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When I initially came in the United States four years ago to start my PhD at Cornell University, I thought I would be the least likely person to be targeted by federal immigration agents. From my perspective, holding a British passport seemed to grant a sort of immunity 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.

The situation deteriorated after I attended a pro-Palestine demonstration on campus in September the previous year. We had halted a campus recruitment event because it featured booths from companies that provided Israel with weapons used in its campaign in Gaza. Although I was there for just a brief moment, I was subsequently 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 prohibited from accessing 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 left my home and went into hiding at the remote home of a professor, fearing the reach of ICE. Three months later, I voluntarily left to Canada, then traveled to Switzerland. I was compelled to flee after a acquaintance, who had been with me in Ithaca, was apprehended at a Florida airport and interrogated about my whereabouts. I did not return to the UK because accounts indicated that pro-Palestine journalists had been arrested there under anti-terrorism laws, which made me fearful.

Surveillance and Immigration Status 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, informing me that the US government had effectively terminated my student visa status. The second came from Google, indicating that it had complied with a legal request and handed over 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, like other student protesters. But the secrecy surrounding these processes and the lack of due process to challenge them provoked more questions than they answered.

Was there any communication between Cornell and US government authorities before 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 case of doubt based on my years working as a journalist covering the US-led “war on terror”? Was I targeted 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 alarming ways the US government has used secretive AI tech to extensively watch, surveil, and evaluate non-US citizen students and immigrants.

The report states that Babel X, software made by Virginia-based Babel Street, allegedly searches social media for “terrorism”-related content and tries to predict the likely intent behind posts. The software uses “persistent search” to constantly monitor new information once an initial query 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. Amnesty International notes that probabilistic technologies have a high rate of inaccuracy, “can often be biased and prejudiced, 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 draw connections between cases. Using ImmigrationOS, ICE can also monitor 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 when it did.

Predictive Policing 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”—detain now, ask questions later. To this day, I have never been charged or tried for any crime, or for displaying antisemitic behavior. As made clear by a recent legal submission 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 exercised my First Amendment free speech rights to protest the killing of innocent people. It is the US government that has acted illegally and unethically.

The Amnesty report emphasizes the ways that big tech and governments are colluding in the surveillance, control, and deportation of racial others and migrants, as well as activists and journalists. We’re seeing this unfold in Gaza, where Israel’s “algorithmic warfare” has turned the territory into a devastated area of corpses and rubble, leaving Palestinians with nowhere to go and no food. The investigation further shows that the US is using tech to deprive asylum seekers and migrants of their fundamental rights, subjecting them to arbitrary detention before they have a chance to defend themselves or seek safety.

Individual Consequences and Thoughts

While I am far from regretting my actions, I now live in a month-to-month 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 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 immune to these horrors. But just before I left the US, Joe, my African American barber, told me that: “You’re just Black.” My racial identity made my status in the US conditional. And because I am also Muslim and document these aspects of myself, 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 AI tools in the hands of an administration that has little regard for constitutional safeguards, we should all be cautious. What is piloted on minorities soon spreads into the mainstream.