2 days ago
7
When I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, less than a year ago, I could never have imagined that writing a critical piece about the US government could put me at risk of deportation, threatening the life and career I’ve built here. But today, that threat is very real.
Just this week, Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, was arrested mere blocks from where I live after publishing an op-ed in her university newspaper describing Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as genocide. That was the full extent of her activism, yet despite having all her documentation in order, she was taken abruptly and transported to Louisiana, over 1,000 miles from her home.
At the university where I work, many colleagues and students are foreign nationals, and recent conversations have revolved around how to navigate this chilling new reality. A Middle Eastern friend who attended protests recently told me she’s started altering her daily route to and from campus – knowing Ice typically conducts arrests in public spaces.
Another international couple told me they’ve exchanged social media passwords to alert each other immediately if something happens, and created an emergency protocol in case one of them suddenly disappears. As I wrote this column, another colleague emailed a Spanish newspaper asking them to erase her previously published opinion pieces out of fear of retaliation. Several German colleagues, similarly cautious, have begun regularly deleting WhatsApp conversations after a French scientist was turned away at the US border for private text messages criticizing President Trump.
Whether or not these specific individuals face imminent deportation is beside the point. The real danger lies in the chilling effect: the Trump administration’s policies deliberately target not only undocumented immigrants – as seen during Trump’s first term – but also perfectly legal immigrants. It is no coincidence that only those who publicly criticize the administration or its allies find themselves under threat. This represents a calculated strategy to silence dissent.
Mark Twain once observed that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. And the rhyme with America’s darker chapters is undeniable here. The current use of state security apparatuses to suppress activism resembles tactics employed during the 1960s and 1970s, when US intelligence agencies infiltrated student, leftwing, and antiracist movements. Back then, the strategy was to sow distrust and dismantle resistance through systematic infiltration. Today, it involves silencing voices of opposition by arbitrarily detaining students for peacefully exercising their right to dissent. The abuses of J Edgar Hoover and James Jesus Angleton were only exposed through the courageous efforts of activists and the Church and Pike Committees, awakening America’s collective conscience. Today, such repression occurs openly in broad daylight, exemplified by the sight of six men arresting a doctoral student without a judicial warrant – and thus without the need of probable cause – for the simple act of writing an opinion article.
Democratic backsliding is gradual; authoritarian regimes always begin by targeting the most vulnerable. A few years ago, it was undocumented immigrants; today, it’s lawful residents speaking out against Trump. Americans who oppose the values espoused by this administration should harbor no illusions: if this arbitrary repression goes unchallenged, they will certainly become the next targets.
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Berna León is a visiting fellow at Harvard University, where he teaches political theory. His doctoral dissertation investigated the democratic oversight of intelligence services in the US and UK
