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Upon I initially came in the US four years ago to start my doctorate at Cornell University, I believed I would be the last person to be targeted by federal immigration agents. As far as I could tell, holding a British passport seemed to grant a sort of protection akin to that enjoyed by diplomats—a freedom that had enabled me to work as a journalist unscathed across West Africa’s unstable Sahel region for years.

The situation deteriorated after I participated in a pro-Palestinian protest on campus in September last year. We had halted a campus recruitment event because it featured booths from corporations that supplied Israel with armaments used in its campaign in Gaza. Although I was there for just five minutes, I was subsequently barred from university grounds, a punishment that felt like a type of house arrest since my home was on the university’s upstate New York campus. While I could remain there, I was forbidden from entering any university premises.

In January, as Donald Trump assumed office and enacted a series of executive orders aimed at non-citizen student protesters, I left my home and sought refuge at the secluded home of a professor, worried about the reach of ICE. Three months later, I self-deported to Canada, then traveled to Switzerland. I was prompted to flee after a acquaintance, who had been with me in Ithaca, was detained at a Florida airport and questioned about my whereabouts. I did not return to the UK because accounts indicated that pro-Palestine journalists had been detained there under terrorism laws, which made me fearful.

Monitoring and Immigration Status Termination

I expected my arrival in Switzerland would signal the conclusion of my ordeal. But two weeks later, two distressing emails appeared in my inbox. The first was from Cornell, notifying me that the US government had effectively revoked my student visa status. The second came from Google, stating that it had complied with a legal request and provided my data to the DHS. These emails arrived just 90 minutes apart.

The quickfire emails confirmed my suspicion that I had been under surveillance and that if I attempted to re-enter the US, I would likely be arrested by ICE, similar to other student protesters. But the lack of transparency surrounding these procedures and the lack of legal recourse to challenge them raised more questions than they answered.

Was there any communication between Cornell and US government authorities before my visa being canceled? What did the world’s strongest government want with my Google data? Why did the US authorities go after me? Had they constructed a case of suspicion based on my years working as a journalist reporting on the US-led “war on terror”? Was I singled out because I was Black and Muslim?

Artificial Intelligence Monitoring and Predictive Technology

I may never get full answers, but an report by Amnesty International sheds new light on the concerning ways the US government has used secretive AI tech to extensively watch, surveil, and assess non-US citizen students and immigrants.

Amnesty says that Babel X, software made by Virginia-based Babel Street, allegedly scours social media for “terrorism”-related content and tries to predict the potential intent behind posts. The software uses “persistent search” to constantly monitor new information once an search request has been made. It is possible that my journalistic work—on topics ranging from Guantánamo to drone strikes in the Sahel and the role of British secret services in the Libyan civil war—was marked. The organization says that probabilistic technologies have a high rate of inaccuracy, “can often be discriminatory and prejudiced, and could lead to falsely framing pro-Palestine content as antisemitic.”

Then there is Palantir’s ImmigrationOS, which generates an electronic case file to centralize all information related to an immigrant investigation, allowing authorities to connect multiple investigations and draw connections between cases. Using ImmigrationOS, ICE can also monitor self-deportations, and it was rolled out in April, the same month I left. It may clarify why the US took action to bar my re-entry into the country when it did.

Pre-Crime Policing and Lack of Due Process

This all exists in the predictive policing space that has grown exponentially since the launch of the US-led “war on terror”—catch now, ask questions later. To this day, I have never been accused or tried for any crime, or for exhibiting antisemitic behavior. As demonstrated by a recent complaint by the University of Chicago Law Clinic, submitted on behalf of me and eight other non-citizen protesters to eight UN special rapporteurs, I’ve merely used my constitutional free speech rights to protest the killing of innocent people. It is the US government that has acted illegally and unethically.

The Amnesty report highlights the ways that technology companies and powerful states are cooperating in the surveillance, management, and expulsion of racial others and migrants, as well as political dissidents and journalists. We’re seeing this play out in Gaza, where Israel’s “algorithmic warfare” has turned the territory into a wasteland of the dead and rubble, leaving Palestinians with no refuge and nothing to eat. The investigation further shows that the US is using tech to strip asylum seekers and migrants of their basic human rights, consigning them to arbitrary detention before they have a chance to defend themselves or ask for safety.

Personal Consequences and Thoughts

While I am far from feeling sorry for my actions, I now live in a month-to-month state of uncertainty of precarious living arrangements and nagging doubts about whether I can finish my degree before my funding is cut. I have been compelled to jump through hoops to access essential medical treatment. I was perhaps naive to think that as a British national with a London accent, at an Ivy League university, I was immune to these injustices. But just before I left the US, Joe, my African American barber, told me that: “You’re just Black.” My Blackness made my status in the US conditional. And because I am also Muslim and document these aspects of myself, it does not make things easier. It is no surprise that in a country with a history of racial slavery and post-9/11 Islamophobia, I would get targeted.

With this AI tools in the hands of an administration that has little regard for legal protections, we should all beware. What is tested on minorities soon spreads into the mainstream.