‘First they came’: Migrants, trans people are first targets of Trump’s fascist rule

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Activists protest Trump’s anti-trans executive orders at the Kentucky State Capitol, Jan. 30.

Jan. 31 – The first 12 days of the new Trump administration have seen an avalanche of attacks on the working class and oppressed peoples of the United States and the whole world. Federal workers, reproductive rights, diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, students opposed to genocide in Gaza, teachers, and AIDS prevention and treatment are just a few of the targets.

The most brutal executive orders have been directed at two especially vulnerable sections of the working class: migrants and transgender people. 

The Trump regime has openly and savagely declared its intent to bring home the genocidal policies carried out in Gaza under Biden.

The “shock and awe” of hundreds of executive orders is meant to overwhelm, demoralize, and disorganize workers and our communities, unions, and organizations to make it impossible for people to fight back.

But fighting back, in unity and with massive numbers, is the only way to push back the onslaught and organize a militant resistance to stop this government. 

When an executive order freezing all government funding for grants and loans caused state Medicaid and SNAP (food stamp) websites to shut down, the broad and immediate outcry forced the Trump government to temporarily walk back some portions of the freeze. This was a small but important victory.

It’s been pointed out that many of Trump’s executive orders hold no particular legal weight. Many of them are blatantly illegal and unconstitutional, such as the attempt to repeal birthright citizenship. All will be challenged in court. 

But government agencies, businesses, and institutions are rushing to implement these attacks anyway – either because they are eager to do so, or because they fear lawsuits, loss of funding, and repression if they do not. 

They all understand that the far-right U.S. Supreme Court has declared Trump and his oligarch allies like Elon Musk exempt from the rule of law.

The word has come down through Trump and his lackeys, IT billionaires who dominate social media, the heights of Corporate America, and the capitalist media: Fascism is what the ruling class wants now, and it’s what they shall have. 

Democrats in Congress have quietly acquiesced, and sometimes enthusiastically joined in – as Biden and Harris did during the 2024 presidential campaign by refusing to defend trans lives and promoting anti-immigrant measures.

But our power to fight fascism doesn’t rest on legalities. It depends on the struggle of class against class. Trump and the bosses understand this very well and will do everything in their power to continue pitting workers against each other to prevent a united resistance.

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Protest against ICE raids on schools at the Oklahoma State Capitol, Jan. 28.

ICE raids and concentration camps

After Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were dispatched to several so-called sanctuary cities, where local laws were enacted under the first Trump term in office to prevent local police from collaborating in federal roundups of the undocumented, and others caught up in the web of repression.

On Jan. 29, Trump announced that a detention camp for 30,000 migrants would be opened in the U.S. Naval base that occupies Guantanamo in Cuba. This is where hundreds of illegally detained men were tortured and imprisoned as part of the U.S. “War on Terror.” Some spent more than two decades imprisoned there, and as of Jan. 6, at least 15 still remain.

Socialist Cuba, which has been fighting for the return of its rightful territory in Guantanamo, condemned Trump’s plan.

The ICE gestapo are supposedly going after migrants accused (not convicted) of crimes and offenses. Yet they have also targeted children in schools, patients in hospitals, and workers on the job. Some hospitals and school districts have issued guides for workers on how to resist these illegal ICE incursions.

Indigenous peoples, particularly in the Southwest, have reported a surge in detentions and threatened deportations of tribal members, despite being the original inhabitants of this land. Every person of color is considered fair game.

But there is resistance. In cities across the U.S., people are on the lookout for ICE vehicles and federal agents. Community defenders are patrolling vulnerable neighborhoods and distributing “Know Your Rights” information. People are posting photos and locations of suspicious movements on social media to warn their neighbors.

Is it effective? Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, went on CNN to complain about “well-educated” communities defying ICE: “They call it ‘Know Your Rights.’ I call it ‘how to escape arrest.’”

Trans genocide 

The forces backing Trump need and want to continue exploiting immigrant labor. They seek to terrorize immigrant communities with deportations in order to create even more brutal conditions and lower wages for those who remain.

In the case of trans people, though, the goal of the fascist right is outright extermination. Executive orders have come down daily attacking the ability of trans people to live their lives. 

Already, passports and other federal documents are being altered, nullified, and seized to hamper people’s ability to travel and, if necessary, escape the country. Trump has ordered an end to life-saving gender-affirming care for young people under the age of 19 while laying the groundwork for a ban on trans health care for adults, too. And some hospitals are rushing to comply.

A trans restroom ban in federal facilities goes into effect today, including in government offices, airports and much more. The administration will also push for a restroom ban in all private facilities and workplaces. Trans soldiers are being expelled from the U.S. military.

Trans women in federal prisons are to be transferred to men’s prisons to be tortured, raped, and murdered, as already happens in many states. Teachers are threatened with being prosecuted as “sex offenders” if they acknowledge the real names and genders of their trans students. 

These measures will further escalate anti-trans violence on the streets and in schools, as well as suicides, especially for youth. 

All of it is being couched in hypocritical language about “protecting” children and women.

No LGBTQIA+ people are safe from the storm. On Jan. 29, Idaho state representatives called on the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide – a move the right-wing justices have already hinted they plan to make soon.

Every statement and executive order names trans people as one of the main causes of the country’s problems.

Make no mistake: Extermination of trans lives is the aim of the capitalist ruling class and the Trump regime. This community has been assigned the role of scapegoat. 

For trans people, the only option being presented is to go back into the closet. If we cannot or will not do so, we are to be criminalized, imprisoned and tortured, or eventually murdered outright.

Which side are you on?

Many of us learned about the prose poem “First They Came” in school. It was written after World War II by German pastor Martin Niemöller, who originally collaborated with the Nazi regime, then discovered he was not safe from the ravages of fascism himself. 

“First they came for the communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a communist

“Then they came for the socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a socialist

“Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

“Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

“Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.”

The poem was written as a warning to future generations: Ignore the plight of fascism’s first victims at your own peril, because your turn will come.

Some groups targeted by Hitler and his Nazis were left out of the poem, however – notably, the migratory Roma and Sinti peoples, and also queer people, who were shipped off to concentration camps marked with a pink triangle. This symbol was later famously reclaimed by ACT UP in the fight against government neglect of the AIDS epidemic.

One of the first targets of the Nazi regime in Germany was the Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin, led by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld was a pioneer of gender-affirming health care for trans people. The institute was an advocate and safe haven for trans people in the Weimar era that preceded the Nazi takeover.

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Nazis burn the archives of the Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin, Germany, May 1933.

On the night of May 6, 1933, a few months after Hitler became chancellor, the Nazis swarmed the institute, destroying its library and records in one the first major book burnings. 

So reviled were trans lives that the post-war German capitalist government and many “experts” refused to acknowledge that trans people were victims of the Holocaust until a court case in 2022 finally forced a measure of recognition. 

(In the antifascist German Democratic Republic – socialist East Germany – pre-Hitler science on homosexuality and transgender was partially recovered, before the counterrevolution and German reunification in 1990. Notably, East German understanding of queer lives informed the development of Cuba’s policies, leading to the revolutionary new Families Code in 2022.)

Will working-class organizations be able to relearn history’s lesson in time to fight back in defense of its most vulnerable members? Or will these extinguished lives be relegated to the first line of a new “First They Came” decades in the future?

How these questions are answered will decide the fate of the working class in the U.S. and worldwide for many years to come.


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