When I arrived to study in the United States, the terrifying spectrum of expulsion was the last thing in my mind.
As a British – citizen of the “Première World” – I was supposed to benefit from the “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom.
As horrible as it is, the deportation has arrived at asylum seekers in Mexico or Haiti, in a world far from the snowy hills of Ithaca in New York State, which houses the Cornell University where I study. Or I thought.
In January, when I taught a class on African-American literature, I received an SMS that made me believe nervously by the window for the danger in the street below.
Immigration and customs’ application agents (ICE) had been identified in downtown Ithaca. I had reason to be afraid: the day before, President Donald Trump had signed a decree asking agencies to consider expelling foreign students who, like me, faced disciplinary measures for activism in Palestine.
The order obliges universities to “monitor and report the activities of students and extraterrestrial staff” and calls on the Secretary for Education to provide an inventory of the Court and disciplinary affairs involving an anti -Semitism presumed in the universities.
Released the anti-war demonstrations that took place on American campuses last year, Trump would have been quoted in a white house information sheet: “For all resident foreigners who joined pro-jihadist demonstrations, we have put you in note: 2025, we will find you, and we will get you.”
Trump’s words have since become reality. On Saturday evening, ice immigration agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian who led camp to Columbia University, and transferred him to a detention center in Louisiana, a thousand kilometers from his very pregnant wife, which remains in New York. His status as a permanent resident holding a green card did not do much to protect it.
By taking unprecedented measures to punish students for peaceful activism against the War of Israel in Gaza, universities have paved the way for Trump and the raids that have now started.
These institutions are faced with a fork on the road: they can comply with the order and become accomplices of a repression of dissent, or they can withstand Trump and its clan of intimidators, protect their students and quickly hold their declared values of freedom of expression.
Universities must demonstrate whether they are for the first amendment or against.
Myself, I was suspended following the takeover of the students of a career show in September 2024, featuring Boeing and L3harris – companies that provided Israel some of the weapons he used to carry out his war against the Palestinian population – described as a genocide by the main human rights groups.
Many of the hundreds of students who participated in the event participated in previous actions, including a major camp which lasted more than two weeks and professions of major university buildings.
But in an unprecedented decision, Cornell chose 15 of us for the suspension, mainly black, Muslims, Arab and Jewish students.
Four of us are international students and could face the deportation. In addition, Bianca Wake, a Canadian Arab student, who was suspended in April 2024 for managing a protest camp on the campus, also faced this prospect.
Although there was no suggestion that my actions were anti -Semites or violent in any way whatsoever during subsequent disciplinary procedures, I was banished from the campus and I could not go to the library or visit my university department.
While I live in a private residence on campus, I was actually placed in the form of a residual residence for a month before the lifting of my suspension.
All this to take a stand against the free annihilation of innocent people.
However, I was one of the luckiest.
Four students were arrested by campus police for pushing and resisted agents; The accusations of three of them have been abandoned or will be rejected while waiting for a period without other charges.
At least one student was expelled from the accommodation of the campus, while others were prevented from attending the shabbat or the Muslim prayers on the campus.
In a very publicized case, Momodou Taal, a British student colleague, was suspended and threatened with deportation.
Experts warned that Trump’s presidency intended to use Gaza’s protests as a tool to wage a broader “war against wake -up” against progressive thinking in American universities.
And so by punishing us in this way, Cornell and other universities have left the door widely open to the burning insurgents of Trump to run Riot.
The suspensions are embarrassing for an institution that prides itself on freedom of expression and a heritage of protest for students. Indeed, freedom of expression was the theme of the University 2023-2024.
Ironically, while punishing us for taking control of a career show, the university is still boasting on its website in its progressive history, which includes the takeover of Willard Straight Hall of 1969, in which black students occupied the campus, Protestant against institutional racism. On this occasion, Cornell was willing to respond to some of the requests of its students and opened the first department of African studies in the United States.
The level of censorship at university became a question of public embarrassment on February 3, during a main conference by the distinguished and academic activist Angela Davis.
Davis was presented by one of the highest black administrators in Cornell, Marla Love, the dean who oversees the department who rendered my suspension and my confinement.
Stressing that Davis’ work “challenges us to confront today’s injustices”, LOVE presented the conference as a meditation on the contemporary relevance of Dr. Martin Luther King to tackle “war and militarism, imperialism, world human sufferings and government abuses of power”. Davis did exactly that: she challenged injustice, but not in the way the university management would have hoped.
“It is from him (Dr. Martin Luther King) that we learned the indivisibility of justice. It is not possible to call for justice for some and to leave others outside the circle of justice, “she said before going out.
“I understand that there are those who cannot attend this evening because they have been banished from this community because of their efforts to criticize the anti-democratic forces of the State of Israel,” said Davis.
During the question-answer session, Davis’ discussion, a undergraduate student, revealed that the university had prohibited them from asking questions about Palestine or, ironically, about censorship on campus. They did it anyway.
After having lacerated Cornell for the demonstration of the Campus Entrevant, Davis, sporting his emblematic gray Afro, looked at and asked: “So they gave you a list of subjects of which you were not supposed to speak?”
“It’s really scary,” she added.
Although Davis’ speeches have offered a welcome morale to student activists, this will not do much to suppress the threat of deportation suspended above our heads.
Cornell must ensure that this will not work with the immigration authorities and the Ministry of Internal Security to withdraw us. Catchaging on legitimate protest and dissent will not do it anywhere. He has already had Columbia anywhere.
Last week, the Trump administration withdrew $ 400 million from federal subsidies from the University of Columbia for not failing to contain anti -Semitism and “illegal protests”. It is the same university as at the end of April 2024 called in the NYPD to erase a pro-Palestine student camp. The raid, in which more than 100 were arrested and beaten, occurred a few days after the president of the time, Minouche Shafik, promised to intensify Columbia’s repression against the student demonstrators when she was embarrassed before a powerful committee of the Congress.
All this is hardly surprising because, after all, “This is America”, a country which, as suggested by Gambino’s childish song, is imbued with systemic racial violence and dominant police.
As non-citizen black Muslims, Taal and I are falling at the intersection of the deep history of the United States of the anti-black, post-15 September Islamophobia and now an resident xenophobia.
Unless Cornell takes a firm position, it is not clear if our British passports will save us.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.