Is The Trump Regime Committing Genocide?

From a human rights legal perspective, the facts we know reveal a frightening conclusion we cannot afford to ignore

ICE is leaving Minnesota. But this does not mean that we are safe. As a human rights lawyer, it appears that we cannot ignore a potential conclusion that the Trump regime is committing genocide.

I approach the term genocide with caution and precision. It is not a rhetorical device, nor is it a word to be deployed for shock value. It is a term defined in binding international law under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which the United States is a signatory. The Convention establishes both substantive prohibitions and affirmative obligations. When credible evidence suggests that conduct may fall within its scope, legal professionals have a duty to examine it carefully rather than dismiss it reflexively.

That examination has become increasingly urgent. Let’s Address This.

The Definition of Genocide

Article II of the Genocide Convention defines genocide as certain enumerated acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, 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.

The question before us is whether current federal immigration enforcement practices, taken together, satisfy elements of this framework or at minimum warrant formal investigation under it. Let us look at the evidence we have before us.

1. Mass Detention and the Removal of Due Process

The federal government is currently expending hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire and expand large-scale detention facilities designed to hold migrants and individuals detained by ICE. These facilities are not temporary overflow centers but industrial-scale warehouses intended to process and confine large numbers of people for extended periods. As Bloomberg reports:

Despite protests in small towns and cities across the US, the Trump administration is pushing ahead with the purchase of warehouses it plans to convert into immigration jails in what could be the largest expansion of such detention capacity in US history.

The cost for acquiring two warehouses alone was $172 million. A third in El Paso, Texas, could be among the largest jails of any kind in the country if completed as envisioned, with 8,500 beds. The deals mark the latest turn in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s plan to use as many as 23 warehouses for detaining thousands of immigrants arrested by federal agents in Minneapolis and other cities.

Simultaneously, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a policy allowing the federal government to detain immigrants indefinitely without bond in Texas, reversing lower court rulings that had previously constrained such authority. Reports indicate that detainees are being moved into jurisdictions within the Fifth Circuit’s authority where this indefinite detention regime applies—hence the massive warehouses mentioned above. Indefinite detention without meaningful access to bond hearings constitutes a profound erosion of due process protections, particularly when the population subjected to such detention is overwhelmingly composed of racial and ethnic minorities.

More than ninety percent of individuals arrested and detained under current immigration enforcement practices are Latino or Black. Publicly available data further indicates that the vast majority—up to 97.4%—have no criminal record. When a racially identifiable group is disproportionately targeted for detention, deprived of bond, and confined in expanding facilities built for long-term incarceration, the inquiry must move beyond administrative justification and toward examination of discriminatory impact and intent. The Genocide Convention explicitly prohibits “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction.” Mass detention combined with the removal of due process rights raises serious questions about whether such conditions are being systematically imposed.

But the situation is even more dire than this.

2. Sexual Abuse, Reproductive Harm, & Preventing Births

This legal analysis becomes even more troubling when we consider documented abuse within immigration detention facilities. In 2019, The Guardian reported nearly 5,000 documented allegations of child migrant sexual abuse involving ICE and DHS facilities. Meaningful structural accountability did not follow those revelations. Instead, both the Biden and Trump administrations increased ICE and DHS funding. Promises of reform were made, yet subsequent reports indicate that abuse continues.

Activists in Texas are now calling for the closure of a facility where detainees have alleged severe sexual abuse, including the crushing of testicles. As The Guardian reports:

“Isaac”, a Cuban national who adopted a pseudonym for the purposes of the letter, stated in a sworn declaration, according to the coalition, that after refusing to sign a voluntary deportation form, guards at the camp slammed his head against a wall several times, before an officer “grabbed and crushed my testicles between their fingers, which was very painful and humiliating”, according to the letter.

In another incident, a teenager identified as “Samuel” described how one officer “grabbed my testicles and firmly crushed them”, while another “forced his fingers deep into my ears”, before he was reportedly beaten unconscious by guards for turning off an overhead light in his housing unit, the letter says.

“Samuel” suffered broken teeth and testicular trauma requiring hospitalization, according to the letter, which also asserts that he was later billed for the ambulance ride required to treat the injuries allegedly inflicted by the guards.

The Genocide Convention specifically includes “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” as a prohibited act. Reproductive mutilation is not incidental harm; it falls squarely within one of the Convention’s enumerated categories when carried out with intent to destroy a protected group in whole or in part. It strains credulity to suggest that the crushing of testicles could occur accidentally or as a byproduct of negligence. If substantiated, such conduct constitutes deliberate reproductive harm. When such allegations arise within a detention system that overwhelmingly targets Latino migrants, and when political rhetoric repeatedly frames those migrants as demographic threats through narratives echoing the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, the nexus between ideology and conduct appears undeniable.

3. Inferring Intent from Pattern and Policy

Genocide requires specific intent. It is rarely accompanied by explicit declarations of destructive purpose. Courts and international tribunals routinely infer intent from patterns of conduct, policy architecture, foreseeability of consequences, and official rhetoric. When a regime invests heavily in expanding detention capacity, removes procedural safeguards, tolerates documented abuse without accountability, and targets a racially identifiable population while employing dehumanizing rhetoric, the cumulative effect becomes clear evidence of intent.

This is not an assertion that every individual actor within the system harbors genocidal motives. Rather, it is an acknowledgment that the structure and operation of the system itself may be producing outcomes consistent with one or more prohibited acts under the Convention. The convergence of mass detention, indefinite confinement, serious bodily harm, and reproductive injury against a protected group requires more than policy debate; it requires legal scrutiny at the highest levels. It suggests, rather mandates, meaningful investigation.

The Obligation to Investigate

The United States is bound by the Genocide Convention not only to refrain from committing genocide but to prevent and punish it. That obligation necessarily includes the duty to investigate credible allegations. Congress must initiate comprehensive hearings into ICE and DHS detention practices, including conditions of confinement, medical treatment, reproductive harm allegations, and compliance with due process requirements. Independent oversight mechanisms must be strengthened rather than weakened.

Moreover, given the gravity of the allegations and the international legal framework implicated, and given that the Department of Justice appears compromised (given their clear corruption in handling the Epstein files) the United Nations should initiate a formal inquiry into whether the United States is in violation of its treaty obligations under the Genocide Convention. Such an inquiry would not constitute condemnation; it would constitute adherence to the rule of law. If the conduct does not meet the Convention’s threshold, a transparent investigation will confirm that conclusion. If it does, failure to investigate would compound the violation.

The Limits of Reform

For years, political leaders have insisted that ICE can be reformed. Yet reform presupposes institutional willingness to change and a record of accountability. When thousands of documented abuse allegations yield little structural consequence, and when new allegations arise in facilities operating under expanded detention authority, the argument that incremental reform is sufficient becomes increasingly untenable. An agency that repeatedly ignores judicial warrants, presides over systemic abuse, and operates within a framework of racialized enforcement raises fundamental questions about whether abolition and reconstruction, rather than reform, are necessary to restore compliance with domestic and international law.

The Moral and Legal Imperative

Corporate media’s relative silence on these developments does not diminish their significance. The expansion of detention infrastructure, normalization of indefinite confinement, documented sexual abuse, and allegations of reproductive mutilation together form a pattern that demands sustained public attention and legal analysis. As someone who has written extensively on genocide and international human rights law, I cannot responsibly ignore these warning signs.

The question before us is not whether invoking the Genocide Convention is politically comfortable. It is whether the facts, as currently documented, warrant serious legal scrutiny under that Convention. Based on the record to date, the answer is yes.

Investigation, transparency, and accountability are not acts of hostility toward the United States; they are expressions of fidelity to its legal commitments. If the rule of law is to mean anything, it must apply domestically as well as abroad. I will continue to analyze, document, and raise these concerns within the framework of international law. I urge Congress and the international community to do the same.