The U.S. Of Abductions
Photo: ice.gov
By Shakeel Syed
“The brave” of the “land of the free” is turning the U.S. of America into the U. S. of Abductions. The leaders of the so-called “land of the free” have been kidnapping international students and scholars as a way to silence their criticism of apartheid Israel and their solidarity with the victims of genocide in Gaza.
Here are but a few examples:
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish Fulbright scholar & doctoral student at Tufts University was abducted by six plainclothes & masked officers as she was walking near her apartment. Ozturk was handcuffed and forced into an unmarked van. Her whereabouts were unknown until after she was flown halfway across the country to Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center, an immigration detention facility operated by the GEO Group, a publicly traded for-profit private prisons owner/operator.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian former graduate student at Columbia University and a lawful permanent resident was abducted from his New York City apartment in front of his US citizen pregnant wife and shipped out to the private prison in Louisiana.
Ranjani Srinivasan, Columbia graduate student and a doctoral candidate in urban planning, whose valid student visa was revoked and who in panic opted to “self-deport” instead of being abducted like Rumeysa and Khalil.
Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral researcher at Georgetown University, who was snatched by masked agents outside his home in Virginia and transported to an ICE facility in Texas.
Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian national and a doctoral student in mechanical engineering at the University of Alabama abducted by ICE before dawn from his campus apartment and flown away to Louisiana.
Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University in Rhode Island, who was deported in March following a visit to family in Lebanon.
Yunseo Chung, a21-year-old Columbia student, a Korean-born permanent resident of the US who has lived in the U.S. since she was seven, arrested & threatened with deportation for attending a pro-Palestine protest at Manhattan’s Barnard College, after which her lawful permanent resident status was revoked.
And there is Momodou Taal, a British Gambian PhD student at Cornell University, who irked Trump after suing his administration over the crackdown on pro-Palestine solidarity. Facing deportation, Taal announced on March 31 that he would be departing the country of his own accord: “I have lost faith I could walk the streets without being abducted.”
The business of abductions & kidnappings by the United States of Abductions is duly confirmed by Tom Homan, Trump’s abduction-in-chief and the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement who wants his agency to implement “a system of trucks that rounds up immigrants for deportation in a system similar to how Amazon delivers packages around the US.”
Arguably, the fear of abduction can be more psychologically traumatizing than the act itself. But as Trump expands his xenophobic assault to include not just under and undocumented people but also visa holders and legal US residents, Americans have a choice to either let the United States of America permanently become the United States of Abductions or reclaim what is left of it.
(Syed is the Executive Director of South Asian Network, CA)
