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When I initially arrived in the United States four years ago to start my doctorate at Cornell University, I assumed I would be the least likely person to be hunted by immigration authorities. From my perspective, holding a British passport seemed to grant a certain protection similar to that enjoyed by diplomats—a freedom that had enabled me to work as a journalist unscathed across West Africa’s restive Sahel region for years.

Things began to fall apart after I participated in a pro-Palestinian protest on campus in September last year. We had halted a campus recruitment event because it included booths from companies that provided Israel with weapons used in its military operations in Gaza. Although I was there for just five minutes, I was later banned from campus, a sanction that felt like a form of house arrest since my residence was on the university’s upstate New York campus. While I could continue living there, I was forbidden from entering any campus facilities.

In January, as the new administration came into power and enacted a series of executive orders aimed at non-citizen student protesters, I abandoned my home and went into hiding at the remote home of a professor, worried about the reach of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Three months later, I voluntarily left to Canada, then traveled to Switzerland. I was prompted to flee after a friend, who had been with me in Ithaca, was apprehended at a Florida airport and interrogated about my location. I did not return to the UK because reports indicated that pro-Palestine journalists had been detained there under anti-terrorism laws, which filled me with apprehension.

Monitoring and Visa Termination

I hoped my arrival in Switzerland would mark the end of my difficult experience. But a fortnight 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 “received and responded to legal process” and provided my data to the Department of Homeland Security. These emails arrived just 90 minutes apart.

The quickfire emails confirmed my hunch that I had been under surveillance and that if I attempted to re-enter the US, I would likely be detained by ICE, like other student protesters. But the secrecy surrounding these procedures and the lack of due process to challenge them raised more questions than they answered.

Was there any communication between Cornell and US government authorities prior to my visa being canceled? What did the most powerful government want with my Google data? Why did the US authorities go after me? Had they built a case of suspicion based on my years working as a journalist covering the US-led “war on terror”? Was I targeted because I was Black and Muslim?

AI Monitoring and Risk-Assessment Technology

I may never get complete answers, but an report by Amnesty International sheds fresh insight on the alarming ways the US government has used secretive AI tech to mass-monitor, observe, and evaluate non-US citizen students and immigrants.

Amnesty says that Babel X, a program 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 intelligence agencies in the Libyan civil war—was flagged. The organization notes that probabilistic technologies have a wide margin of error, “can often be biased and biased, and could lead to falsely labeling pro-Palestine content as antisemitic.”

Then there is Palantir’s ImmigrationOS, which generates an digital record to centralize all information related to an immigrant investigation, allowing authorities to link multiple investigations and draw connections between cases. Using ImmigrationOS, ICE can also track self-deportations, and it was launched in April, the same month I left. It may clarify why the US took action to bar my re-entry into the country at that time.

Predictive Policing and Absence of Legal Rights

This all exists in the pre-crime space that has expanded significantly since the launch of the US-led “war on terror”—catch now, ask questions later. To this day, I have never been charged or prosecuted for any crime, or for displaying antisemitic behavior. As made clear by a recent legal submission 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 exercised my First Amendment free speech rights to oppose the slaughter of innocent people. It is the US government that has acted illegally and immorally.

The Amnesty report emphasizes the ways that technology companies and governments are colluding in the monitoring, control, and expulsion of racial others and migrants, as well as political dissidents and journalists. We’re seeing this unfold in Gaza, where Israel’s “algorithmic warfare” has turned the territory into a devastated area of the dead and rubble, leaving Palestinians with no refuge and no food. The investigation further shows that the US is using tech to strip asylum seekers and migrants of their basic human rights, subjecting them to unjust imprisonment before they have a chance to defend themselves or seek safety.

Personal Consequences and Thoughts

While I am far from feeling sorry for my actions, I now live in a uncertain state of uncertainty of unstable living arrangements and nagging doubts about whether I can finish my degree before my funding is cut. I have been forced to jump through hoops to access essential medical treatment. I was perhaps overly optimistic to think that as a British national with a London accent, at an Ivy League university, I was above these injustices. But just before I left the US, Joe, my African American barber, reminded me that: “You’re just Black.” My racial identity made my status in the US uncertain. And because I am also Muslim and document these identities, it does not help matters. It is no surprise that in a country with a history of racial slavery and post-9/11 Islamophobia, I would get flagged.

With this technology in the hands of an administration that has minimal respect for constitutional safeguards, we should all beware. What is piloted on minorities soon spreads into the mainstream.