Trump wants to deport foreign students like me. Universities must defy him

When I arrived to study in the United States, the terrifying spectre of deportation was the last thing on my mind.

As a Brit – a citizen of “the First World” – I was supposedly the beneficiary of the “special relationship” between the US and the United Kingdom.

As awful as it was, deportation happened to asylum seekers from Mexico or Haiti, in a world far removed from the snow-capped hills of Ithaca in upstate New York, home to Cornell University where I study. Or so I thought.

In January, as I taught a class on African American literature, I received a text message that caused me to nervously peer out the window for danger on the street below.

Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had been spotted conducting raids in downtown Ithaca. I had reason to be afraid: the day before, President Donald Trump had signed an executive order asking agencies to consider deporting foreign students who, like me, faced disciplinary action for activism on Palestine.

The order requires universities to “monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff” and calls on the secretary of education to provide an inventory of court and disciplinary cases involving alleged anti-Semitism at universities.

Mischaracterising the antiwar protests that took place across US campuses last year, Trump was quoted as saying in a White House fact sheet: “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.”

Trump’s words have since become reality. On Saturday night, ICE immigration agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian who led the encampment at Columbia University, and transferred him to a detention facility in Louisiana, a thousand miles away from his heavily pregnant wife, who remains in New York City. His status as a permanent resident holding a green card did little to protect him.

By taking unprecedented steps to punish students for peaceful activism against Israel’s war in Gaza, universities paved the way for Trump’s order and the raids that have now begun.