Ismail Ajjawi is supposed to be getting ready to start his first year of college at Harvard, but the 17-year-old Palestinian teen was instead deported after Customs and Border Protection officials at Boston Logan International Airport canceled his visa over social media posts from friends that were supposedly critical of the U.S., The Harvard Crimson reports. Yup: not even something he authored, but something someone else wrote.
Ismail said that, while he and other international students were initially detained after arriving, they were all eventually allowed to leave, except for him. An officer reportedly interrogated him “about his religion and religious practices in Lebanon,” then demanded that he unlock his phone and laptop. His items were searched for hours, and it was then that the officer returned—“she started screaming at me,” he said—to harass him about his friends’ activities.
“I responded that I have no business with such posts and that I didn't like, [s]hare or comment on them and told her that I shouldn't be held responsible for what others post,” he said. “I have no single post on my timeline discussing politics.” It actually shouldn’t even it matter if he did, but this is an openly fascist administration, so “the officer then canceled Ajjawi’s visa, informed him he would be deported, and allowed him a phone call to his parents.”
While Ismail is still in Lebanon, he “wrote that he is in touch with a lawyer and hopes to resolve his visa issues so he can arrive this week before classes start next Tuesday,” and “university officials are currently working to resolve the matter before classes begin on Sept. 3, University spokesperson Jonathan L. Swain wrote in an email.” But this is just one student. Who knows how many others have faced similar authoritarian abuses for opinions and viewpoints, including those that aren’t even theirs?
One tip for the federal officials and officers whose feelings are apparently getting hurt over criticism from others: Maybe stop doing the inhumane and indecent shit—like ending deportation protection for immigrant children currently undergoing lifesaving treatment for cancer and other diseases—that gets you criticized in the first place. Now you can add this latest incident to that list, too.