group contends that protesting and radical rhetoric alone are not enough to bring about change. Instead UdB seeks to model itself on militant groups, such as the Brown Berets and the Black Panthers, as well as the socialist revolutions of Cuba and Venezuela.
According to a PowerPoint presentation used in trainings reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, UdB seeks to "identify, denounce and expel" ICE officers from Mexican neighborhoods. It does so by teaching people how to identify the different types of U.S. immigration agencies, how to identify uniformed and undercover immigration officers, the vehicles they use, and their methods of operation.
UdB members interested in further "protecting communities from ICE and police terror" are encouraged to join and carry out daily car patrols, according to the training PowerPoint.
"The Community Patrols are a means of building community-based power that will challenge police and migra attacks," UdB’s website states. "These agencies are trained to profile, harass, detain, arrest, and brutalize our people. We are determined to build … barrio [neighborhood]-centered self-defense and prevent the detention and family separation that has taken place over the last several decades."
"The objective is to organize our people in every barrio, block by block, to defend our communities from colonial violence and threats to our human and democratic rights," the webpage continues. "We intend to expose the anti-Raza [race] nature of the colonizer state that has now openly declared itself a tool to terrorize, repress, and exploit the lives and labor power of the Mexicano-Raza working class."
During the Jan. 18 online training session, UdB secretary general Adriana Jasso emphasized that self-defense is part of the greater socialist class struggle.
"The great majority of our people are providing for their families, are in survival mode under this colonial system," Jasso said. "For that reason, we stand together and we stand in unity and unconditional support to defend the working class of our communities and that’s who we identify with and that’s who we seek to defend in this period of struggle."
"We don’t want anyone to be separated or to be deported," Jasso continued. "Our communities deserve to be seen, and we stand with them. We will defend them and our proposal to all of you is community self-defense. No one is going to tell us if we belong here or don’t belong here. We know that this is our struggle. We know that, going back to our history, this is where our people are supposed to be."
On Sunday the group released its own online guide outlining best practices for organizing protests.
"In recent days, we have seen a major surge of anger and community action, both on the streets of every U.S. city and on social media. Unión del Barrio applauds the courage of our gente in standing up to resist the current attacks against our community," UbD wrote in a statement.
UbD’s website includes three "strategic goals to guide all areas of our community work for building people’s power."
Under the first goal, "Community Level Self-Defense," UdB says it must become "a party capable of providing for the immediate self-defense of our communities within every sector of our population. Conditions are already truly dire for our gente, and things will inevitably be getting worse."
The second goal, "dual and contending power," refers to a concept used by revolutionary movements to undermine the state’s legitimacy and vie for control.
"We live in what is an empire in decline, which is domestically and internationally even more violent and dangerous than an ascending empire," the website states. "Precisely because of this, we must build a party capable of providing for the economic, political, cultural, and ideological self-determination and self-sufficiency within every sector of our population within the current borders of the U.S."
The final goal, written in Spanish, translates to "Rearguard for Our America." There, UdB argues that it must work toward the first two goals "with the understanding that we have an essential role to fulfill as the historical Rearguard (Retaguardia) of the revolutionary process for liberation and socialism that is already taking place throughout Nuestra América."
"When we struggle locally we must also identify ourselves with and actively defend the socialist revolution of Nuestra América [Our America] that is currently on the march in the South," the site continues.
In addition to "resisting" immigration and law enforcement in the United States, UdB "unconditionally uphold[s] the right of self-determination of indigenous people, and of all poor and oppressed people throughout the world." As such, in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack, UdB announced that "Palestinians and Mexicans/Indigenous people have a common enemy: settler colonialism."
"Today, we express our solidarity with the bold resistance of Palestinians in their struggle against normalized Israeli state terror and settler colonization," UdB wrote in a statement the day after the attack. "Unión del Barrio stands with the people of Palestine and with their righteous struggle for self-determination and the right to return to their illegally occupied lands. The bold resistance of the Palestinian people is understood as such by billions of colonized and displaced people around the world, and we are confident that justice will prevail in Palestine!"
UdB has since participated in dozens of anti-Israel and pro-Hamas protests according to Instagram posts reviewed by the Free Beacon. On the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre, the group once again released a statement celebrating the attack and blaming Israel for the violence.
UdB did not respond to a request for comment.