The Trump Administration and Genocide: Understanding the Lemkin Institute’s Red Flag Alerts for Genocide in the United States

Author: Nelson Kalberer, MSc

May 21, 2025

Author's Disclaimer: I am not accusing the Trump administration of committing genocide.

I am using examples of early stages of genocides to bring awareness to its features and how it occurs to prevent genocide in the United States.

A demonstrator holds a placard showing a picture of US President-elect Donald Trump modified to add a swastika and an Adolf Hitler-style moustache during a protest outside the US Embassy in London Nov. 9, 2016 against Trump after he was declared the winner of the US presidential election. [Image credit: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images]

During President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk, who would become the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) later that day, made two Nazi salutes in appreciation of his supporters. The act was immediately criticised by governments and organisations around the world as an act of Neo-Nazism and fascist symbolism, including the German government, members of the European Parliament, and Democratic politicians. Israeli and Jewish organisations, including Israeli news agency Haaretz and the NGO Jewish Council for Public Affairs, called it a “fascist salute” and condemned it as “normalising and endowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists”.

The Anti-Defamation League, an American NGO against antisemitism, described it as “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute”, though CEO Jonathan Greenblatt later criticised Musk after he appeared to joke about the Holocaust on X. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also defended Musk as being “falsely smeared” for the apparent salute. Musk’s supporters attributed the gesture to an awkward movement caused by his “autism”, and the Trump Administration took no action against Musk. 

The same day as Musk’s Nazi salute, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security issued a Red Flag Alert for Genocide in the United States. Named after Raphaël Lemkin, the founder of the legal term “genocide”, the Lemkin Institute aims to create awareness of ongoing and potential genocides to ensure the international community takes immediate action to prevent genocide. It issues “Red Flag Alerts” when there are developments that have potential to move a society towards committing genocide. 

After gaining significant traction on social media for the alert, public awareness of the Institute and its Red Flag Alerts diminished. At the beginning of the Trump administration, social media was abuzz with fear for the coming four years. Association between a buzzword like “genocide” and the incoming administration created relatability between fearful social media users. “Genocide” invoked memories of political persecution and mass murders of Jews and other groups in the Holocaust, an undeniably catastrophic event in human history. 

However, there was a lack of understanding towards the developments precluding genocide, which was what the Lemkin Institute’s Red Flag Alerts aimed to highlight. In this article, I aim to bring awareness to recently published Red Flag Alerts for Genocide in the United States and the reasons why the Alerts have been published.

What is genocide? What is ethnic cleansing?

Armenia

On March 15th, 1921, an Armenian named Soghomon Tehlerian assassinated Talaat Pasha, the former Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, in Berlin. Tehlerian had been one of the survivors of what is generally considered the Armenian Genocide, in which between 664,000 and 1.2 million Armenians were killed in the Ottoman Empire (out of a total of 1.5 million Armenians) between 1915-1916. Ottoman authorities, led by Pasha, strategically and systematically targeted Armenians within its territory with the intention of eliminating any Armenian presence. Pasha had been living in Berlin in self-imposed exile since 1919, when the Turkish Military Tribunal had sentenced him to the death penalty in absentia.

Tehlerian was arrested by German authorities and released following a public trial, in which he argued “I have killed a man, but I am not a murderer” because he was seeking out justice for his people. The trial’s publicity influenced Lemkin, who believed it was unjust for states to be allowed to commit extreme violence against a group without consequences. Studying in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) at the time, he asked Professor Juliusz Makarewicz, an established criminal law professor who would be the main author of the 1932 Polish Criminal Code, why the German courts had not convicted him of the crimes the Turkish courts had prosecuted him for. Makarewicz responded that the doctrine of state sovereignty allowed governments to act against their own people as they saw fit. Lemkin disagreed; sovereignty was not “the right to kill millions of innocent people”.

The Concept Develops

During the Madrid Conference in 1933, Lemkin proposed a new law against Crimes of “barbarity” and “Vandalism”, which was influenced by the crimes committed during the Armenian Genocide and the 1933 Simele Massacre in Iraq. He saw these crimes as more than mass killings; they were systemic attacks against both culture and people to ultimately cause a group’s physical destruction. 

On August 22nd 1939, Adolph Hitler stated the forthcoming war aims against Poland consisted of “the physical destruction of the enemy… to send to death mercilessly and without compassion men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language”. In January 1939, Hitler had stated a world war would bring “the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe”. As a Polish-Jew, Lemkin experienced Hitler’s attempts to eradicate his Jewish and Polish culture, language, and existence. 

After fleeing Poland on 6 September 1939, Lemkin devoted the next five years to tracking, analysing, and compiling documentation on the Nazis’ war crimes and atrocities. This culminated in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, in which he defined the Nazi destruction of Jewish people as genocide: “a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves”.

The International Court of Justice has officially charged genocide for three different genocides since the United Nations Genocide Convention was ratified in 1948: the Cambodian Genocide (1975-79); the Rwandan Genocide (April-July 1994); and the Genocide in Srebrenica (July 1995). Though Adolf Eichmann was charged for crimes against the Jewish people (genocide in other words), this was determined by the District Court of Jerusalem and not an International Court.

The ICC defines genocide as follows:

…any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

How Genocide is prosecuted

Legally, genocide requires a clear intention to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group through the above means. Importantly, this differentiates genocide from mass killing events, but also makes it more difficult to charge individuals, states, or governments with genocide. Intention can be both implicit and explicit. For example, documents from the Secret Young-Turk Ittahidist Conference (The "10 Commandments") and Nazi officials (Wannsee Conference) established extermination timelines and used language like “exterminate”, “eradicate”, or “complete destruction [of a group]”. This displays intent and, had trials been held for the Armenian Genocide and Holocaust, would have led to a clear conviction. With Eichmann’s trial, intention to commit genocide was determined through these documents.

In other instances, such as the Rwandan Genocide, convictions have been determined by means other than documents mapping out genocidal plans. In the positive genocide conviction of Jean-Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of Taba Commune and first person ever definitively convicted of genocide, the Trial Chamber determined his intent based on his authoritative role in his commune, finding him complicit in instigating, aiding, and abetting the genocide. As the  peacekeeper of his community, he was aware of the Interahamwe’s killing of Tutsis and did nothing to stop it.

The facts leading to Jean Kampanda’s guilty plea of genocide also revolved around his negligence of duty to protect Tutsi citizens. Kampanda, the “caretaker” Prime Minister of Rwanda during the genocide, incited massacres using the media and public speeches. Massacres were also planned through various groups within his governments’ military and political wings, meaning he neglected atrocities committed by members of his government (p.15-18). Intent was interpreted.

The Genocide in Srebrenica, a part of what is considered academically as the Bosnian Genocide (1992-5), was proved through documents planning on eradicating the Bosnian Muslim population of Srebrenica. Ratko Mladić, the military leader of the Republika Srpska Armies, was convicted of genocide through his command over the systematic murders of 8,372 Bosniak males in Srebrenica, having stated clear intent: “you can either survive or disappear” and “live or vanish” (para 5130). 

Radovan Karadžić, the former President of Republika Srpska, was convicted of his second count of genocide based on his intention to remove the Bosniak community from Srebrenica through systematic killing. Karadžić was not convicted of his first count of genocide, as the Trial Chamber was not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that he intended to destroy the entire Bosniak community in various regions in Bosnia. This was despite evidence of Mladić and other officers eliminating Bosniak cultural and physical presences in Prijedor, Cerska, Žepa, Srebrenica, and Goražde (page 996). Karadžić’s argument that “displacement does not equal destruction” was a main factor in not convicting him for the first count of genocide. 

This argument was crucial to the emergence of ethnic cleansing as a non-legal term in international law, and is incredibly important in how war crimes, atrocities, and genocides are charged or prosecuted today. 

Ethnic Cleansing

The International Committee of the Red Cross defines ethnic cleansing as a “policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas”. The United Nations offers a similar definition, but importantly, notes that ethnic cleansing is not a crime under international law. Rather, it is only a descriptive term that encompasses various acts, many of which fall under crimes against humanity, war crimes, and even genocide.

Ethnic cleansing, originally etničko čišćenje in Serbo-Croatian, originated when Croats and Bosniaks fled Croatia, and later Bosnia and Herzegovina, following a Serbian systematic campaign of cleansing operations against non-Serbians. Republika Srpska troops significantly limited Bosniak rights and freedoms, including movement and communication, and used violence and terror to make their lives in Bosnia unliveable. According to experts like Norman Cigar, Laura Silber, and Allan Little, there were quotas of Bosniaks allowed to stay in towns; the rest would be deported, detained in concentration camps, raped with the intention of producing ethnically Serbian babies, or killed. 

Karadžić’s argument that “displacement was not destruction” was vindicated when the ICTY determined he had not committed genocide against the entire Bosniak community in Bosnia, citing the Bosnian Serb leadership’s objective to create an ethnically pure Bosnian-Serb state requiring “a redistribution – rather than the physical destruction – of the [Bosniak] population” (para. 2625). 

The main difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing is the association the former has with the planned, systematic killing of a group to physically destroy it,  and the latter with physical or forced removal through terror, killing, or persecution. Ethnic cleansing often fits within the definition of genocide. For example, the Trial Chamber for Karadžić found there was “a widespread and systematic attack against Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, demonstrated by the existence of a campaign of co-ordinated violence… [that] targeted victims solely on the basis of identity” (para. 2623). The language here is similar to language used to describe genocide but was identified as intent to “remove” rather than to “destroy” the communities (para. 2624). 

The town of Foča (para. 2625+2617) exemplifies the difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing. Between 1991-92, Republika Srpska forces and supporters looted and destroyed Bosniak houses, leading many Bosniaks to leave the town. Many of those that remained were killed either in attacks or while in detention facilities. In 1994, Karadžić “congratulated” Foča, renamed to Srbinje, for being a “true Serbian town” that the Bosniak’s had “given up” (para. 2625).

The 1991 Censuses in Foča showed there were over 19,000 Bosniak residents out of around 40,500. When the conflict ended, there were around 10 Bosniaks remaining. The ICTY viewed this as ethnic cleansing because of the Bosniaks’ expulsion from Foča, rather than extermination, regardless of whether the physical presence of Bosniak’s disappeared. This was not limited to Foča, and includes Prijedor, Vlasenica, Bratunac, Zvornik, and many other towns before and after the Genocide in Srebrenica. 

The United States’ History with Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing

While the United Nations Genocide Convention (also part of the Rome Statute) obligates member states to enforce the prohibition of genocide and punish nations that perpetrate genocide, there is no equal legal obligation for ethnic cleansing. Accusations of genocide or ethnic cleansing often carry geopolitical connotations or are determined by a country’s own actions.

For example, the United States did not fully adopt the UNGC until 1988 (the UNGC was created in 1948) because of their use of boarding schools to separate Native American children from their parents and cultural practices between 1819-1969, which would have legally constituted genocide (Article II.e). If they adopted the convention, they feared the Soviet Union or other enemy nations could accuse them of genocide. 

Since adopting the Convention, the United States has, amongst others, accused Islamic State of committing genocide against religious minorities in Iraq and Syria and accused the People’s Republic of China of committing genocide against Uyghurs and other minority groups in Xinjiang. Neither of these conflicts have resulted in a genocide conviction under international law, and both perpetrating parties have poor relationships with the United States. 

In comparison, during the Rwandan Genocide, State Department officials were ordered not to describe the massacres as “genocide”, leading them to hesitate when asked about the violence. During the Bosnian Genocide, the New York Times and most Western media referred to the violence as “ethnic cleansing” until Srebrenica. In both genocides, the United States did not refer to them as genocides until either the UN Security Council or NATO members designated them as genocide. 

Dr. Gregory Stanton, the founding President of Genocide Watch, says ethnic cleansing is commonly used to mean forced deportation, but has “invaded the legal lexicon”; ethnic cleansing is now “the dominant term used to describe genocidal crimes without using the word” and absolves those of their duty to prevent genocide. Ethnic cleansing is a euphemism for genocide.

The Ten Stages of Genocide

It is important to recognise the research by Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, who produced the Ten Stages of Genocide. These are the set of circumstances that build a climate where genocide can occur. At all stages, there are opportunities for either the international community or the public to halt the progression towards genocide, but it is more difficult to prevent as the stages progress. 

The image below provides a good visualisation and explanation of the different stages and will be useful to complement with the Lemkin Institute’s alerts.

The Lemkin Institute’s Red Flag Alerts for Genocide in the United States

The precursors to genocide often mirror authoritarianism, discrimination, and bigotry. Genocide is the most radical of these beliefs. It almost always includes the removal of political opposition to cement complete authority, the dehumanisation of an “enemy” to justify the extermination of the “enemy”, and the use of incendiary language which continues to fuel the perpetrators of genocide.

As of writing, the Lemkin Institute has issued three Red Flags for Genocide against the second Trump Administration. There were three main subjects to the alerts: 

1. 20 January 2025: The rise of fascism and Nazism from Musk’s Nazi Salute

2. 28 February 2025: The administration’s anti-transgender agenda and rhetoric

3. 13 March 2025: The dehumanisation of non-ethnic Americans

The January 20th Alert

The January 20th Alert strongly condemned Musk’s Nazi Salute, calling it an “insult to this country” and the survivors of the Holocaust. Musk’s gesture was “intentional” and meant to “signal allegiance with hate groups”, which is especially disturbing considering his role in the Trump administration.

Beyond being a symbol of antisemitism and antidemocracy, the salute symbolises a group that was obsessed with “natural hierarchies of humanity” through elimination and/or enslavement of supposedly inferior groups (including Jews, Romani and Sinti, and Poles). Musk’s own upbringing as a white South African during the Apartheid regime places him within a background shaped by rigid social hierarchies.

At its core, fascism is a separation of “us” and “them”. It is populist ultra-nationalism, which promotes the interests of one state or idea above all others. The Nazis (the textbook fascists) presented themselves as a community known as the Volksgemeinschaft and were united under a political and cultural aim to achieve the Aryan nation. All others were outside of the community, including political opposition, other ethnic/racial groups, and dissidents. 

The creation of the Volksgemeinschaft (People’s Community) was a crucial step towards the Holocaust because it identified enemies within Germany and made it possible for complete power to go to Hitler. The Reichstag Fire and the Night of the Long Knives eliminated and threatened political opposition in the German government and within the Nazi party, while Kristallnacht solidified Jews as a “dangerous enemy” to the Volksgemeinschaft. These events created incredible unity for the German Volk, excluding and isolating others, and provided a springboard for the Holocaust to occur. 

This Red Flag Alert was concerned about whether the Trump administration, specifically Elon Musk, will use many of the same features as the Nazi hierarchy in commanding power. It is important to be mindful of four major developments since January 20th that provide justification for the alert. 

On January 20th, President Trump ordered the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which aimed to “maximise governmental efficiency and productivity” and was headed by Elon Musk. Even though DOGE acts as if it is a formal US government department, it was never formally approved by Congress, meaning it is not actually a cabinet-level agency like the Department of Defense or Education. Since its establishment, DOGE has gutted the Department of Education, almost dismantled USAID, accessed the U.S. Treasury, and can view American Social Security Information and other private data. No other private American citizen has ever had this much information on United States citizens in its history. Trump even wants to increase the amount of information Musk and other members of his administration can access, having announced an Executive Order on March 20th to “removing unnecessary barriers to Federal employees accessing Government data”.

DEI (diversion, equity, and inclusion) initiatives, which are crucial to creating inclusive and innovative work environments, were also targeted by Trump after his inauguration. On January 20th, he ordered the termination of all DEI initiatives in the Federal government and has since attacked nationwide DEI initiatives. 

A March 27th Executive Order targeted the Smithsonian Institution for promoting a “divisive” historical narrative of the United States and stated the administration would prohibit funding for any institutions that claim the United States used race as a means to maintain systems of power, celebrate achievements by transgender people, and “promote ideologies inconsistent with federal law”. “Inconsistency with federal law” comes under a vagueness that could mean anything the administration disagrees with, however slight. In other words, censorship. The administration has already used this power to ban the Associated Press from White House presidential events (the ban has been lifted after a Federal Judge ruled it infringed on the First Amendment) and freezing over $3.3 billion in elite university funding, often directed towards specific research, due to “failure to protect Jewish students on campus”. Critics of the moves against universities, including many Jewish groups, have called this an attack on free speech and “an authoritarian takeover”.

Finally, on March 30th, President Trump announced he would not rule out a third presidential term and that there were “methods to do this”. A third presidential term is unconstitutional under the 22nd Amendment and can only be changed through a constitutional amendment or constitutional convention, both of which appear to be an impossibility under current voting patterns. Regardless, his announcement and the proposal by Tennessee Republican Rep. Andy Ogles to increase presidential term limits signify a turn towards complete power.

In reading these developments, one may be struck by how they seem to be more alike to how dictators gain power than to how genocide is perpetrated. Genocides are almost always persecuted by dictators, authoritarian leaders, or leaders with a monopoly over a minority group. 

The developments seen here show President Trump’s ideological insertion within the cultural, media, workplace, and private spheres of American life. Crucially, he does this with almost unflinching support from the Republican Party and with complacency from important figures and institutions. Leading Democrat Chuck Schumer reversed his position on forcing a government shutdown in March after supporting the Republican budget and Columbia University surrendered to Trump’s demands to change supervision of its Middle East department, adopt a new version of antisemitism into its policy, and empower public safety on campus to make arrests after he pulled $400 million in funds. Instead of being seen as innocently placating Trump for potentially better treatment in the future, they are seen as examples of caving to demands that threaten free speech and democracy without checking on power. 

Finally, the Lemkin Institute’s January 20th Alert was meant to create awareness of violence and threats the administration would make to control power. The Nazi Propaganda Ministry controlled the flow of information to the public and did not allow them to hear/read anything “calculated to weakening the strength of the Reich”. In February, the White House announced it would decide which journalists were allowed access to Donald Trump’s events; in March, they eliminated the US Agency for Global Media and crippled Voice of America. On April 14th, the administration planned to rescind $1.1 billion from NPR and PBS. These attempts of censorship are concerning because of the history of censorship in dictatorships, including under Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong.

In cases of genocide, censorship is even more concerning because they hide the atrocities committed. Following the first reports by foreign journalists in Phnom Penh of the atrocities, the Khmer Rouge sealed the country. Reports were only taken from refugees in border camps, and it was only until the regime was overthrown that the full scale of the genocide was made aware. In the Holocaust, censorship allowed the Nazi leadership to continue mass killings. The public’s critical reaction to the euthanasia program against physically and mentally disabled people forced Hitler to publicly halt the program, but he continued it secretly, and it became crucial to the plans for the Final Solution. The scale of these programs was not known until after World War II ended.

The February 28th Alert

This Red Flag Alert stemmed from various Executive Orders from the Trump administration aimed at transgender people in the United States. The first day of the administration saw an Executive Order erasing “sex” as anything other than the “biological classification as either male or female… belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell”. It also attempted to link trans and gender identity as “gender ideology”.

Beyond the scientific impossibility of this order (reproductive cells are not produced at conception), it delegitimizes trans identities as political agenda and essentially erases their official identities. The order states the Department of Homeland Security and Department of State will “implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex [under the new definition]”. 

On January 28th, the White House published an Executive Order to “protect children from chemical and surgical mutilation” from hormonal therapy and gender-affirming surgery. The Order stated it was against the “‘transition’ of a child [defined as under 19 years old] from one sex to another, and will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures”. The Order is full of falsehoods meant to create fear of transgender livelihood and identity. According to a 2021 review of trans teenagers and adults, only about 1% expressed regret after receiving gender-affirming care, not “countless” as the Order states. Unlike the claim that these “children” are “impressionable” and taken advantage of, the process of gender transitioning includes significant psychological evaluations, patient and parental consent below the age of 18, and gender transitioning surgery typically occur after the age of 18.

Lastly, an Executive Order on February 5th banned trans women from competing in women’s sport competitions at the collegiate level to “preserve fairness and safety in women’s sports”. In the NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, there are fewer than 10 transgender athletes out of over 500,000.

The Lemkin Institute issued the Red Flag Alert because the administration has, through Executive Orders, “created a fictitious ‘cosmic enemy’” and normalised greater state repression against all individuals. The Institute also believes the Orders can lead to a “paper persecution” of the transgender identity group and desensitise the public to persecution of people based solely on their identities. If fully implemented, the administration could “begin the process of removing a trans presence from collective life and preventing trans people from existing as themselves”. 

The minority group as the “fictitious cosmic enemy” is a significant theme in all genocides: in Germany, the Jewish population constituted 0.75% of the entire population in 1933; in Rwanda, the Tutsi’s made up 14% of the population in 1994; in Yugoslavia (rather than Bosnia because Serbian forces invaded Croatia and Bosnia) the Bosniaks made up 8.9% of the population in 1991; and in Cambodia, the ethnic Khmer population made up around 93% of the population according to the 1963 census. In the Cambodian genocide specifically, the Khmer Rouge exploited grudges between classes to create the idea of an “enemy” – mainly non-ethnic Khmers – that must be exterminated or forced to assimilate for the “purification” of the regime.

In the United States, around 1.5% of the population identifies as transgender. The Trump administration’s accusation that they pose a threat to the United States is as divisive as arguing any of the above minorities were threatening the status quo. Already, there have been successful attempts to erase transgender people’s legally chosen sex.

Hunter Schafer, a trans actress and model, had her passport stolen in March and had to receive a new one. When she received it, the sex marker was changed to “M” for Male. In a Tiktok video, she expressed her anger towards the administration’s attack on her identity, as well as her resolve that trans people “are never going to stop existing” and she will “never stop being trans”. 

Having to “out” herself to Border Control and other federal agents is not only uncomfortable, but also threatens her safety. She, like other trans people, will now be more vulnerable to transphobia from people who would not have known she was trans. The anti-trans rhetoric from the Trump administration could also make it more likely for federal agents to harass or detain her because the government has now declared her identity non-existent.

This type of group targeting through changing official documents is called “paper persecution”. The most infamous incident of “paper persecution” was in Nazi Germany, where German Jews’ passports were declared “invalid” in 1938 and all German Jews had to carry identity cards identifying them as Jews. Jews were also required to wear Stars of David to identify themselves. In Rwanda, an identity card with the designation of Tutsi “spelled a death sentence at any roadblock”. All non-Serbian Bosnians in north-west Bosnia were also made to wear white armbands. Another example in Nazi Germany of persecution through symbols was the pink triangle the Nazis required gay men to wear.

On March 9th, President Trump shared an article portraying the same upside-down pink triangle with a ban sign on top of it on his social media app Truth Social. The article itself, published by the Washington Times, emphasises the Trump administration’s accomplishment at making the US military “stronger”. The article’s artwork seems to allude that without queer people in the military, it is stronger. After President Trump shared the article, it may mean that these people are weak. 

Regardless, the symbolism of the pink triangle is a means to create unease in the queer community, especially in the trans community. In its Alert, the Lemkin Institute compares the danger the trans community faces with the danger Native Americans faced from the United States’ attempts at forced integration: “kill the Indian… and save the man”. President Trump and the administration have denied the existence of trans people, which the Lemkin Institute identifies as the 9th Pattern of Genocide.

The March 13th Alert

This Red Flag Alert also expressed concerns over the administration’s anti-trans rhetoric and highlighted  President Trump’s “blatant statements of genocidal intent” against undocumented immigrants. Trump’s March 4th address to Congress read as a “textbook example” of “perpetrator speech” similar to speeches by Adolf Hitler or Slobodan Milošević against Jews and Poles or Bosniaks.

Throughout the speech, President Trump used fear-inducing rhetoric about undocumented immigrants, including labelling them as “murderers, human traffickers, gang members… monsters… savages… terrorists” and invaders “strongly embedded in the country”. Additionally, the Lemkin Institute expressed concern over the vagueness of a law mandating the “detention of all criminal aliens who threaten public safety” because the law could be used to detain anyone suspected of being undocumented or threatening public safety without the proper legal documents.

The perpetrators of genocide are almost always convinced by their leaders of an existential threat from a “dangerous” enemy. The enemy is also often dehumanised by the perpetrators as non-human to achieve their eradication. 

The Nazi Party blamed “the Jewish high finance” for Germany’s humiliations in the 1900s and stated the Jews were an “inimical [hostile] Jewish counter race”. The assassination of German official Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a Polish Jew, was used by the Nazis as a pretext for Kristallnacht. In Trump’s March 4th address, he too weaponised the stories of murder victims Laken Riley and Alexis Nungaray as a means to protect American citizens and “eliminate these threats [to] our homeland”. 

In Cambodia, Pol Pot’s use of social grudges between the rural and urban classes created the idea of “the enemy” and “the loyal”; the “city people had done ‘something bad’ to the poor by making them suffer” and must be held accountable. Anthropologist Alexander Laban Hinton found that during the genocide, the Cambodian cultural model of disproportionate revenge – karsângsoek, or “head for an eye” – contributed to the scale of violence the perpetrators committed against their enemies. 

Prior to the Rwandan Genocide, many members of the Hutu leadership repeatedly called the Tutsi ethnic group Inkotanyi or Inyenzi, which translates to “enemy” or “accomplice”. They were also referred to as “cockroaches”. This was continued during the genocide; Jean-Paul Akayesu was known to have incited crowds to commit genocide by telling them to eliminate the Intokanyi and Inyenzi.

Before the genocide, Milošević gained power via Serbian nationalism and claimed Islamic fundamentalists in Bosnia were terrorising Serbians, a claim he repeated in his 2002-6 trial in The Hague. In Serbia, anti-Muslim sentiment was profound following Vuk Drašković’s book Nož (Knife), which “denied the Muslims’ existence as a legitimate community”. When Bosnia attempted to secede from the collapsing Yugoslavia, Milošević invaded and began systematically removing Bosniaks under the pretext of “freeing” Serbians.

Many of the Trump administration’s actions against undocumented immigrants have been illegal, including the deportation of a two-year old U.S. citizen and the rejection of a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling that he must “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from a Salvadorian prison. They also have direct similarities to policies of ethnic cleansing through illegal deportation and self-deportation. The Department of Homeland Security has added an app for “aliens illegally in the country” to self-deport themselves, and threatened that if not “we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return”. The aim of the administration is to target non-U.S. citizens who express views or behaviour that officials believe threatens national security and foreign policy.

But unlike his claims in his address to Congress, it is not only undocumented or “illegal” immigrants that are targeted. Alongside undocumented immigrants, legal and permanent residents have also been targeted, mainly those who entered the country illegally but gained citizenship or are on student visas. Below are some of the people targeted, detained, and deported by the Trump administration:

• On March 8th, Columbia University graduate and outspoken Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who is a U.S. legal resident on a green card, was detained by ICE officials who entered his apartment and transferred him to a detention centre in Louisiana. Since then, he has not been found guilty of any criminal activity beyond his “beliefs, statements, or associations”, the evidence that Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited for his deportation. On April 13th, a federal judge ruled he could be deported.

• On March 11th, Columbia student Ranjani Srinivasan fled to Canada after she learned her student visa had been revoked. The previous week, she had been visited by ICE officials who did not have a warrant, which prompted her to flee the country. The Secretary of Homeland Security had stated Srinivasan was “involved in activities supporting Hamas”, the Palestinian terrorist organisation, but her lawyers state she had only attended some protests and interacted with posts relating to Palestinians in Gaza. 

• On March 12th, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was detained by ICE officials in a Texas detention facility before being placed on a deportation plane to El Salvador on March 15th. He was deported based on a 2019 accusation by local Maryland police for being a member of a Venezuelan gang. In 2019, a US immigration judge shielded Abrego Garcia from deportation because of likely gang persecution in El Salvador, meaning he had “protected legal status” in the United States. The Trump administration has not provided evidence for Abrego Garcia’s deportation and calls his wrongful deportation “an administrative error”. The Supreme Court unanimously called for the US government to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia on April 10th, but President Trump and El Salvador’s President Bukele claimed they were powerless to free him on April 14th. 

• On March 15th, 238 undocumented Venezuelan men living in the United States were deported to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). They were deported to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act because the US government found they were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which was “aligned with” the Venezuelan government and “perpetrating” an invasion of the United States. The New York Times has since discovered most of the men have no association with the gang nor do they have a criminal background anywhere beyond being undocumented immigrants. The men will spend at least a year in CECOT, with El Salvador’s dictator Nayib Bukele calling the incarceration “renewable”.

• On March 25th, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University named Rumeysa Öztürk was arrested by ICE officials on a street for her “activities in support for Hamas”. The State Department had revoked her visa prior to the arrest, but she was not made aware of that development. Initially, the government cited an op-ed she wrote criticising Tufts University’s response to the Israel/Palestine conflict as evidence for revoking her visa, which was condemned internationally and by Pro-Israeli and Republican groups as suppression of free speech. On April 14th, The Washington Post revealed a memo days before her arrest stated the government did not have any evidence showing she engaged in antisemitic activity or endorsed terrorist organisations. 

• On April 11th, NBC reported immigration attorney Nicole Micheroni, a US citizen, received an email from Homeland Security telling her to leave the country. The threatening language within the email made her believe it was a “scare tactic”. An official at the Department of Homeland Security said, “if a non-personal email – such as an American citizen contact – was provided by the alien, notices may have been sent to unintended recipients [including American citizens]”. The Trump administration does not have the legal means to deport American citizens yet, but scare tactics such as this could deter people from speaking out. 

One of the concerning things of the  Trump administration’s approach is that if they ever do commit genocide against “undocumented immigrants”, it would be difficult to prove due to the  vagueness of the term “undocumented immigrants”. Under the UNGC, a genocide against “undocumented immigrants” is not exclusive to their nationality, ethnicity, race, or religion. Undocumented immigrants come from all countries, races, ethnicities, and religions. The same would be true for transgender victims as they do not share a nationality, ethnicity, race, or religion. 

Genocides against these groups would come under the non-legal bubble of ethnic cleansing. International law could not prosecute a Trump administration for intentionally eradicating trans people or undocumented immigrants. If these atrocities ever occur, international law must be able to prevent and prosecute them.

The Deportation of American Citizens

The relationship between President Trump and President Bukele is concerning for the victims of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign. 

On April 14th, President Trump was caught saying to President Bukele that he wanted to send “homegrowns [to El Salvador] … you’ve got to build five more places [like CECOT]”. Bukele seemed to respond positively to that. In an Oval Office meeting, he repeated the desire to send “homegrown criminals” to El Salvador’s prison.

The definition he gave for “homegrown criminals” is vague, specifying that they are people “that push people onto subways” or those who “hit elderly women on the back of the head with a baseball bat” who were born or grew up in the United States. He described these criminals as “monsters”, echoing the dehumanising language he gave to undocumented immigrants in his March 4th address.

Immigration and constitutional experts state the deportation of American citizens without due process is “obviously illegal”, as American citizens would have to be stripped of their citizenship. Additionally, the Trump administration’s deportations and detentions of legal residents so far have often violated free speech. There is no evidence to suggest the administration will not use the same criteria on American citizens if they decide to deport “homegrown criminals”.

On April 10th, the New York Times reported the Trump administration had listed thousands of immigrants as “deceased” to cut off their access to Social Security and coerce them to self-deport. These immigrants were added to Social Security’s “death database” and prevented from using financial services such as credit cards, banks, or receiving money. Social Security officials said the “termination” of “financial lives” could develop to include others besides “convicted criminals and suspected terrorists”. 

In early April, 6,300 immigrants had their legal status revoked and placed on the “death database”. Without Social Security, they have limited choices but to self-deport. Many fear Social Security’s new role as an immigration enforcer could lead to American citizens’ names being put onto the “death database”. In the context of President Trump’s suggestion to deport American citizens to El Salvador, this could be another way through which the administration could control its citizens. 

Social Death

The philosopher Claudia Card believes genocide takes place in two ways. The first is what we commonly associate with genocide: the mass murder of victims. The second is social death, “a loss of identity and consequently a serious loss of… existence”. This occurred in Bosnia and Herzegovina when Republika Srpska made Bosniak lives unliveable, achieving ethnic cleansing by forcing them to self-deport. In the Holocaust, many concentration camp prisoners were Muselmann – the “walking dead” – who had no opportunity for cultural or social progression.

Listing immigrants as “dead” is a method of dehumanisation and limits their social development. One cannot compare the social death of Bosniaks and Jews with immigrants on the “death database”, but understanding the methods used to destroy identities is important in preventing genocide. 

The Trump administration has tried to destroy the identities and social lives of trans people and undocumented immigrants. The signposts of genocide are very present in President Trump’s Executive Orders and must be publicly acknowledged. Any nation can commit genocide if there is an enemy that a leader incites others to persecute.

Next Steps

The United States is at a stage where it is possible to stop genocide. It can stop it through government branches and offices standing up to President Trump (following the administration’s defiance of the Supreme Court in refusing to bring back Abrego Garcia, a “showdown” between the government branches seems imminent) and from ordinary people engaging in civil disobedience and nonviolent protest against laws designed to strip rights away.

The Lemkin Institute issued its Red Flag Alerts not to create panic of an imminent genocide, but to make the public aware of what they must look out for. The Institute also made this clear in their “Letter to the American People”, in which they insisted people be united, anti-complacent, and aware of developments that threaten their or their neighbours’ livelihood. 

While the possibility of genocide in the United States is not likely, it is possible. The Trump administration still has a long way to go before being guilty of mass exterminations and destruction of identities. 

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Glossary

• The Alien Enemies Act: This Act allows the US government to swiftly deport citizens of an invading nation, and had last been invoked in World War II.

• Alien immigrant: A legal term referring to a person who is not a citizen or national of the country they are in.

• Antisemitism: Prejudice, discrimination, or hatred towards Jewish people.

• Assassinate: To murder an important person for political or religious reasons.

• Atrocities: An incredibly cruel act usually through physical violence. It is a violation of international law and falls under the crimes of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

• Autism: A neurological and developmental disorder affecting how people communicate and interact with others.

• Bosniak: An ethnic Bosnian group of which a majority are Muslims

• Bosnian Genocide: A period of mass violence and deportation against Bosniaks by Serbian authorities during the Bosnian War (1992-1995). Genocide was officially charged in Srebrenica, where over 8,000 Bosniaks were massacred, but the genocide is generally considered to have taken place throughout the war.

• Buzzword: A word or phrase that becomes popular or trendy over a period of time.

• Cambodian Genocide: A period of mass violence between 1975-1979 where the Khmer Rouge systematically killed between 1.5-3 million Cambodian citizens of different ethnicities and political beliefs.

• Censorship: The suppression or prohibition of books, media, or ideas that are politically unacceptable or perceived to be a threat to national security.

• Civil Disobedience: Active refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders, or commands by a government through peaceful protest. Examples include the Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King Jr.

• Concentration Camp: A prison camp in which people are detained and imprisoned under harsh conditions. The camps are used for forced labour, detention of opposition, or for mass killing.

• Dehumanise: To deprive someone of positive human qualities and associate them with non-human things.

• Deportation: The act of forcing someone to leave a country, usually because they are not allowed to be there or have broken a law.

• Detention Facility: A prison where people are forcibly confined and often denied access to freedoms or rights.

• Displacement: The movement of people who have been forced to flee their homes due to armed violence, war, or violations of their rights.

• Eradicate: To destroy completely, not necessarily through killing.

• Ethnic Cleansing: A non-legal term that references the forced removal of one group from a certain geographic area.

• Euphemism: A word used in place of another word considered too offensive or harsh.

• European Parliament: One of the legislative bodies of the European Union.

• Executive Order: An order by the US President that goes into law without being approved by Congress. Federal courts can stall the orders, but generally the President has the final say.

• Exterminate: To destroy completely through killing.

• Fascism: A far-right political belief that is usually characterized by dictatorships and total governmental control.

• The Final Solution: The policy of systematic mass murder the Nazis implemented to eradicate Jews in Nazi-controlled territory after late 1941

• The First Amendment: A part of the US Constitution that prevents the government from preventing freedom of speech, the press, peaceful assembly and protest, and religion.

• Gender: A social construct of how individuals perceive their identities as male, female, both, or neither.

• Gender Transitioning: The process by which some people try to more closely align with their gender identity through changing their outward appearance. Social transitions include changes in visual appearance and names to associate closer with their preferred gender. Physical transitions change their physical appearance through hormone changes and surgery to align with their preferred gender.

• Genocide: A coordinated plan aimed at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.

• Geopolitics: A way of viewing geography as a method of understanding power relationships in international relations.

• Green Card: Having a green card allows a foreign citizen to legally live and work permanently in the United States.

• The Holocaust: A period around World War II in which the Nazis systematically killed around 6 million Jews (the Shoah); it can also reference the additional 6 million murders of other minorities and prisoners-of-war by the Nazis.

• Ideology: A set of beliefs and ideals that form the basis of economic or political theory or policy.

• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): A federal law enforcement agency that enforces laws related to customs and immigration. 

• Incendiary Language: Language used by someone to cause violence or strong feelings of anger.

• Intent: Something someone purposefully aims to accomplish. 

• Interahamwe: Hutu militiamen who took part in the genocide. 

• The International Criminal Court (ICC): An international court that investigates, prosecutes, and tries individuals accused of committing serious international crimes.

• The International Court of Justice (ICJ): An international court that settles legal disputes between states.

• Intokanyi: A derogatory Kinyarwanda word meaning “enemy” during the Rwandan Genocide to incite violence.

• Inyenzi: A derogatory Kinyarwanda word meaning “accomplice” used during the Rwandan Genocide.

• Karsângsoek: A Cambodian word meaning “disproportionate revenge”. 

• Khmer Rouge: The name of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, which controlled Cambodia under Pol Pot’s leadership during the Cambodian Genocide. It was made up of ethnic Khmers.

• Kristallnacht: Between November 9th-10th, 1938, the Nazi Party orchestrated violent attacks against the Jewish population to create national unity against Jews.

• Legal Residents: A resident of a country who is there legally with proper documentation but is not a citizen of that country.

• Massacre: Indiscriminate killing of people, often brutally and with intention.

• Member States: States that are members of a treaty or organisation.

• Non-governmental organisations (NGOs): A non-profit organisation that works outside government control, such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch.

• Nationalism: An imagined political community between those, and only those, who share their culture and history

• Nazi: A political party led by Adolf Hitler that controlled Germany between 1933 and 1945.

• Neo-Nazism: A political movement to revive the Nazi party; Neo-Nazis are people who have believed in Nazism after 1945 

• Night of the Long Knives: On June 30th, 1934, the SS (Hitler’s personal bodyguards) murdered 400 members of the SA (Nazi police) and other political opposition to keep sole power.

• Ottoman Empire: A state that existed between the late 1200s and 1922 around modern-day Türkiye.

• Paper Persecution: Persecution of a group of people by changing official documents and legal protection.

• Persecution: Hostility towards someone because of their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or political beliefs.

• Ratified: Approved by the State to act on a treaty it has signed. 

• The Reichstag Fire: On February 27th, 1933, an arsonist burned down the German Parliament (Reichstag). Afterwards, Hitler enacted an emergency law that gave him authoritative rule over Germany.

• Republika Srpska: An unrecognized state and political identity representing Serbian people in Bosnia. It was founded at the beginning of the Bosnian War in 1992 under control of the Republika Srpska Army.

• Rwandan Genocide: A genocide committed by the Hutu against the Tutsi between 7 April to 19 July 1994 that killed at least 800,000 Tutsi, or 77% of the Tutsi population.

• Self-Deportation: Voluntary deportation from a country rather than forced removal by immigration officials. It could potentially make it easier to re-enter the country at a later date 

• Sex: A designation of male, female, or intersex depending on chromosomes, reproductive functions, and/or hormones.

• Smeared: Damaging the reputation of someone.

• Sovereignty: The authority of a state to govern itself.

• Student Visa: A temporary visa granted to foreign students who wish to study in a country where they do not have citizenship. It is often only valid for the duration of the school year and until education is completed.

• Transgender: People whose gender identity is different from the gender they were at birth (shorthand, trans).

• Trial Chamber: This chamber determines whether the accused is innocent or guilty of the charges held against them during a Military Tribunal.

• Unconstitutional: An illegal act that goes against the US Constitution.

• Undocumented Immigrants: Individuals who have either illegally entered a country without documents or have had valid immigration visas which have expired. 

• United Nations: An international organisation founded in 1945 to maintain international peace, security, and developing friendships and human rights.

• The United Nations Genocide Convention (UNGC): An international treaty that defines genocide and obligates State Parties to prevent and punish genocide.

• Uyghurs: A predominantly Muslim ethnic group residing in Central Asia.

• Visa: A document that allows a person to legally enter a foreign country for a specific period of time. Visas have to be renewed if the person wants to stay in the country after the time has expired. Visas can be revoked if the individual has committed a crime.

• Volksgemeinschaft: Translated to “The People’s Community”, this nationalist group was united in their race, ethnicity, and social values under Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.

• War Crime: A serious violation of the laws of war, such as murder, torture, or rape.

• White Supremacists: People who believe white people are superior to all other races.

• Yugoslavia: A country in the Baltic region between 1918-1992. It was made up of the modern-day republics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.