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When I first arrived in the United States four years ago to start my PhD at Cornell University, I assumed I would be the last person to be targeted by immigration authorities. As far as I could tell, holding a British passport seemed to grant a certain protection similar to that enjoyed by diplomats—a mobility that had enabled me to work as a journalist unscathed across West Africa’s unstable Sahel region for years.

Things began to fall apart after I participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration on campus in September the previous year. We had brought a job fair to a standstill because it featured booths from corporations that provided Israel with weapons used in its military operations in Gaza. Even though I was there for just five minutes, I was later banned from campus, a punishment 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 prohibited from accessing any campus facilities.

In January, as the new administration came into power and issued a set of presidential directives targeting non-citizen student protesters, I left my home and went into hiding at the remote home of a professor, fearing the reach of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Three months later, I voluntarily left to Canada, then traveled to Switzerland. I was compelled to flee after a acquaintance, who had spent time 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 arrested there under anti-terrorism laws, which filled me with apprehension.

Monitoring and Visa Revocation

I hoped my arrival in Switzerland would mark the end of my difficult experience. But two weeks later, two alarming emails reached my inbox. The first was from Cornell, informing 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 DHS. These emails arrived just 90 minutes apart.

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

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

AI Surveillance and Predictive Technology

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

The report states that Babel X, a program made by Virginia-based Babel Street, reportedly scours social media for “terrorism”-related content and tries to predict the likely intent behind posts. The software uses “persistent search” to continuously monitor new information once an search request has been made. It is possible that my reportage—on topics ranging from Guantánamo to drone strikes in the Sahel and the role of British intelligence agencies in the Libyan civil war—was marked. The organization says that predictive technologies have a wide margin of error, “can often be biased and biased, and could lead to incorrectly framing pro-Palestine content as antisemitic.”

Then there is Palantir’s ImmigrationOS, which generates an digital record to consolidate all information related to an immigrant case, allowing authorities to link multiple investigations and establish relationships between cases. Using ImmigrationOS, ICE can also track self-deportations, and it was launched in April, the same month I left. It may help explain why the US took action to block my re-entry into the country when it did.

Pre-Crime Enforcement and Lack of Due Process

This all exists in the pre-crime 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, filed on behalf of me and eight other non-citizen protesters to eight UN special rapporteurs, I’ve merely used my First Amendment free speech rights to oppose the killing of innocent people. It is the US government that has acted unlawfully and unethically.

The Amnesty report highlights the ways that big tech and governments are colluding in the monitoring, management, and expulsion of racial others and migrants, as well as activists and journalists. We’re seeing this unfold in Gaza, where Israel’s “algorithmic warfare” has reduced 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 mobilizing tech to deprive asylum seekers and migrants of their fundamental rights, consigning them to arbitrary detention before they have a chance to defend themselves or ask for safety.

Individual Consequences and Thoughts

While I am far from feeling sorry for my actions, I now live in a uncertain limbo of precarious living arrangements and persistent doubts about whether I can finish my degree before my funding is terminated. I have been compelled to navigate obstacles to access life-saving medical treatment. I was perhaps naive 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, told me that: “You’re just Black.” My Blackness made my status in the US conditional. And because I am also Muslim and write about 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 targeted.

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