‘Are you an illegal immigrant?’ Right-wing instigators disrupt Trans Day of Visibility demonstration with bigotry toward students, administration

Off-campus instigators disrupted the March 31 Trans Day of Visibility demonstration hosted by UTD’s chapter of Young Democratic Socialists of America by making racist, demeaning and violent remarks towards demonstrators and UTD administrators. Students organizing the demonstration also reported receiving verbal harassment and threats of violence from additional disruptors affiliated with UTD’s Turning Point USA chapter.

The demonstration, which began at 2 p.m. at the TI Plaza, was first announced March 28 on YDSA’s public Instagram account in response to what the organization called a “culture of hate” TPUSA had created since the Plinth attack the week prior, where a trans student hit a TPUSA officer with a bike lock and was arrested. Along with roughly 30 YDSA officers and demonstrators, the event was attended by a gathering of four UTDPD officers, including Chief Brent Tourangeau, and nine campus administrators, including Rafael Martín, vice president and chief of staff, and Kim Winkler, associate dean for student engagement initiatives. Administrators observed the protest from behind a metal barricade near Founders. Around half an hour after the demonstration started, TPUSA members and individuals unaffiliated with UTD began a counter-demonstration.    

Hudson Kazuto Green, a computer science senior and TPUSA member who helped TPUSA table at the Plinth before the demonstration started, shared a video on Instagram around 4 p.m. of a conversation between himself and Martín. Martín informed Hudson that counter protesters must stay behind a barrier if they plan on disrupting the demonstration. Hudson asked what determines disruption, and Martín said he will determine what is disruptive.

“UTD admin saying I don’t have free speech on campus,” Green wrote in the Instagram post. “I am on a public sidewalk on campus. He [Martin] initially came up to me and told me I must be completely silent during their protest, but when I confronted him with a camera, the goalposts moved to whatever he personally considers disruptive.”

Shortly after the demonstration began, an unidentified man appearing in his late fifties moved away from the crowd and took a phone call, where he informed someone that student demonstrators were gathered in the TI Plaza and that the person he was calling should make their way over. By 2:15 p.m. a mixed group of TPUSA officers, including president Paige Neumann, and unidentified middle-aged men, including far-right internet personality Alex Stein, arrived and began recording the protest on their phones and cameras. 

At 2:22 p.m. Stein, his recording team and TPUSA officers entered the demonstration area and began disrupting it. The camera operators came extremely close to student demonstrators and pushed cameras into their faces, which YDSA officers in safety vests tried to block using keffiyehs to cover the lenses. Literature freshman and YDSA member Lourdes Ocampo said that at one point they used their keffiyeh to block a man’s camera, and when the wind blew the keffiyeh into touching the man’s arm, he patted his waist, which according to Ocampo hid the outline of a concealed firearm. Ocampo said that a few minutes later, another cameraman said he would punch them if their keffiyeh touched him. ATEC junior and YDSA member Naethra Joshi said she was afraid of the counter protesters potentially turning violent.

“I was there leading the chants and stuff and I was trying to be as loud as possible to drown out what they’re saying, but I was mildly fearful that they would start escalating,” Joshi said. “Because I mean, they were there in large groups of like five to ten, just random Nazis really there around us, and then Alex Stein being there too.”

At 2:28 p.m., Stein took a knee in the center of the demonstration, and various onlookers, including Ocampo and Joshi, reported that he said, “I’m with you and support reassignment surgery, we want genital mutilation.” Stein briefly departed from the TI Plaza afterward, before he returned wearing a niqab and said, “I’m also free Palestine, I don’t like Jewish people either.” Members of UTD Hillel, including president Jade Steinberg, were present at the protest holding pride flags. Steinberg did not immediately respond for comment regarding the antisemitic remark made by Stein. 

At 2:29 p.m. Martín left the barricade area and approached the mixed crowd of YDSA demonstrators and TPUSA counter protestors. Martín repeatedly asked Stein and TPUSA to stand at a distance from the demonstration and stop harassing students. Ocampo said that by this point, Stein’s cameraman were calling students slurs such as “faggot,” “retard” and “tranny.” Joshi said that when Martín approached Stein, he was accompanied by two UTDPD officers as they tried to get Stein to “stop harassing our students” by leaving university premises.

Throughout the entire disruption, YDSA demonstrators chanted  “no amount of vitriolic attacks will stop us from existing” and “born again bigots should go away.” After the antisemitic comment from Stein, Joshi called for students to not engage with the “fascist disruptors.” Joshi and Ocampo said they had been expecting something like this since Stein had also crashed the Trans Day of Visibility event hosted a day prior in downtown Dallas by the Party for Socialism and Liberation. 

“He pushed people in the [downtown Dallas] crowd, he insulted them,” Ocampo said. “Since he is based in the DFW area, he is able to interact with TPUSA quite frequently. He was actually on campus at the beginning of March. We were pretty sure he’d show up here as well.”

At 2:41 p.m., the group of demonstrators began to march toward Chess Plaza. Ocampo and Joshi said they chose to leave because campus administration wasn’t doing anything to stop students from being actively harassed. Stein walked to the front of the student group and held up a printout of Alyssa Nguyen’s felony charges from the Plinth attack while yelling transphobic statements over the marching students’ chants. 

At 2:45 p.m., Winkler approached Stein and asked him to leave, saying the SU Mall and plaza area was a reserved space. In a recording obtained by The Retrograde, Winkler told the TPUSA students accompanying Stein that they should know the areas they are and aren’t allowed to be in when demonstrating. Stein responded that “this is a public university, I am allowed to be anywhere,” to which Winkler said she could guide them back to the areas where they could continue their counter protest. Stein said he would file a lawsuit because Winkler was “too stupid” to understand the First Amendment. 

“You guys are a bunch of idiots, and I am not here to deal with a bunch of dumb administrators,” Stein said to Winkler. 

Before disengaging with her, Stein asked if UTD was a highly-ranked school before saying it was a community college. He then pointed to Martín and called him a “glorified babysitter.” Martín did not respond. This marked the beginning of a prolonged one-sided exchange between Stein and Martín.  

“You are too stupid, Rafael, do you even know what the First Amendment is?” Stein said to Martín. “Are you an illegal immigrant, Rafael? What are you going to do when I call ICE on you, Rafael?”

Martín did not respond to Stein’s comments. 

Alexander de Jesus-Colon, a political science graduate student, said the racist comment made by Stein toward Martín was “disgusting” and “stupid” at a time when ICE is actively arresting students for free speech and detaining people of Hispanic descent. Jesus-Colon said they were surprised that in what seemed like a blatantly racist attack, Stein apparently did not read the clear name tag that outlined Martín’s high-ranking role at UTD. 

“We have to dubiously ask about what your intentions are and what you’re aiming for in this because quite frankly speaking, threatening people with ICE detention, when we’ve seen legal citizens get detained by ICE, where we’ve seen people who are Puerto Rican get detained and harassed, this becomes not only just a threat about his race but also an attempt to avoid accountability,” Jesus-Colon said. 

Art history graduate student Charlie Milton said they were going to a meeting with a professor when they saw the confrontation taking place and watched everything unfold. Milton’s account corroborated those provided by Ocampo and Joshi. Milton said that after the confrontation with Martín and Winkler, TPUSA and Stein continued giving out flyers printed with Nguyen’s personal information while making remarks about how trans people are violent and that YDSA is supporting “trans violence.” Joshi and Ocampo said all of YDSA’s advertising for the demonstration clearly indicated they were protesting how TPUSA was overemphasizing a single incident of violence from the Plinth attack to call for violence against all trans people, which created a feeling of hate on campus. Joshi said this hatred was only further exacerbated by outside instigators like Stein.

March 31 is not the first time TPUSA officers have disrupted another student event with transphobic and homophobic remarks. In October 2022, UTD alumni and former TPUSA member Kyle Randle interrupted Chi Alpha Iota diaternity’s drag show by moving into the center of the performance and shouting that it was “non-Christ like.” UTDPD detained Randle for this incident. Other right-wing groups have spread xenophobia across UTD’s campus as well. Last fall, an organization known as the American Blackshirts Movement placed hateful neo-Nazi stickers targeting immigrants and queer students around campus, as part of what Alexandra Edwards, a professor at Texas Christian University currently researching North Texas fascists groups, identified at the time as a right-wing network that regularly cooperated with groups like TPUSA. 

“It has really become a challenge to try to show up at your own university when there are people on campus whose sole aim is to threaten and demean other students based on their identity, and they only do it with an increased frequency,” Milton said. “With administrator inaction, how are we as a student body even supposed to mitigate something like this?”

The Retrograde reached out to Martín, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment. UTD’s chapter of TPUSA declined to comment. 

This is a breaking news story. The Retrograde will provide more details as new information emerges.