Trump wants to deport foreign students like me. Universities have to defy him | Opinions

When I got to study in the United States, a terrifying spectrum of deportation was the last thing on my mind.

As a Briton – the citizen of the “first world” – I was allegedly a user of a “special relationship” between the US -Ai United Kingdom.

As awful as it may be, the deportation happened to the asylum seekers from Mexico or Haiti, in a world that is away from the snow hill in Ithaca in UPSTATE New York, the Cornell University, where I study. Or I thought so.

In January, while teaching the class on African American literature, I received a text message that made me peeking out the window nervously because of the danger on the street below.

Agents from immigration and customs implementation (ICE) have been noted that he spends raids at the ITHAKE center. I had a reason to be afraid: the day before, President Donald Trump signed an executive order asking agencies to consider deporting foreign students who, like me, faced a disciplinary measure of activism on Palestine.

The command requires that universities “supervise the activities of activities by alien students and staff” and invites the Secretary of Education to provide a list of court and disciplinary cases that include alleged anti -Semitism at universities.

Wrong celebration of anti -war protests that took place in the American campuses last year, Trump was quoted in the White House The fact of sheeT: “We have informed you to all the inhabitants who joined the pro-Jihadist protests: Come 2025, we will find you and we will deport you.”

Trump’s words have since become a reality. On Saturday night, the ICE immigration agents were arrested by Mahmoud Khalil, Palestinian who led the camp at Columbia University, and transferred him to detention in Louisiana, a thousand miles away from his very pregnant wife, who remained in New York. His status of a permanent resident holding the green card was a little protected.

Taking unprecedented steps to punish students for peaceful activism against the Israeli war in Gaza, the universities have traced the road to Trump’s order and raids that have now begun.

These institutions face the villa on the road: they can adhere to order and become a copy of disagreement in disagreement or may confront Trump and his bullies clan, protect their students and quickly hold their said values ​​of freedom of expression.

Universities have to show whether they are first amendment or against it.

I, I, Suspendovan after the student’s assignment of a career fair in September 2024, in which Boeing and L3haris performed – companies that provided Israel with a weapon he used to spend the war on the Palestinian population – are described as genocide of leading human rights groups.

Many of the 100 or more students who participated in the protest were included in the previous actions, including a large camp that lasted more than two weeks and the occupations of the main academic buildings.

But in an unprecedented move, Cornell singled us 15 for a suspension, mostly black, Muslim, Arab and Jewish students.

We are four international students and we could face the deportation. In addition, Bianca Waked, a Canadian Arab student, who was suspended in April 2024. For the leading of a protest camp in the campus, she also faces this look.

Although there were no suggestions that my actions were anti -Semitic or violent in any way during later disciplinary procedures, I was expelled from campus and could not go to the library or visit my academic department.

While I live in a private residence in the campus, I was effectively placed under the form of home custody a month before my suspension was abolished.

All this to occupy the point of view against the cheeky destruction of innocent people.

Still, I was one of the happier ones.

Campus police arrested four students for pushing and resisting officials; The charges of three have been rejected or will be rejected until the period without further charges.

At least one student was thrown out of the campus accommodation, while others were prevented from attending Shabbat or Muslim Prayer at Campus.

In one high profile fileMomodou Taal, a colleague of British student, was suspended and threatened to deport.

Experts They warned that Trump’s Presidency intended to use protests in Gaza as a tool for running a wider “war against waking” against progressive thought at US universities.

And so punishing us in this way, Cornell and other universities left our doors wide open to Trump’s rebels who burn books to run clutter.

The suspensions are uncomfortable with the institution that is proud of the freedom of expression and the inheritance of the student protest. Indeed, the freedom of expression was the topic of the University 2023-2024.

It is ironic that it punishes us to take care of the career fair, the university can still boast on its website about its progressive history, which includes the takeover of the 1969 Willard Aracl Hall, in which black students occupied the campus, protesting against institutional racism. On that occasion, Cornell was ready to fulfill some of his students’ requests and opened the first department of African studies in the USA.

The level of censors at the University became a question of public shame on February 3, during the main lecture of a distinguished activist and academic Angela Davis.

Davis presented one of Cornel’s oldest black administrator, Marla Love, a dean who oversees the department who handed over my suspension and prison.

Pointing out that Davis’s work “challenges us to face today’s injustices”, love charged a lecture as a meditation on contemporary importance of Dr. Martin Luther King in resolving “war and militarism, imperialism, human global suffering and government abuse of power.” Davis did just that: she caused injustice, just not in the way the university leadership hoped.

“It was from him [Dr Martin Luther King] that we learned about the strangeness of justice. It is not possible to call justice for some and to leave others out of justice, “she said, before she went beyond the topic.

“I understand that there are those who cannot attend tonight because they have been expelled from this community for their efforts to criticize the anti -democratic forces of the State of Israel,” Davis said.

During the session of questions and answers, Davis’s discussion, an undergraduate student, revealed that the University had banned them to ask questions about Palestine or, ironic, about the Censorship Censors. They did it anyway.

After Cornell broke up to interfere with the campus protest, Davis, he was involved in his iconic gray Afroom, leaned down and asked, “So, did they give you a list of topics you shouldn’t talk about?”

“This is really scary,” she added.

Although Davis’s conversation offered to the incentive of morality to the student activists, it would do a little to remove the threat of the deportation that hung over our heads.

Cornell must offer convinces that they will not work with the immigration authorities and the Ministry of Internal Security to remove us. The demolition of a legitimate protest and disagreement will not get it anywhere. There is no Colombia anywhere.

Last week Trump’s administration withdrew $ 400 million federal scholarships from Columbia University for Reportedly fails to contain anti -Semitism and “illegal protests”. It is the same university he invited to clean the Pro-Palestinian student camp at the end of April 2024. The attack, in which more than 100 were arrested and many were beaten, came for days after the then President Minouche Shafik, promised in order to enhance Columbia’s suppression of student protesters as she passed before the powerful committee of Congress.

All of this is hardly surprising because, after all, “This is American”, a country that, as suggested by the hit Childish Gambino Song, is imbued with systemic racial violence and prevailing law implementation.

As black Muslims who were not, Taal and I fall to the intersection of American deep history of Anti-Black, after 9/11 Islamophobia, and is now re-ksenophobia.

Unless Cornell occupies a firm position, it is not clear whether the British passports will save us.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeere.