I joked about getting deported. In Trump's America, it's not funny.

USA Today

24-05-2025

I joked about getting deported. In Trump's America, it's not funny. | Opinion The secretary of State, under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, can trigger the deportation of any noncitizen if their presence is deemed harmful to U.S. foreign policy interests.
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Moment Tufts University student was detained caught on security camera
The moment Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by ICE was captured on a home security camera.
When times are tough, I like to remind myself that I live in a country where I'm protected by an ironclad constitution from arrest without charge.
Whatever hardships arise, at least I cannot be snatched up by government henchmen or hooded goons because of something I said, or wrote. Not without redress. Not without lawsuits, news coverage, protests, firings or prosecution for abuses of power – the guardrails of American freedom.
That assurance is simply not available in much of the world.
And the certainty of those protections, right here in the land of the free, seems to be fading in and out like the photograph of Marty McFly's siblings in 'Back to the Future.'
Eerie familiarity
My parents were not born in a place where they were free to have their say.
Political imprisonment and suppression of dissent were common where they grew up in Syria, much like many countries from which families emigrate to the U.S.
I'd be lying if I said that was the reason my parents immigrated. Their motivations were more about economic opportunity – the chance to raise children in a place where their futures would be secure.
But freedom of speech, due process rights and the unequivocal rule of law aren't just added perks. They are the foundations on which the world's strongest economy was built.
So I have a certain duty to deeply appreciate and make the best of what my parents did for me: leaving their families behind, walking away from everyone and everything they knew and traveling to the opposite end of the world to give me a life of freedom and opportunity.
But over the last two months, images of hooded and masked agents of the United States government stalking and arresting students – apparently for their political views – has thrown every notion of American comfort and security I've ever had into question.
Meanwhile, there's strange new leadership back in Syria, too. It's a mess. Decades of dictatorship have finally given way to a fledging new government that is trying to dismantle and rebuild myriad government institutions from the ground up.
The country is several years away from its next election. Arrests with ambiguous justification that may be political in nature are still common. And the country's new leaders are struggling to build and hold the trust of the populace every step of the way.
Sounds familiar. Far too familiar.
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My April Fools' ICE prank went wrong
It was a silly, lighthearted joke, I thought.
'Guys, there are ICE agents outside the building asking about me. What do I do? Hide me!'
It was April Fools' Day. I was in the mood for some pranking, and a little social experimentation.
I'm a Michigan-born U.S. citizen. Most of my friends and co-workers – certainly my family members – know that. It would be absurd, previously, to imagine Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to be on the hunt for little old me.
But the prank was fairly consistently met with genuine horror. Some were angry with me afterward.
And then the reality set in.
This is no joke.
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In addition to seeking comfort in the Constitution, I cope with calamity by turning to humor, and I make no apologies for the prank. But the joke didn't land, for good reason.
Our president has sought to end birthright citizenship and has expressed interest in sending 'homegrowns' – whatever that means – to a prison in El Salvador.
Citizens being targeted by U.S. immigration agents is no longer such a farfetched possibility.
It all started with Mahmoud Khalil
It started with Mahmoud Khalil, the Trump Administration's inaugural political detainee, a legal permanent resident married to a U.S. citizen who was arrested because he organized and participated in protests at Columbia University.
The secretary of State, under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, can trigger the deportation of any non-citizen if their presence is deemed harmful to U.S. foreign policy interests – a provision the Trump Administration is interpreting very loosely.
The case is making its way through the courts, but Khalil, who's never been charged with a crime, is still behind bars, more than 50 days after his March 9 warrantless arrest. He missed the birth of his first child during his inexplicably lengthy detention.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a memo seeking to make Khalil deportable despite his permanent resident status, declared 'I have determined that the activities and presence of these aliens in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.'
The memo accused Khalil of 'condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States.' The government has not elaborated on its characterization of antisemitic conduct.
The 1952 law that grants Rubio the authority to make such a determination was once declared unconstitutional, back in 1996.
Then-U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, under President Bill Clinton, was seeking to extradite Mario Ruiz Massieu to Mexico, despite multiple court rulings that prosecutors lacked probable cause to suggest Massieu had engaged in criminal activity.
'Absent a meaningful opportunity to be heard, the Secretary of State's unreviewable and concededly 'unfettered discretion' to deprive an alien, who lawfully entered this country, of his or her liberty to the extent exemplified by this case is, in this court's view, unconstitutional,' wrote U.S. District Judge Maryanne Trump Barry.
Yes, that's President Donald Trump's late sister.
Barry's ruling was overturned months later by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in an opinion written by Samuel Alito, now a U.S. Supreme Court justice, who found that the district court lacked jurisdiction on the matter: 'If plaintiff wished to challenge the efforts to deport him, he was required to exhaust available administrative remedies (in immigration court) and then petition for review in this court.'
In 1999, after four years of awaiting a resolution while under house arrest, Ruiz Massieu killed himself.
In 1944, the Supreme Court said internment camps were constitutional
Another heartbreaking historic court ruling seems relevant to the abhorrent trend of indefinitely detaining immigrants.
In the 1944 case Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to uphold the constitutionality of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Dissenting Justice Frank Murphy, a former Detroit mayor and Michigan governor, found the ruling abhorrent.
'This exclusion of 'all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien,' from the Pacific Coast area on a plea of military necessity in the absence of martial law ought not to be approved. Such exclusion goes over 'the very brink of constitutional power,' and falls into the ugly abyss of racism,' Murphy wrote in his dissent.
'To infer that examples of individual disloyalty prove group disloyalty and justify discriminatory action against the entire group is to deny that, under our system of law, individual guilt is the sole basis for deprivation of rights. Moreover, this inference, which is at the very heart of the evacuation orders, has been used in support of the abhorrent and despicable treatment of minority groups by the dictatorial tyrannies which this nation is now pledged to destroy.
'To give constitutional sanction to that inference in this case, however well-intentioned may have been the military command on the Pacific Coast, is to adopt one of the cruelest of the rationales used by our enemies to destroy the dignity of the individual and to encourage and open the door to discriminatory actions against other minority groups in the passions of tomorrow.'
Immigrants with legal status are being snatched
Since Khalil's March arrest, more immigrants with legal status have been snatched from their communities and face indefinite detention pending potential deportation.
Rumeysa Ozturk, an international student from Turkey who co-wrote an op-ed for the school newspaper at Tuft's University, was arrested March 25 by plainclothes agents while walking in a Boston suburb.
'We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist, to tear up our university campuses,' Rubio told reporters after the arrest.
Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian international student who took part in protests last year at Columbia University, was taken into custody at a Vermont immigration office after being summoned for what he initially hoped would be a final interview before gaining U.S. citizenship.
And Rubio moved to revoke the visas of at least 1,000 international students, including students at least five colleges in Michigan.
In the face of numerous lawsuits filed by students, with courts showing signs of losing patience with the administration, the administration reversed course on those revocations last week.
But the damage has been done. Some of the students whose visas were threatened have already left the country.
And the images of three foreign students being handcuffed and hauled away to immigration detention centers, where they remain, are sure to discourage families across the world from sending their children to study in the U.S.
As the administration explores how far it can go, many, like my co-workers on April Fools' Day, are fearfully anticipating word that a rabble-rousing U.S. citizen has been plucked from their community and threatened with deportation.
Amir Makled got a taste of what that might be like earlier this month. The Detroit-born civil rights attorney, who is representing a University of Michigan student charged with resisting arrest during student protests last year, was detained for nearly two hours at Detroit Metro Airport on April 6 as he returned from a family trip to the Dominican Republic.
'I was targeted because of the work I was engaged in,' Makled told me. '… It could not have been a routine search. They were waiting for me. They knew I was an attorney. They knew my client list. They were telling me about me.'
Federal agents demanded, without warrant, to search Makled's cellphone. He refused, but ultimately allowed the agents to view his contacts, leading to his release.
He regrets making that concession.
'In hindsight, now I know a lot more about how far they can go,' Makled said. He believes the government needs an actual indication of a real national security threat to confiscate a traveler's phone.
Makled wears the experience like a badge of honor, proud to be in a position to fight for upholding civil rights.
'I'm not going to be intimidated in this setting," he said. "This is not something that puts me in a position of being scared."
He is, however, afraid for the future of constitutional civil rights in the U.S.
'This is the death of democracy and due process,' he said. 'The message they're sending is: 'Stay quiet, or else.' This is exactly how free speech gets killed.'
We have to to be the guardrails of our own rights
There are those who are indeed choosing to stay quiet, to store away their soapboxes and protest signs and wait for safer times.
And there are those, like Makled, who are only getting more fired up to fight.
It's the latter who'll keep our constitutional rights from fading out of the picture.
It'll be the lawyers with the courage to fight for their own rights and those of their clients in the face of unprecedented federal retaliation against opposing attorneys.
It'll be the preachers, educators and block club leaders who are willing to go out on a limb to inform and warn their communities of the threats coming from the White House.
It'll be the local elected officials who manage to find balance between fighting back and making compromises to protect municipal budgets from federal cuts.
It'll be the remaining federal workers who risk their jobs to document everything they possibly can.
And yes, it will be those protest activists, of all sorts and stripes and causes, of varying degrees of righteousness and courage, who demonstrate despite being monitored and targeted like never before.
Because we are the guardrails.
Our laws, it seems, can't stand alone. We the people, who believe in the Constitution, need to be the ones who keep our rights intact.
Those of us who cannot afford to take our constitutional rights for granted, because they're being pressed to their limits, those who actively cherish and are willing to work to protect free speech and due process – we must be the guardrails.
Khalil AlHajal is deputy editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press, where this column originally published. Contact: [e-mail].