On Feb. 18, the White House X (formerly known as Twitter) account posted an autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) video of deportation. The video depicted illegal immigrants, who President Donald Trump calls “illegals,” with their wrists bound by shackles and their ankles chained, the click of shackles on another’s hands, and the sound of the chains being drawn across the plane runway. This video is the tip of the iceberg of the Trump Administration’s immigration policies and their view of immigrants.
President Trump does not only have a prejudice against illegal immigrants but against legal ones, too: Mahmoud Khalil was a pro-Palestine student activist at Columbia University in the spring of 2024, but, unlike many protesters, he never covered his face. According to a New York Times article, he spoke in depth about the war between Israel and Palestine and the realities of it. The war was not against the terrorist group Hamas but rather against the people. Acting as a negotiator on behalf of the coalition of student protesters, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, he shared his disdain for the violence and dark rhetoric surrounding the war and aimed at many Jewish students on campus. He was thoughtful and compassionate in expressing the views and wants of the students who had pitched tents on the iconic grass of the university. Throughout negotiations, Khalil was responsive to the demands of the university going as far as to remove 17 tents and emptying the second lawn after they requested for 20 to be removed. He was a good-faith negotiator, yet he was named as supporting a terrorist organization and spreading terrorist propaganda.
On Mar. 8, only seven weeks into Trump’s presidency, the police showed up at Khalil’s door and arrested him. He was taken into immigration custody. He had a valid green card, but the officers didn’t care. His wife, Noor Abdalla, took a video of the arrest while she was on the phone with their lawyer. The arresting officers were in plain clothes and refused to give their names; they have still not been identified as of Mar. 19. Since his arrest, his lawyers have been unable to have a private conversation with him, which is a right under Attorney-Client Privilege.
This is the reality for immigrants living under the Trump administration. Trump has been making threats to deport legal foreign students who support Palestine, for he views this as an act of supporting Hamas, which the American government has deemed a terrorist organization. Khalil and many other students in similar situations have never supported Hamas, but they reviled the acts of the Israeli government.
Under the Trump Administration, immigration policies have been murky at best. They provide little to no reasoning while they go under consistent changes. The growing presence of ICE across the country has many immigrants fearing for their safety, even in previously protected locations like schools and churches. Trump has declared an invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, 50 U.S.C. 21 et seq., among his previous executive orders. According to an analysis by the National Immigration Law Center, many of his executive orders on immigration are cruel, illegal, and even unconstitutional (this includes Trump’s challenge against birthright citizenship, which Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin deemed unconstitutional).
The Trump Administration has created a political climate where a country built on immigrants reviles them. In the birth of America, people like Alexander Hamilton, James Wilson, Robert Morris, George Taylor, and more were accepted with open arms and became founding fathers. They were all immigrants. Now, the president challenges the presence of immigrants in every stretch of the nation in his attempt to “Make America Great Again.”
