Trump’s Politically Driven Deportations Are Quietly Rising

Donald Trump’s approval on immigration is so deathly low, and his ongoing deportation raids so unpopular even in red states, that you’d be forgiven for thinking his administration has pumped the brakes on the issue. Instead the White House is advancing a radical agenda that is increasingly targeted not at criminals or even law-abiding undocumented people but at legal immigrants.

Pro-Palestinian activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil may have staved off his politically motivated deportation, but the Trump administration is only expanding its targeting of permanent residents. It just got the go-ahead to deport an Israel critic and leader of the largest mosque in Wisconsin, Salah Sarsour, based on decades-old convictions in Israel — namely, that he threw a rocks at members of the Israeli military while living in the West Bank and that he tried to own weapons, actions the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) calls terrorist activity. A Trump-appointed district judge had previously ruled that he had presented a “substantial” case showing the administration was going after him over his pro-Palestinian speech.

Mohsen Mahdawi, the fourteen-year-long permanent resident who became an early flash point in the Trump administration’s free speech crackdown after he was arrested at his citizenship interview, remains at risk of deportation. This past June, a judge ordered that Mahdawi, who alongside Khalil cofounded Columbia University’s Palestinian Student Union, be deported to Jordan.

Unlike with Sarsour, the administration has not even bothered to accuse Mahdawi of a crime. His deportation is based purely on punishing him for his constitutionally protected speech, claiming that his campus pro-Palestinian activism would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”

These are just two of the most politically motivated cases in a growing trend: that of green card holders being detained and having deportation proceedings started against them, often based on years-old convictions or other flimsy grounds. Dozens of other green card holders were slated for deportation by a new DHS unit whose express purpose is revetting their permanent residency.

It’s not just green card holders. Ya’akub Vijandre, a Muslim photojournalist originally from the Philippines, had his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status revoked and was arrested and detained over social media posts the government claims were “endorsing or espousing terroristic activity.” Given that Vijandre’s posts — some of which the federal government hasn’t even produced but simply alleges he made — were allegedly about the kind of due process violations that are typical in writing about “war on terror” excesses, it raises the question of whether simply criticizing government policy while being an immigrant qualifies as a crime in Trump’s America.

The administration’s hostility extends even to US citizens. Making good on its threat to ramp up the stripping of citizenship, denaturalization efforts have hit a record high, with 105 suits filed in the first seven months of the year. While the government has released information about some of those successful cases highlighting very real and odious crimes to justify denaturalization, little is known about most of these cases and their underlying basis, making it hard to know if at least some of these cases are similarly politically motivated as the administration’s targeting of permanent residents like Khalil and Mahdawi.

But there’s still one more milestone the administration has hit with its turn to targeting legal migrants. Last month saw the very first successful deportation case for the thirty-year-old Alien Terrorist Removal Court (ATRC), a special tribunal that can deport noncitizens based on secret evidence that the accused is not allowed to see or challenge. Using this system, forty-seven-year-old green card holder Nazira Haji Zada was sent to Afghanistan and banned permanently from the United States, with the government never even charging her in the criminal justice system.

As attorney Eric Lee, who serves on former Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient Vijandre’s legal team, wrote for Just Security, the case brings up many of the concerns that have been raised about the ATRC, including in the way the court itself and its expansive authority can be used to coerce noncitizens into signing away their rights. (Zada ultimately agreed to be deported and conceded that she was a terrorist when faced with the ATRC.) Since she was challenged based on secret evidence, it’s impossible to evaluate the merits of the case against her.

But given how broadly the administration has defined criminal or terrorist activity in other deporation cases against noncitizens — including simply pro-Palestinian activism and social media posts — and given how it internally defines terrorists as effectively anyone who criticizes or protests against its own policies, mostly on the Left, you have to wonder: Whatever Zada was or wasn’t guilty of, was hers simply the case that will open the door to the Trump administration using the ATRC to deport its noncitizen political opponents for speech and other First Amendment–protected activity it doesn’t like?

The Trump administration suffered a major political defeat on its deportation efforts in Minneapolis at the start of this year and, as a result, made a public show of moderating. But what has followed since is a quiet but fundamental reshaping of the American immigration system, which is being slowly transformed into a weapon for advancing the president’s and his party’s political goals — namely, to destroy the pro-Palestinian movement and the Left more broadly — and one where noncitizens, no matter their exact status, are viewed as having little more rights than tourists.

This article originally appeared in Jacobin, a democratic socialist magazine publishing long-form essays and analysis on politics, economics, and culture. Subscribe to the print edition for $20 a year.