Analysis of: ‘Trump, I’m not afraid of you’: meet some of the people suing the president
The Guardian | February 21, 2026
TL;DR
Four plaintiffs sue Trump administration over immigration detention, protest rights, trans identity, and church sanctuary—revealing how state power targets the most vulnerable to discipline broader working-class resistance. Legal battles expose the contradiction between constitutional rights and capitalist state enforcement.
Analytical Focus:Class Analysis Contradictions Historical Context
This Guardian article profiles four individuals suing the Trump administration over various civil liberties violations—medical neglect in immigrant detention, punishment for pro-Palestinian protest, denial of trans identity documents, and threats to religious sanctuary. While framed as individual acts of courage against executive overreach, a materialist analysis reveals these cases as flashpoints where the capitalist state's disciplinary function becomes visible. The plaintiffs represent groups whose labor is among the most precarious and exploitable: undocumented workers detained in privately-operated facilities, immigrant refugees whose deportability makes them politically vulnerable, trans content creators facing economic blacklisting, and religious communities serving marginalized populations. The state's targeting of these groups is not arbitrary cruelty but functional discipline—maintaining a pool of hyper-exploitable labor while demonstrating to the broader working class the consequences of dissent or deviation from acceptable identity categories. Fernando Reyes's medical neglect in a *privately owned* detention facility exemplifies how capital profits directly from immigration enforcement, while Mohsen Mahdawi's detention for Palestine advocacy reveals the state's protection of imperial interests through domestic repression. The legal strategy employed by these plaintiffs illuminates a key contradiction: they must appeal to constitutional rights and court systems that are themselves instruments of class rule, yet these instruments occasionally produce outcomes that constrain state power. This contradiction—between bourgeois legal rights and their selective enforcement—creates openings for resistance while simultaneously channeling opposition into reformist frameworks. The administration's arguments (executive authority, lack of standing, immigration law supremacy) reveal how legal doctrines evolve to insulate state violence from challenge, particularly when that violence serves capital accumulation and imperial management.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Undocumented immigrant workers, Private prison corporations (GEO Group, CoreCivic), Federal immigration enforcement (ICE, CBP), Trans workers facing economic discrimination, Religious institutions serving marginalized communities, Corporate brands withdrawing from 'controversial' associations, Legal advocacy organizations (ACLU, Georgetown ICAP), State apparatus (executive, courts)
Beneficiaries: Private prison corporations profiting from detention, Employers benefiting from deportable, disciplined labor force, Capital interests in maintaining low-wage labor vulnerability, Imperial interests in suppressing solidarity with Palestine, Political forces using identity-based scapegoating to divide working class
Harmed Parties: Undocumented workers subject to detention and medical neglect, Immigrant communities facing enforcement terror, Trans people denied legal recognition and economic participation, Religious communities under surveillance, All workers whose organizing capacity is weakened by these disciplinary examples, Palestinian solidarity movement facing state repression
The state acts as enforcer for capital interests, using immigration policy to maintain labor discipline and deportability as a wage-suppression mechanism. Private corporations profit directly from detention while facing minimal accountability. Legal challenges must navigate courts that historically protect property rights and state power over human rights. The 'brands backing away' from trans creators demonstrates how capital disciplines workers through economic exclusion, not just state violence. Religious institutions occupy contradictory positions—historically aligned with state power but now finding their autonomy threatened when serving marginalized populations.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Private prison industry's profit motive in maintaining detention, Immigrant labor's role in low-wage sectors (agriculture, construction, service), Economic precarity forcing migrants into exploitable positions, Content creator economy's vulnerability to corporate brand decisions, Cost externalization of immigrant healthcare onto detained individuals
The detention system exemplifies capital's extraction of surplus value from both detained labor and state contracts—private facilities profit from per-bed payments while providing minimal services. Mahdawi's case shows how deportability functions as labor discipline even for educated professional workers, extending precarity up the class ladder for immigrant communities. Perysian's experience reveals how legal gender markers connect to economic participation—employers, platforms, and clients use state-issued documents to gatekeep labor market access. Reyes's medical neglect is not system failure but system function: detained workers' health is only valuable insofar as it serves detention facility operations.
Resources at Stake: Control over immigrant labor pool, Ideological control over acceptable political expression, State authority over identity documentation, Church autonomy vs. state surveillance capacity, Constitutional precedents affecting millions
Historical Context
Precedents: Palmer Raids (1919-1920) targeting immigrant radicals, COINTELPRO repression of civil rights and anti-war movements, Japanese American internment demonstrating racialized mass detention, Historical persecution of Anabaptists cited by Mennonite plaintiff, Reagan-era expansion of private prison industry, Post-9/11 expansion of surveillance and immigration enforcement, Obama-era deportation machinery that Trump inherited and expanded
This represents the neoliberal phase of capitalist crisis management, where austerity for social services combines with expanded carceral spending. Private detention facilities emerged from 1980s privatization ideology and have become structurally dependent on maintaining high detention populations. The attack on 'sensitive locations' policies reverses accommodations made during earlier periods when capital required immigrant labor integration; the current conjuncture prioritizes disciplinary terror over incorporation. Trans rights rollbacks follow the pattern of using marginalized identity groups as political wedge issues during periods of economic anxiety—deflecting working-class anger toward cultural 'enemies' rather than economic structures. The attack on protest rights, particularly Palestine solidarity, reflects the long history of suppressing challenges to U.S. imperial interests through domestic repression.
Contradictions
Primary: The contradiction between liberal democracy's legitimizing ideology (constitutional rights, equal protection, due process) and the capitalist state's functional requirement to discipline labor and protect property relations. These plaintiffs invoke constitutional rights that the state nominally upholds while the state simultaneously argues these rights don't apply to them.
Secondary: Private profit motive vs. humane treatment in detention facilities, Religious freedom claims vs. state immigration enforcement authority, First Amendment protections vs. suppression of anti-imperial dissent, Executive authority claims vs. judicial review, Individual legal victories vs. systemic policy continuation, Brands' diversity marketing vs. actual support for marginalized workers
Individual legal victories may provide relief for specific plaintiffs while leaving structural conditions intact—the class-action potential in Perysian's case offers broader impact but faces supreme court resistance. The administration's aggressive appeals strategy aims to establish precedents limiting judicial oversight of executive immigration and identity policies. The deeper contradiction between democratic legitimacy and capitalist state function cannot be resolved within the legal system; it requires political organization that connects these disparate struggles to their common class basis. The article's framing of individual courage, while inspirational, obscures the need for collective action beyond legal channels.
Global Interconnections
These domestic struggles connect directly to global dynamics of imperial management. Mahdawi's case explicitly links domestic repression to U.S. support for Israel's Gaza siege—his punishment for protesting 'genocide' demonstrates how empire disciplines dissent at home to maintain freedom of action abroad. The detention system's treatment of Central American refugees like Reyes cannot be separated from U.S. intervention in El Salvador's civil war, which created the refugee flows now criminalized. Private prison corporations operate transnationally and lobby for enforcement policies that guarantee their revenue streams. The attack on trans rights connects to global reactionary movements funded by similar networks of conservative capital, using identity politics to fracture potential working-class unity across borders. Religious institutions' historical role in providing sanctuary reflects tensions within the superstructure—churches that served ideological legitimation for colonialism now find their institutional autonomy threatened when they extend solidarity to colonialism's victims. These seemingly disparate cases reveal a unified state strategy: discipline the most vulnerable to demonstrate consequences for the broader working class while maintaining the flexibility capital requires in managing both domestic labor and imperial extraction.
Conclusion
These lawsuits reveal both the possibilities and limits of legal resistance under capitalism. Each plaintiff has achieved partial victories through courts, demonstrating that bourgeois legal institutions contain contradictions that can be exploited for temporary protection. However, the administration's aggressive appeals and the Supreme Court's accommodation of executive power show how legal terrain ultimately favors the state. The deeper lesson lies in what connects these cases: a refugee fleeing U.S.-backed war, a Palestinian advocate for Gaza, a trans content creator, and a Mennonite pastor all face the same state apparatus protecting capital's interests through selective enforcement of 'rights.' Building consciousness of this common enemy—not individual courage alone but collective organization across these struggles—offers the path beyond legal reformism toward transformative politics. The plaintiffs' willingness to speak publicly, despite risks, creates potential for solidarity; the task is translating individual resistance into class-wide mobilization.
Suggested Reading
- The State and Revolution by V.I. Lenin (1917) Lenin's analysis of the state as instrument of class rule illuminates why constitutional rights are selectively enforced—the state's primary function is protecting capitalist property relations, not individual liberties.
- The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (1961) Fanon's analysis of colonial violence and its psychological dimensions helps explain both Mahdawi's persecution for Palestine solidarity and how imperial dynamics structure domestic repression of colonized peoples.
- Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti (1997) Parenti's examination of how capitalist states use scapegoating and selective repression during crisis periods directly parallels the targeting of immigrants, trans people, and dissenters in Trump's second term.
- Women, Race & Class by Angela Davis (1981) Davis's intersectional class analysis provides framework for understanding how race, gender, and immigration status function together as mechanisms of labor discipline and political division.