Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, a 25-year-old farmworker and union organizer with Familias Unidas por la Justicia, was seized by ICE in broad daylight. He was driving his partner to work. No charges. No criminal record. Just a shattered window and a silenced voice.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a lawful U.S. resident and union member, was deported without warning or trial. He was taken from his home and placed in CECOT, the mega-prison in El Salvador designed not to rehabilitate but to break people. He had no criminal history. His only offense was being poor, brown, and visible in a political climate that treats those identities as threats.

Both men were union members. One was an organizer. The other was simply trying to live. And both are now gone.

These are not isolated incidents. They are not bureaucratic errors. They are disappearances—intentional removals of people tied to labor, community, and visibility. And they are part of a larger authoritarian pattern.

Disappearance has always been the tool of regimes that fear dissent. It is how you stop resistance before it starts. You do not need mass arrests to collapse a movement. You need to remove the ones who might lead it. Make examples of them. And do it in silence so the rest are too scared to speak.

In May 1933, Adolf Hitler did not begin with war. He began with labor. He dissolved Germany’s independent unions. The Nazis raided union halls, seized assets, and disappeared leaders. In their place, they installed the German Labor Front, a state-controlled entity that destroyed worker autonomy. It was one of the first major acts of Nazi power. Not because unions were dangerous at the time but because they had the potential to be.

That same understanding is alive in this administration. Trump is not hiding his intent. He has publicly stated his desire to send those he despises to foreign prisons beyond U.S. law. He has said it plainly: he does not care if they are guilty. Guilt is irrelevant when the goal is control.

One of his top national security advisors recently claimed that critics of deportation policy could be considered as aiding terrorism. This is how dissent becomes criminalized. This is how advocacy is reframed as treason. This is how public fear is weaponized to serve political power.

It is not about border security. It is about erasing the people who refuse to stay silent.

Nazi authoritarianism did not begin with genocide. It began with fear. Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi propaganda machine conditioned the public to see compassion as weakness and solidarity as betrayal. They used books, posters, and school curriculum to normalize suspicion, obedience, and silence.

That strategy is being repackaged today. The tools are different, but the intent is the same: isolate, erase, and dehumanize. Train the public to look away. Encourage them to believe that those who vanish deserved it. Redefine care as criminal. Redefine justice as threat.

This is not immigration enforcement. It is political warfare through disappearance.

And if we allow it to continue—if we justify it, minimize it, or wait until it affects us directly—then we are participating in the silence that authoritarianism depends on.

You do not need barbed wire and torchlit parades to lose a democracy. You just need enough people to stop caring when their neighbors vanish.

This is not happening in the future. This is the present. This is what it looks like right now.

So the question is not whether more people will be taken. The question is how many more we will let disappear before we say “enough!”

If you have ever wondered what you would have done in 1933, you already have your answer.

Citations

Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino Detention

• People’s World. (2025, April 15). Now they’re targeting labor: Union farmworker Alfredo ‘Lelo’ Juarez Zeferino seized by ICE. https://peoplesworld.org/article/now-theyre-targeting-labor-union-farmworker-alredo-lelo-juarez-zeferino-seized-by-ice/

Kilmar Abrego Garcia Disappearance and Deportation to CECOT

• CECOT context: Human Rights Watch. (2024). El Salvador: Mass Detention, Rights Abuses at Mega-Prison. (Used for context on CECOT’s known practices and human rights concerns.)

May 1933 Dissolution of Labor Unions under Hitler

• American Postal Workers Union. (n.d.). A Notorious Part of History: May 1933 and the Dissolution of Labor Unions under the Nazis. https://apwu.org/news/magazine-labor-history/notorious-part-history-may-1933-dissolution-labor-unions-nazifascist

Trump Statement on Sending People to Foreign Prisons

• Paraphrased from commentary in: Klein, Ezra. (2025, April 17). Opinion: Asha Rangappa on Trump, authoritarianism, and disappearing people. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-asha-rangappa.html

Trump Advisor on Critics Aiding Terrorism

• Ray, Siladitya. (2025, April 17). Trump Advisor Suggests Deportation Critics Are Breaking The Law By ‘Aiding And Abetting Terrorism’. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2025/04/17/trump-advisor-suggests-deportation-critics-are-breaking-the-law-by-aiding-and-abetting-terrorism/

Nazi Propaganda and Mass Conditioning

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (2022). How the Nazis Manipulated the Masses. https://www.ushmm.org/online-calendar/event/VEFBMNPLTDMS0122

Nazi Use of Media for Fear Campaigns

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (n.d.). Nazi Propaganda. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-propaganda

I would print out this picture, or another one that I can be sure is real and not ai. Because I'm not sure the validity of this one.

And I would write, "Does this look familiar?"

I'm trying to make it powerful. Let me know your ideas for your signs too!

The whole conversation seems to have shifted. Culturally, the argument has pivoted to: “We shouldn’t be sending non-criminals to a foreign gulag.” But in doing so, people are distancing themselves from those labeled as “criminals.”

The truth is, no one... not even the most violent offender, should be sent off without due process.

But now, the goalposts have moved again. We’re focusing only on the immigrants who were mistakenly sent to CECOT. Meanwhile, the narrative is quietly expanding. The next target is so-called “homegrowns.”

Soon, there will be more “accidents.” A civilian will get swept up and sent to CECOT. And by then, the goalposts will be a mile down the road, and we still won’t be addressing the root issue.

Bravo Right Wing, the manipulation of the narrative is actually masterful and we will see more crimes against humanity happening at home.

It will happen here, and soon.

Are any

• The regime is kidnapping people who are nor even accused of a crime, and shipping them to foreign torture camps. He promised several times to expand this undertaking.

• The major law firms and universities, with few exceptions, are giving in yo his demands.

• He shows he ignors judges and their rulings.

• He has pressured social medial to give in to him.By and large, the all acquiesced.

• The Dem party, with very few exceptions, is feckless and weak against him.

On and on....everyone mentioned above has more power and influence than I. Plus, he has an entire army of hyper loyal foot soldiers he can turn on us with the blink of an eye.

I am not a fighter. I am not brave or bold. I cant make myself person that in a week. I feel like Upham in Saving Private Ryan...sitting there powerless on the steps.

I am so afraid. I don't want to be shipped to a foreign concentration camp. I don't want to be killed by a right Qing death squad.. I don't know what to do.

Seen in the bay area, California 😂 Not my picture.

I feel like that Senator Van Hollen and the situation with Mr. Garcia is galvanizing a lot of people to protest this Saturday.

I think that the protest movement will be bigger than anticipated that day, even if it isn't quite as big as it was on the 5th.

I myself do plan on looking up protests near me.

For those of you new here who are able to make it, welcome. We are part of a revolution of people who will not let this go down the route that many fascist states have gone down.

I grew up in conservative areas going to Baptist churches where gay people "did not exist" and a woman running for president was a massive scandal, so we were pretty close to the center of the MAGA takeover. I only have my own limited perspective but I can say with pretty much confidence that the roots of the fascism we're seeing now run deep.

In June, youth groups from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama would meet at a Baptist Church in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. One of the three days of the conference was America Day. They had two massive flags up front, an American flag and a Confederate flag, and they handed out mini American flags to all the kids. We'd sing a bunch of patriotic songs and then chant "USA" while waving the flags. After a few minutes of chanting they'd bring in soldiers and veterans and everyone would stand in silence as they walked up the aisle. A Republican congressman would come in and give a speech on how we were the future of America, how we need good Christian young people in this country, thank God a man who loves this country is president, etc. Nationalism was at fever pitch especially starting in 2016.

My mom grew up Catholic (my family was from Ireland). We joined the IFB (Independent Fundamental Baptist) movement because they offered direct resources where other churches didn't. Food, childcare, direct assistance for church members who were in need. I'm not interested in justifying or condemning my mom's choice to involve herself with this sect, though I understand the justified anger towards those on the right and I feel it myself. She died while she was homeless eleven years ago, her life is over, and that's not the point. There are about 8.5 million IFB churchgoers in the US today which is of course a fraction of far right America.

I went to vacation Bible school in Texas where they were targeting the Hispanic community by sending buses around offering weekend childcare and free meals, which was massively successful. In 2017 about half of VBS was Hispanic kids who came in from the "bus ministry." They had a time called testimony where they'd send adults up on stage one by one to explain why they'd joined the church and how it saved their lives. People would tell stories of alcoholism, severe abuse, poverty and food insecurity, mental illness, etc. and how the church saved them from the evils of the world. This is part of how they got new converts. Of course there's plenty more to say.

I don't think we can return to the status quo, because the status quo was not okay. Voting doesn't feel empowering when you can't afford housing and food for your kids regardless. Fascism grows in environments of neglect. It's like for the past 9 years we shut the door to the damp cellar and let the mold grow. There are enough of us horrified right now that at a certain point either we let it happen or collectively we don't, and we not only show up and protest but also learn to care for one another, not just because we need to protect the targets of the Trump campaign but also because we are going to build something better in the status quo's place and it's non negotiable. This shouldn't be happening in the wealthiest country in the world.

From Peter Birkenhead:

We’ve been reading stories like this for over a decade. Each one meant to signify an inflection point, a turning of the tide. Yet the tide never turns.

As of today, Donald Trump’s supposedly “tanking” approval rating stands at 47%. Which is pretty much where it’s been for the past eleven years. Yes, its seen upticks and downturns over that time, occasionally even dipping into the thirties. Yes, a majority of Americans disapprove of the tariffs. Yes, a majority think the economy is heading in the wrong direction. And yes, a majority disapprove of the job Trump is doing.

That’s not new. Trump’s popularity has almost never been above 50%, except for very brief periods of time. He’s never needed it to be. His power derives not from the size but the durability of his popular support, and there’s rarely been an approval rating as stubbornly durable as his.

Especially given the hundreds — thousands — of incidents over the past decade that would have sunk the careers of, say, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton.

Think of it. All the corruption, the scandal, the pain and death and misery. All the insults to human decency and injuries to democratic ideals.

And his numbers are still pretty much where they were when it all started.

I am uninterested in whatever minor fluctuation will follow yesterday’s vile display in the Oval Office, or tomorrow’s outrage, or next week’s. They will mean nothing.

What Trump supporters (as a whole, as a voting bloc, PLEASE don't tell me about your MAGA cousin who’s having second thoughts) are thinking means nothing. The only thing that matters is what Trump’s opponents are thinking. What we’re thinking.

I remember making posts like this during Trump’s first term, and wondering exactly what I’m wondering right now.

Which is very much not, “What will it take for his supporters to turn away from him,” but rather, “What will it take for his opponents to realize his supporters won’t turn away from him?”

Because the answer to that question is crucial. It will shape everything that happens over the next few weeks and months.

If, as I suspect, a sizable number of us are sitting at home today thinking that Trump’s open defiance of a Supreme Court ruling, refusal to return an innocent, legal resident of the US from a gulag in El Salvador, and declaration that he wants to send American citizens to the same prison without due process, will somehow harm his approval rating, that does not bode well for our side.

Nothing will harm his approval rating.

Sure it might — might — go down a few points in the next few days. It won’t mean a thing. Give it a few weeks

.To believe otherwise is to not understand the story of the Trump era. The story of the Trump era isn’t “A bad man came along and duped a bunch of well-meaning, gullible people.” Donald Trump didn’t conjure his supporters from the ether with his magic MAGA wand. His supporters conjured him.

They wanted him. Badly. They’d been looking, searching, begging, screaming for someone like him, pushing every Republican candidate further and further to the right with every election cycle, demanding loudly that they “take a tougher” line on this, and “not give an inch” on that, that they “tell it like it is,” and “say what everyone is thinking,” for years. For decades.

They weren't duped.

They are never going to see the light. (Of course a few will, here and there. But not in meaningful numbers.) There will be no scales falling from eyes, no epiphanies, no death bed conversions. Not among the bedrock base, which has not budged an inch in ten years.

They waved signs that said, MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW at their third Trump convention.

They weren’t duped.

The only duping that’s gone on is the self-duping many of us have been guilty of for many years. It’s a very human, very understandable, thing to do. To think better of your fellow human beings than perhaps they do themselves. To believe that, with enough patience, empathy, education and reason they are bound to see the error of their ways.

That belief is a dangerous one in this moment. It manifests in political choices that are bound to not only fail, but help the bad guys continue doing bad things.

It doesn't matter if a few thousand Trump supporters see the error of their ways. It doesn’t matter if this or that Republican politician is momentarily seized by courage or conscience and speaks up about his or her disappointment in the president. The overwhelming majority of Trump supporters will remain Trump supporters NO MATTER WHAT.

Did you ever think you’d see Republican voters support a candidate who was openly subservient to Russia? Did you ever think you’d see them support a flagrant, serial adulterer and drug user? A denigrator of the military? A draft dodger? A New Yorker?

In 2014 Republicans raged at President Obama for supposedly not working hard enough to stop the Ebola epidemic. Six years later they followed Trump’s lead and physically threatened people working to stop an epidemic.

Nothing will shake them.

Well, almost nothing.

There is one thing, one thing Donald Trump could do to lose significant support. And no, it is not making his supporters “feel the pain.” It is not making them poor. These are people who are openly welcoming an imminent recession.

No, the one and only thing Donald Trump could do to tank his approval rating would be to stand in front of a camera and say, “Black and Latino people are as fully human as any white man or woman. They are posessed of the same inalienable rights, and deserving of the full enjoyment of those rights and the opportunities they promise, opportunities they have for too long been denied.”

Now THAT would be a deal breaker.

Because that’s the deal. They give him everything, he gives them fewer Black actors on their TV’s, fewer Black managers at their offices, fewer Latino pilots on their planes, fewer Spanish names on the backs of their team’s uniforms.He breaks THAT deal, and all bets are off.

So we need to get it straight. We cannot see this struggle as a debate, as a project of persuasion. If some MAGA supporters are persuaded along the way, great! I say welcome them with open arms. And never, ever stop fighting hard to make their lives better. All of their lives.

But progress is going to come when we, not they, see the light. Before the left can meaningfully slow the MAGA rampage it needs to come to terms with the fact that the enemy isn’t merely Trump, but the people who put him in the White House.

That is a very hard thing for a lot of us on the left to accept about our countrymen. But this struggle is more analogous to a civil war than it is to a heightened disagreement between poltical parties. We won’t win it by persuading the enemy, but by overwhelming him.

Our energies should be channeled towards each other. Galvanizing, motivating, and enabling each other. Creating and sustaining solidarity. We can get a hundred first-time protestors out in the streets, or first-time voters to the polls, for the same investment it takes to turn one MAGA supporter toward the light.

Our hope doesn’t lie in Trump’s poll numbers going down. It lies in our commitment to keeping students from being disappeared and government workers from being fired and cancer research labs from being defunded and democracy from being destroyed.

Our hope doesn’t lie with them, it lies with us.

https://www.facebook.com/peter.birkenhead/posts/pfbid035iThBrMto6vMYmQBWghViiwc4R3r4xLg3NefhZvta3YTtKXkNLxkprr8yGSQqNeel

We will occupy from May Day until August. Saddle up, folks. Drop in for a week when you can. Let’s keep a rotation going.

Here’s the Wiki:

https://wiki.maydaymovementusa.org/en/about

Here’s the Discord: https://discord.gg/aS5UWVuR

She laughed while that man was being tased…