The anti-immigration policies of the Trump administration have introduced an indelible, low-level thrum of horror into American life. Rooted in a white nationalist mindset, this presidency has done its damnedest to restrict, harass, and punish those who have done what countless generations of Americans have done before: come to this land seeking a better life. Equating undocumented immigration with criminality, and denying any standing to long-term undocumented residents, including those brought here at too young an age to have had a choice in the matter, Donald Trump has propagated a vision of a United States suffering literal invasion. This has been the basis for numerous measures that defy both the American spirit and basic human rights; carried out in the name of the American people, they bring shame on us all.
At the same time, due in part to the administration’s conscious strategy, these measures have been kept somewhat abstract for most Americans. No one with a conscience has been untroubled by the separation of immigrant children from their parents, or the placement of these children in overcrowded camps and cages; yet these abuses have largely been conducted out of the public eye, with the media’s ability to gain access to such facilities severely restricted. Likewise, the escalated harassment of undocumented immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol have been invisible to most of us. We know this is happening all around us, yet the lack of visibility lessens the sense of moral urgency, even as it seeds American life with a sinister undertow.
This, as at least, is my current theory, as I consider the deeply unsettling and visceral impact on me from news last week that Portland-based stand-up comic Mohanad Elshieky was harassed by CPB employees while returning from a gig in Washington state. Elshieky, a Libyan citizen granted political asylum in the U.S. in October 2018, was riding a Greyhound back to the city after a gig in Washington state when CPB officials boarded his bus in Spokane. The agents asked Elshieky and a few other passengers for their IDs; when he was asked if was a U.S. citizen, Elshieky replied that he’s a Libyan. From there, the interaction grew into a sadistic and unnerving display of anti-immigrant fervor being brought to bear on a documented asylee. Although he provided them with a driver’s license and a work permit, the agents insisted he was illegal (a spokesperson for the CBP subsequently asserted that all people granted asylum must carry a particular document at all times; Elshieky says his lawyer told him the documents he carried would be sufficient). Disturbingly, he overheard a phone conversation in which a CBP official verified his legal status, yet an agent at the scene still insisted that he was illegal. Elshieky was informed that the documents he carried could be faked. He told the agents that what they were doing was not legal, and that he would contact his lawyer. After 20 minutes, the CPB officials finally sent him on his way.
Elshieky subsequently wrote a tweet about his experience that got widespread attention in the Twittersphere, and his ordeal was covered by major media outlets. Clearly, what happened to him happens to many, many other people; but in this case, Elshieky is a media-savvy and eloquent narrator of his own experience. Just as much as undocumented immigrants can be said to live in the shadows of our society, the same seems to be true of the actions of immigration agents: their actions must be conducted away from scrutiny and public exposure, lest their odiousness be observed and rebuked. Part of what rankles about his story is that Elshieky has been granted political asylum, not an easy bar to reach, particularly under this malicious administration. Asylum is not meant to be simply the opening gambit in a sadistic game in which the asylee can then be tripped up in a dozen different ways and deported back to his or her place of origin. The agents’ presumption of Elshieky’s guilt would turn political asylum into a sick joke.
But the most twisted part of the story may be the fact that Elshieky is exactly the sort of immigrant we should welcome to our country and encourage to become a citizen. He enriches our culture through his sharp and incisive humor, and proves himself more in the American grain than those CPB agents, by standing up to their bullying and abuse of authority. As someone who has had the pleasure of seeing Elshieky perform, it is painful for me to witness the Trump administration hit so close to home, its pursuit of a racially purified nation leading to this cruel and disheartening experience for a comic who has enriched the lives of Oregonians and others lucky enough to have heard him.
There is something obviously authoritarian and beyond redemption about a government that has unleashed its vast powers in such an indiscriminate fashion that a comic granted political asylum must be treated as an enemy of the state until proven otherwise.
There is a twist to the story, though, in that we can make an argument that Trump’s eager agents do actually have grounds to fear immigrants like Elshieky and others like him — though not for the reasons the agents would claim; not because these immigrants are criminals, or steal American jobs, or suck away social services, but because they have a more visceral attachment to actual American ideals than these uniformed officers of a white nationalist regime; because they know authoritarian bullshit when they see it and have come too far to accept it here. In an ironic turn of events, the actions of ICE and CBP, and of the Trump administration more broadly, themselves lend weight to arguments that Americanness is not restricted to being born here, but can be rooted in belief in notions of individual autonomy, self-determination, and ambition that are not restricted to any race or nation. I am once again wowed by the smallness of the Trumpian nationalist vision: demented by racism and dedicated to the preservation of maldistributed wealth, they can’t even seen how big America can be, how we become greater by embracing those who want to be here for the best of reasons.