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President Donald Trump signed more executive orders in his first week than any of the last 15 presidents combined. By the end of his second week in office, he overhauled the government and uprooted all of former president Joe Biden’s progressive initiatives.

He signed more than 66 executive actions, including initiatives ranging from immediate mass deportations and extensive DEI dissolutions to infringements on free speech for non-citizen student activists. Trump now aims to dismantle the Department of Education, which oversees public K-12 education and college financial aid.

An executive order, a direct instruction included under the catch-all term of executive action, allows a president to enact his unchecked vision of how the federal government should be run. Although there are limits and ways to prevent these orders from going into effect, as seen with the blocking of the unconstitutional order limiting birthright citizenship, the concept of executive orders go beyond rules. For Trump, they’re overt political messaging.

Cole Ross | Digital Design Director

His message strengthens the dangerously misdirected, populist ideas of anti-immigrant rhetoric. This affronts us with the ever-growing power of the oligarchy as it detaches itself further from the working class’s struggle.

It’s convenient for some to push the polarizing yet false narrative that undocumented immigrants are somehow “leeches” of the government.

They don’t even have access to welfare resources despite paying $96 billion in federal taxes. Meanwhile, the wealth of Earth’s 10 richest people increased by $64 billion the day after Trump’s win. Four of these men — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg — sat front-row at his inauguration and share a combined net worth comparable to that of the entire lower half of the American population.

It only took 10 days for Trump to revert us backward in time to 20th-century domestic concentration camps, similar to those in “Operation Wetback” and the Japanese Internment Camp era, with the memorandum Expanding Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to Full Capacity.

This is a dehumanizing tactic meant to demonize migrants in the minds of common Americans by strategically associating them with terror suspects.

This narrative clearly feeds on his fascist-style regime’s reliance on American people being chained to jobs to make ends meet. The working class is afforded even less time to research his backward policies, which work against their best interests and divert attention from the drastic wealth disparity that is ripping the expanding middle class apart.

During his second inaugural address, I watched Trump’s plea to “bring back free speech to America.” I then watched his close ally, Elon Musk, who spent a reported $200 million securing Trump’s return to the White House, perform Nazi-adjacent salutes at an inauguration rally amid growing condemnation for support of global far-right parties.

Michel Friedman, a prominent German-French publicist and former deputy chair of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, labeled Musk’s actions a disgrace and said they proved a “dangerous point for the entire free world” has been reached.

An insolent indifference echoed through executive chambers and mass media as Musk’s blatantly antisemitic salute was essentially shrugged off by the officials representing and informing us.

Nine days later, Exec. Order No. 14188, 90 FR 8847 (2025) was enacted, setting forth measures to “curb or combat antisemitism” on college campuses. This directs federal agencies to identify and deport non-citizen participants — including college students — who took part in pro-Palestinian protests.

Ironically, there remains no recognition of the harm and foreshadowing of Musk’s inherently racist salute from a federal position, especially considering his immense influence.

The biased infringement on constitutional free speech here couldn’t be more evident, and beside the moral standings of non-citizen, pro-Palestine student activists, the only thing separating them from fellow immigrant Musk is his white privilege and power.

Trump’s control-starved flood of bigoted executive orders are gutting immigrant communities like mine, leaving me feeling alienated and impotent.

The helplessness in listening to my friends tell me their parents don’t want them speaking Spanish in public anymore and the powerlessness of seeing innocent undocumented families praying there’s not a knock at the door are real experiences not to be discredited. Having to remind my family thousands of miles away to carry their green-card and identification consumes me.

But as ICE is racially profiling suspects of being “illegal” and people like my mom, who doesn’t speak English, can’t defend themselves, this reality is one I feel I must meet with complete responsibility despite only being a college student.

It crushed me to agree to my parents’ pleas to strip my social media accounts of anything mentioning my legal status or progressive, headstrong stances as a student — hindering the fierce passion in my heart to speak out on critical social issues, yet preserving my time here to keep advocating.

Stitched together, these moments unveil not random mishaps, but a calculated campaign to erase our footprint in America and silence our collective voice.

It’s the shared despair of knowing that even as we suffer, our expression is suppressed. Our stories are reduced to hushed whispers that echo the dark legacy of McCarthyism.

This isn’t just about free speech; it’s about our basic right to exist and speak our truth without fear of backlash or deportation. It’s not simply personal pain; it’s a systematic assault on humanity, a new breed of fascism dehumanizing us all.

If Syracuse University truly values its students, it can’t stand by while some of us are targeted, silenced and forced into fear. SU has the power to do more than the bare minimum — it can be a true sanctuary for its students. We need to demand real institutional protections from legal support to clear policies that shield immigrant students like me from these escalating attacks.

Due to concerns regarding immigration status, the author of this article has chosen to remain anonymous.

Published on February 5, 2025 at 11:47 pm