The following statement was issued by Will Lehman, a rank-and-file worker at Mack Trucks in Macungie, Pennsylvania. Lehman ran for UAW president in 2022.
I condemn the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil and demand his immediate release. Khalil is a Columbia University graduate student, a legal permanent resident of the US, and a former United Auto Workers member. He was ambushed by Homeland Security agents, kidnapped from his home in New York, and secretly flown to an ICE detention center in Louisiana. He has not been charged with a crime. His only “offense” is opposing the genocide in Gaza and standing up for democratic rights.
The seizure of Khalil is a major escalation of Trump’s move toward dictatorship. His administration is rounding up political opponents while carrying out mass deportations. Trump has made it clear—this is just the beginning. He said his administration will “find, apprehend, and deport” anyone who gets in the way of his agenda. If a student can be arrested for free speech, what will happen to striking workers? What will happen to those fighting back against layoffs, attacks on public education, Medicaid and Social Security?
My name is Will Lehman. I’m a socialist autoworker at Mack Trucks in Pennsylvania. In 2022, I ran for president of the UAW on a program of rank-and-file workers’ power and abolishing the union bureaucracy. So where is the UAW? Khalil was a dues-paying member, yet the extent of the UAW bureaucracy’s opposition is hollow statements of solidarity and a call to organize.
There are hundreds of thousands of active workers already in the UAW that could be mobilized with over three quarters of a billion dollars in our strike fund to support actions we could take. But the UAW bureaucrats fear workers taking political action much more than they fear Trump’s fascistic actions against rank-and-file workers. What the UAW means by “organizing” is getting additional dues-paying members, whose struggles it will also suppress.
Many UAW members at Columbia and in California have protested the genocide in Gaza. They’ve faced retaliation. The UAW has done nothing for them either.
When UAW bureaucrats were caught embezzling our dues, they spent millions on their own legal defense. When a rank-and-file member is targeted for standing up to war and dictatorship, the union officials do nothing, or worse.
UAW President Shawn Fain went all out to support Biden and then Harris in the 2024 elections—Biden, the war criminal who armed and funded the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the man who called anti-genocide protesters “antisemitic” and first ordered the crackdown on campus demonstrations.
Now, as Trump tramples the Constitution and arrests a recent UAW member for speaking out, Fain praises Trump’s nationalist trade war policies—policies that divide workers in the US from our brothers and sisters in Canada, Mexico, and China.
Rank-and-file workers must take action. Autoworkers, educators, grad students, Amazon workers—every section of the working class must unite. We must demand Khalil’s release. We must stop Trump’s assault on democratic rights. Mass meetings and protests must be organized now, and we should begin preparing work actions.
I call on UAW members in every plant and workplace: Discuss Khalil’s case. Form rank-and-file committees to fight for his freedom. This fight is not just about one worker. It’s about mobilizing the entire working class against the capitalist system, the source of war and dictatorship. It’s about taking power from the oligarchs and putting it in the hands of workers.
The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees is organizing this fight. Demand Khalil’s release! Defend free speech! Join us today. Attend the online meeting this Saturday and sign up for the IWA-RFC at wsws.org/workers.