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When I first arrived in the United States four years ago to begin my PhD at Cornell University, I assumed I would be the last person to be targeted by immigration authorities. From my perspective, holding a British passport seemed to grant a sort of protection akin 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 protest on campus in September the previous year. We had brought a job fair to a standstill because it included booths from corporations that provided Israel with weapons used in its military operations in Gaza. Although I was there for just a brief moment, 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 Ithaca campus. While I could remain there, I was prohibited from entering any university premises.

In January, as the new administration came into power and enacted a set of executive orders targeting non-citizen student protesters, I abandoned my home and went into hiding at the secluded home of a professor, worried about the reach of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 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 apprehended at a Florida airport and questioned about my location. I did not return to the UK because accounts indicated that pro-Palestine journalists had been arrested there under terrorism laws, which made me fearful.

Monitoring and Immigration Status Termination

I hoped my arrival in Switzerland would mark the end of my difficult experience. But two weeks later, two distressing emails appeared in my inbox. The first was from Cornell, notifying me that the US government had effectively terminated my student visa status. The second came from Google, stating that it had “received and responded to legal process” and handed over my data to the DHS. These emails arrived just an hour and a half apart.

The rapid emails confirmed my hunch that I had been under observation and that if I attempted to return to the US, I would likely be detained by ICE, like other student protesters. But the lack of transparency surrounding these procedures and the lack of legal recourse to challenge them provoked more questions than they answered.

Was there any correspondence between Cornell and US government authorities before my visa being terminated? What did the world’s strongest government want with my Google data? Why did the US authorities target 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?

Artificial Intelligence Surveillance and Risk-Assessment Tools

I may never receive full answers, but an investigation by the human rights organization sheds new light on the alarming ways the US government has deployed shadowy AI tech to extensively watch, surveil, and assess non-US citizen students and immigrants.

Amnesty says that Babel X, a program made by Virginia-based Babel Street, allegedly searches social media for “terrorism”-related content and tries to determine the likely intent behind posts. The software uses “persistent search” to continuously 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 secret services in the Libyan civil war—was flagged. Amnesty International notes 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 consolidate all information related to an immigrant investigation, 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 help explain why the US took action to bar my re-entry into the country at that time.

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”—detain 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 exercised my constitutional free speech rights to oppose the slaughter of innocent people. It is the US government that has acted illegally and unethically.

The Amnesty report highlights the ways that big tech and powerful states are colluding in the surveillance, management, and expulsion of minorities and migrants, as well as political dissidents and journalists. We’re seeing this play out in Gaza, where Israel’s “algorithmic warfare” has reduced 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 strip 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.

Personal Consequences and Reflection

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 complete my degree before my funding is terminated. I have been forced to navigate obstacles to access life-saving 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 immune to these horrors. 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 uncertain. 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 legacy of racial slavery and post-9/11 Islamophobia, I would get flagged.

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