Trump, who competes with the Green Card owners of students like Mahmoud Khalil, violates us all

When I grew up on the south side of Chicago, I lived as a little Mexican girl with a green card without fear. At that time Mexico had a one -party rule. My family was so happy to be in the USA, where it seemed to us that democracy was welcomed from the streets to the electoral bodies.

Although the only person in my family who could vote, my father was (he was quickly for citizenship as a brilliant scientist at the University of Chicago), my mother Berta, like me, was fascinated by democracy and all her expressions. In fact, mom took us out of school to go to a rally to Martin Luther King Jr.

But the warning signs were already there.

Papa never forgot the disgust that he felt on his first trip by bus to Chicago when he had to choose which bathroom he should use at the pit stop in Texas. He was light brown. Did he go into the “colored” bathroom or that with the label “only white”?

I was a year old when I arrived in the USA with my mother and siblings in the USA, where an immigration agent noticed a rash on my body and told her that I had to be put under quarantine. He suspected that it could be measles. My mother knew exactly what the rash was. I used another blanket because mine had already been packed and shipped to Chicago and I had an allergic reaction to the material. Nevertheless, the agent insisted that it left me back at the airport and continues to Chicago without me. Mom, violent and adamant, pressed back hard and shouted that we had green cards and the legal permission to be here. She was so loud and powerful that the agent had returned. This moment made it clear that even a baby with legal documents was already considered a threat.

As a 6-year-old, I remember that I went home with my Jewish BFF from school and made plans about which basement would hide her family and my hiding if George Wallace was elected president. At the time we had no Instagram or Tikkok, but we knew that Wallace didn't like Mexicans or Jews.

On the annual road trips of our family to Mexico, I was always afraid when the border officers approached our car when we returned to the USA. Why did you search our car, but not the white people from Texas who also drove home?

Still, me felt secure. I loved my new country, although I knew I wasn't quite part of it.

In truth, the immigrants were never really sure. And our country has to accept that now. In the first few months of Donald Trump's second administration, we saw an aggressive examination of people who speak against the administration, including a rush for student activists. Mahmoud Khalil, a student activist at Columbia University and a Green Card owner, was confiscated by ICE agent in his house in March. The Trump government claimed that its pro-Palestinian activism on campus was anti-Semitism and argued that its continued presence in the United States had “potentially serious undesirable foreign policy consequences” and reported an obscure determination in the Immigration Act. He is currently fighting against the case.

The Columbia student Yunseo Chung, who has had a legal residence since childhood and has lived in the United States, sued the government to block its deportation after the government has issued an administrative order against its arrest and deportation, undercut its activism for Palestinian rights. Mohsen Mahdawi, a student and owner of Green Card in Columbia, was arrested by ICE when he arrived for his interview to preserve his American citizenship, supposedly because of his activism in the Pro-Palestinian movement on campus. Since then, a federal judge in Vermont has been released under conditions. And there are others.

It was only in college that I started to understand the risks of a student activist with a green card. I chose the Barnard College, the Columbia's sister school (then when Columbia was still all men) because I wanted to study theater And Policy. I was never arrested or arrested. In a way, I knew that if they are political and an immigrant without citizenship, they are not quite sure – although I never feared that I would have arrested in my home and gave deportation instructions.

Nevertheless, as a student activist, I visited many protests in the 1980s.

I took part in rallies against Columbia and Barnard's investments in apartheid in South Africa. A few years later, the then student Barack Obama and dozens of other students took over the Hamilton Hall, which promoted the call for sale. The door remained closed for three weeks. But the NYPD was never called on campus.

In 1983 the Barnard College Jeanne Kirkpatrick awarded his medal of honor, a war-hawk who played a key role in promoting millions of US taxpayers to support an anti-democratic, oligarchy-blessed, Salvadoran government and its struggle against the left guerrillas, which were supported by Jesuit Catholic priests with speakers with speakers. At the time, El Salvador was in the headlines every day. This was the same government that was shot at the sermon to the archbishop Oscar Romero when four American nuns were raped, murdered and their bodies left on the roadside. There, innocent people were killed with bombs that were paid by US taxpayers.

We protested on the campus and demanded that Barnard pick up the award. The media aroused our efforts and suddenly we were portrayed as student demonstrators as those who tried to limit the freedom of speech. The protests made national news, and I even appeared in “Nightline” for an interview. It never occurred to me to stay completely quiet because I had a green card. In the end, Barnard decided to lift the medal.

Everything that I have achieved in this country in many of the news editorial offices in which I have worked, from NPR to CNN, founding futuro media, a flourishing, now 15-year-old independent media company, all the awards and recognition sessions probably never happens if I had lived in Trump's world. According to the current operating logic, I could have founded and threatened with deportation at any time as a student on a Green Card.

In the late 1980s I had completely moved away from activism and became a journalist. My work led me to the places that the US government considered suspected – places such as Cuba and Nicaragua. To become a citizen felt like the clever when I wanted to continue my work as a journalist, which led to tearing up the feathers of the powerful.

In 1989 I lay the oath of becoming an American citizen. Until then, I understood that my green card made me vulnerable to the moods of immigration agents, especially at the border. I had already lived through when the agent tried to take myself away from my mother at the airport despite our green cards. This moment stayed with me. It reminded me that my legal status only offered a limited protection. And so I became a citizen because I knew I had to protect myself.

As a journalist, I have won the most prestigious awards in the industry – a Pulitzer, Peabody, Four Emmy's, The Murrow and Cronkite Awards – and now I am a respected journalist in Residence at my Alma Mater. But I was decades ago Not as different from today's students who are removed from campus and protest points disappear in the bright daylight just to express their views and to work for justice.

The students that I now teach in Barnard are afraid. I also taught students who are immigrants or undocumented. They live in fear of being hunted by ice if they just want to learn.

I recently thought that I heard from friends in the Black Church as a child in Chicago: “But there for God's grace.” My students are not the only fear, although they tell me that they don't give up or give in.

I'm also afraid. For Mahmoud Khalil, Yunseo Chung, Mohsen Mahdawi and so many others. Because once, not too long ago I was her. A student who wanted to change the world for the better who happened to be born in the United States.