Witnessing

Things are just getting worse. I don’t know which thread to pull, everything is unraveling at such an unholy pace. Top brass leaking war maneuvers ahead of time in a hackable group chat when they don’t even know who all the participants are is certainly egregious but I’m still stuck on the detainments and deportations of students for attending a protest on their campus. This week there’s the saga of a South Korean born Columbia University student who has been a permanent resident since she was seven years old. She was the valedictorian of her high school and is a straight A student at Columbia and she was not even a player in the Gaza war protests last year. Maybe she stopped by on her way to class. Earlier this year she took part in a protest over how Columbia was treating students exercising their first amendment rights. She was among 100 students arrested and released with a ticket. 

Suddenly, ICE appears at her parents’ home with a warrant to arrest and deport her. This happened the day after they arrested Mahmoud Khalil, who is still in detention in Louisiana, despite a judge having ordered that he be brought back to New Jersey so that his case can be adjudicated. Now the government is saying Khalil lied on his green card application by not disclosing that he worked at the Syrian embassy in Britain and that he was a member of a Palestinian affinity group at Columbia, or some such trifle, and that's why they are deporting him. His lawyers say they are bringing this new charge because they are trying to duck the first amendment argument as they know they cannot win there.

But back to the South Korean-born green card holder, she was not at her parents' home when the ICE agents showed up. ICE hasn’t been able to find her, despite tearing apart her dorm room and another Columbia residence in their efforts to arrest her. Her lawyers have sued the government to stop pursuing her, arguing she has done nothing wrong. Yesterday a judge ordered the government to stop all proceedings against her. Sadly, we have seen that this administration simply ignores court orders. I hope this young woman is able to stay hidden, but now her whole life has been disrupted, her education stalled, her future imperiled. Imagine men in plain clothes showing up at your house, showing you a piece of paper and claiming to be government agents but providing no proof of that, saying they are there to take your daughter away in an unmarked car to who knows where and you have no rights but to let them do so. No, really pause and imagine that. 

My friend shared an interesting thought last night. She said the targeting of student protestors worries her most of all. We all know 47 doesn't care about anti-Semitism, she said. She thinks that these detainments are obviously a preemptive strike to shut down future uprisings when things get really bad. They don’t want campus protests like they had during the Vietnam war, so they are choking it off in advance—which signals to her that they are planning to do something much worse than we have so far seen, and they want students too scared to fight back. Her words gave me chills. 

Poster art is by Greta Andreica