03-04-2025
‘This president is trying to make America white again': An immigration law professor assesses Trump deportation policy
In recent weeks, a
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Now, Gonzalez said, she is advising immigration law clinic clients to avoid traveling, including to international airports within the United States. She said she recently urged a client not to fly to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., because it has an international airport. 'You're at a border when you're at an international airport,' she said.
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Gonzalez said the implications of detaining people with disfavored viewpoints extend beyond those with visas and green cards.
'People view the United States as the country of freedom and liberty. It's not feeling that way these days,' she said. 'US citizens should not think that just because this is happening to immigrants that it wouldn't happen to any one of us who was born inside the United States.'
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She noted that the detained Columbia University student activist,
Also, Gonzalez noted that the Tufts Ph.D. candidate, Rümeysa Öztürk, was taken into custody on a Somerville sidewalk by masked ICE agents on March 25 after taking a public pro-Palestinian stance on the Tufts campus.
'That was a kidnapping,' Gonzalez said. 'It's quite scary what happened to her.'
The Trump administration revoked Öztürk's student visa, and
But Gonzalez said, 'I think this is a fishing expedition to scare students and various universities into submission — don't speak out against our administration or we will find a reason to arrest you.'
'It's a scary time,' Gonzalez said. 'It makes me sad to see universities such as Harvard and Yale, that have a ton of money, bow down to this administration.'
She noted Roger Williams University, based in Bristol, still has an Institute for Race and the Law. 'I'm proud to say that,' she said. 'It's important that we remember where we came from as a nation.'
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Gonzalez explained why the Brown Medicine kidney doctor, Dr. Rasha Alawieh, was in a '
She noted Alawieh's H-1B visa was a non-immigrant visa that allowed her to live in the United States for a period of time because she was working in a specialty occupation. While she had studied and worked in the United States for six years, she still had to be re-admitted once she left the country, and while she was in Boston, she was technically at a border at the airport, Gonzalez said.
So although Alawieh enjoyed constitutional rights while she was in the United States, she did not have those rights when
outside the border at Logan and not yet re-admitted, Gonzalez said. 'She didn't have the right to any due process, as we think of it,' she said.
Alawieh could have refused to show immigration officers her cell phone, but authorities then could have refused to admit her on that basis, Gonzalez said.
When Alawieh was deported, the White House posted a Facebook message saying, 'Bye-bye, Rasha,' showing Alawieh and President Trump waving from a McDonald's drive-through window.
'That's just gross,' Gonzalez said. 'She was only the third doctor in the entire state of Rhode Island that does this work. It's a detriment to her patients and her students, and I think that's just gross for people to be making fun of such a thing.'
Gonzalez said that if people are concerned about the detentions and deportations, they should contact their US senators and representatives.
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'People need to vote,' she said. 'People need to speak out. And we can't be afraid to speak — we cannot be afraid to speak.'
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