T is an international student at Columbia University.
Keren Carrión / NPR
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Keren Carrión / NPR
When, at the beginning of March, one of the classmates of Mahmoud Khalil at the University of Columbia learned that the immigration agents had come for him, she tripled her door, terrified that she could be the next.
“I absolutely broke down because it has a green card,” she said. As a student with only a temporary visa, she estimated that they certainly came to look for her. “This is what really scared me.”
In an instant, the student, who because of this fear asked to be identified by his initial first, T, faced a more consecutive decision than that which she had not yet faced during a tumultuous year of involvement in the pro-Palestinian movement of Columbia. President Trump was trying to keep his promise to deport demonstrators of students born abroad like her. Should she continue to express themselves, she wondered, which had become the central cause motivating her life? Or should it be silent in the hope of escaping the arrest and potential expulsion of the United States?
It is a high challenges that international students across the country had to face the administration of Trump, aggressively to silence the criticism of the Israeli bombing campus in Gaza. He canceled the student visas and took the students born abroad to ice detention centers, accusing them, without presenting evidence, of supporting the terrorism of Hamas, of spreading anti -Semitism and threatening the country’s foreign policy.
“Mahmoud’s detention was the moment catalyzing when people continued to defend or simply withdrew,” said a recent afternoon, sitting in a New York city park, not far from the Columbia campus. “At this point, I do not think that nothing would lead me to defend Palestine. But I see it in all international students around me. People are terrified.”
Two international graduate students in the last weeks of their university programs recently talked about their decision to continue to express themselves despite the risk of losing their visa and being detained or expelled, and how this decision has affected their lives and their plans for the future.
T is an international student at Columbia University.
Keren Carrión / NPR
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T, graduate student from Columbia University
T is a writer and photographer of Palestinian origin who publishes online articles and photos on demonstrations on his campus, largely, she said, to counter the right stories of the pro-Palestinian movement as violent and anti-Semitic. She publishes under her real name, but does not draw attention to the fact that she is an international student on a visa.
“I probably went to all the demonstrations in terms of documentation of what is happening,” she said. “I do not want this moment in our history to be erased or manipulated by the powers in place. I want our voices on the ground to be heard.”
She underestimated the aggressiveness of the federal government to expel students for their pro-Palestinian opinions. She said that the arrests of Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi and the student of Tufts University Rümeysa Öztürk, whom the enlisting ice agents picked up by an editorial that she wrote, broke her hypothesis that constitutional right to freedom of expression would protect her.
T said that the realization has turned his life upside down.
“I am now moving with paranoia,” she said. “Whenever I leave my house, I prepare myself emotionally and mentally for detention. Any man in the street or any white or black truck that I see spark a kind of panic in me.”
She was not sure if the government already had her in her eyes. She feared being targeted by pro-Israeli websites that publish the names and photos of pro-Palestinian students and call them to be expelled. She said that she had started to hide when she left the house: mask mask, sunglasses and scarf.
She did not see it as a capitulation but as a necessary precaution. International students around her began to withdraw, she said, so those who always denounce what they believe to be a genocide in Gaza – which Israel denies – felt more exposed.
“I protect myself so that I can continue to publish, continue to speak, to continue to defend,” said T. “If you asked me a year ago, I don’t think I would have said that I would gladly put my education and my body at stake for Palestine. And now, I don’t think there is something I would not do to stop the genocide.”
Despite this, she said that the price of last months had changed her post-Colombia plans. She had always planned, after having finished her higher education program, to adjust her student visa in a temporary work visa. She wanted to find a job in New York, a city she loves.
The relentless anxiety that his published writings could draw the attention of immigration agents, however, wreaked havoc. Federal judges ordered certain students freed from detention and made fear that their arrests violated the Constitution.
T decided several weeks ago, however, that after her diploma this month, she will return to her country of origin in the Middle East, where she will find new ways of supporting Palestinian rights, and above all, she said, feels more safe.
“I think I realized: I can’t live like that,” she said. “It’s just not normal.”
F is an international student who is studying in New York.
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F, graduate student, New York City
F asked that in addition to using only its initial first, NPR also retains the name of its university. A few months ago, she said, it disciplined her for participating in a pro-Palestinian demonstration. The federal government has put pressure on universities to put the disciplinary archives of militant students, and she is concerned about knowing that her school could make it easier to find it.
“We all all international students, we had this thought:” What if it was me? “” She said about her reaction to the first students that ice agents arrested. “Students who were a higher risk, they all started speaking to their lawyers and making arrangements if it were to happen.”
F, which is also from a country in the Middle East, has never considered itself at high risk of detention. She said that she had gone to many demonstrations, still as a participant and not as a leader.
She said she was shocked when Khalil was arrested, how fast the government had followed the bold promise of President Trump. And how insufficient it seemed insufficient with regard to freedom of expression and rights to regular procedure.
“They said, we are going to do it, and they did it. And not only did they do it, but they took this man and others to Louisiana,” said F.
The detentions made him think more seriously about his safety. She planned to cover her face. Before their arrests, Khalil, Mahdawi and Öztürk had all been Doxxed – their names, photos and summaries of their protest activities published online. F said that she had never been doxxe and wanted to keep it as well. She began to assess her exposure to each event. If most people have masked, she did it too, to avoid going out.
Like many militant students, F said that a year and a half after the start of the conflict in Gaza, she often feels numb by the endless Palestinian reports killed by Israeli bombs. Guilt, she said, maybe overwhelming. She decided that losing her student visa or being detained and expelled would be a small price to pay to continue to protest against the murders.
“If something should happen with my immigration status because I was unshakable in my support for Palestine, I really agree with that,” she said. She said that the fact that the government had managed to silence some of the students around her with the threat of expulsion motivated her.
“This is the moment when I think I still have to get involved in the movement and take higher risks that others cannot afford,” she said.
She also graduated this week and plans to continue working in New York.
