No immigrant should feel safe in America today

Mar 20, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- There was a time when an illegal immigrant in America could live in the shadows with some measure of predictability, if not security. He could go to work, send his children to school, and navigate the routines of daily life with the unspoken assurance that, while his presence was unauthorized, the machinery of enforcement would not seek him out unless he ran afoul of the law. That time has passed.

The immigration raids that have swept across the United States have been described as focused, deliberate, and just. At least this is now officials projected these raids. Immigrants have a different narrative to tell.

When the raids began, the explanation was that lawbreakers—those who had committed crimes, those with pending deportation orders—were the priority. The reasoning was sound enough. A government may be justified in enforcing its laws, and it is difficult to argue that those who have shown disregard for the law should be allowed to remain. But as the weeks unfolded, it became clear that the net was not so precisely cast. People without criminal records found themselves detained. The separation of the guilty from the innocent was not as rigid as had been claimed.

A woman in New York tells of her son being stopped on the subway and questioned by officers who suspected him of being an illegal immigrant. He had no identification to prove his status—he was, in fact, a citizen of the United States—but was forced to video call his mother who then had to hold up his documents for an agent to scrutinize through a screen.

This is the America in which we now live, where a citizen must plead his legitimacy from the other end of a telephone. The search for the undocumented has begun to resemble a kind of collective suspicion, where the burden of proof has shifted onto the individual, and innocence must be demonstrated, not assumed.

There is also the disturbing trend of deportations to third-party countries, an extra-legal measure that speaks to the severity of this administration’s posture on immigration. Those who entered the U.S. from one nation are being sent to another, a practice that makes a mockery of the already arbitrary nature of deportation. For many, it is no longer a question of returning home; it is a question of being sent elsewhere, of being displaced yet again by forces beyond their control.

Foreign students, once seen as welcomed guests in the American university system, may also have cause for concern. The notion that they are secured on their student visas is a fiction that is yet to be tested. As the administration tightens its grip on legal immigration, one must wonder whether students will be spared from scrutiny. There is now the threat that some countries may be outright banned from being issued visas while others will face restrictions of the issuance of travel visas to the United States. In the current climate, judicial authority is increasingly under siege. Judges’ orders, once regarded as the final word in legal matters, are now being flouted. Court rulings that do not align with the administration’s policies are ignored, challenged, or circumvented through executive manoeuvres.

Judges who dare to rule against immigration enforcement measures find themselves the targets of public criticism from the highest levels of government. This erosion of judicial independence signals a troubling shift— one in which the rule of law is a mere inconvenience to be sidestepped when politically expedient.

It is easy to believe that those who hold visas, who follow the rules, who have done nothing wrong, will be safe. But safety is no longer a certainty; it is, at best, a temporary condition. The atmosphere has changed. The inclination of government has changed. The country that once prided itself on being a haven for the displaced, a land of refuge, is closing its doors with methodical intent.

No immigrant—legal or illegal—should feel immune from the reach of the Trump administration. The enforcement of immigration law is no longer a matter of order and discretion; it has become a campaign, an assertion of force, an instrument of exclusion. To be foreign in America is to exist under a cloud of doubt, to be regarded as suspect. The raids will continue. The detentions will persist. The deportations will hasten with or without cause. The fear will spread. And lives will be shattered.

(No immigrant should feel safe in America today)

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

 

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• America, Immigrants, Peeping Tom, United States

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