DHS Is Getting Ready to Identify Everyone Who Leaves the Country, Expanding Immigration Dragnet
Legal experts say new land border checkpoints and surveillance measures may herald an expanded crackdown on student protestors.
The U.S. and Iran are presently engaged in high-stakes nuclear talks in Italy, aimed at averting a confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program that could trigger another major war in the Middle East. This week, reports emerged that Israel had already begun military preparations for attacking Iran if talks broke down. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans and other hardliners in the U.S. have insisted on poison-pill stipulations in the talks in an effort to tank them and guarantee that a conflict occurs. On this week’s Drop Site News podcast we were lucky to have Dr. Vali Nasr, former dean of the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, to discuss the history of U.S.-Iran tensions and the prospects of ongoing negotiations.
Meanwhile, closer to home, a state-led crackdown targeting student protestors against the genocide in Gaza may be expanding to include controls on who can exit the country. In addition to its crackdown on major universities like Harvard, which may now be effectively banned from admitting foreign students, the administration has vowed that the deportations and visa revocations we have seen so far are only the beginning. Reports are now emerging of new checkpoints at land-to-land border crossings equipped with photographic surveillance. In addition to a possible impact on undocumented people, lawyers believe that these measures may soon be used to target students who have attempted to flee the U.S. government dragnet.
—Murtaza Hussain
The U.S. government-led crackdown on student protestors against the genocide in the Gaza Strip may be extending to checkpoints with exit controls at land-to-land border crossings. In recent weeks, reports have emerged of plans for new checkpoints near land exits from the U.S., as well as the implementation of programs that use photography and facial recognition technology to identify people attempting to leave the country.
The U.S.-Canada land border has been the point of exit for a large number of students who have had their immigration status revoked after their participation in pro-Palestinian protests on campus, according to lawyers who have worked on their cases. These lawyers told Drop Site that they believe the new measures may be aimed at targeting students who attempt to leave via that route in the future. U.S. officials have stated that hundreds of students have already had their legal status in the country revoked for their involvement in demonstrations, writing articles, or posting on social media in protest against the war.
Lawyers who have advised students say that so far none have faced detention at the Canadian border when exiting the U.S. But the new measures have raised serious alarms at a time when the government is promising to escalate its crackdown, while threatening the use of material support for terrorism provisions to level criminal charges against student protestors.
“There is a U.S. law that actually requires DHS to match entries and exits, so tracking the departure of the person from the US who is not a citizen is consistent with that statutory obligation. But using the border as a checkpoint for the detention of people based on their political opinions is an entirely different level of concern,” said Greg Nojeim, Senior Counsel and Director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology. “I don’t think we have seen that yet, but I do think that it is a possibility given the aggressive nature of immigration enforcement under this administration, as well as its broad view of its own ability to remove people from the US based on nebulous foreign policy concerns.”
Legal experts who also spoke to Drop Site said that voluntarily exiting the country by land to Canada has been a common means of safely self-deporting for affected students, who may be subject to other legal measures or targeted for detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Since the Department of Homeland Security has access to flight logs, leaving the country through a land border typically entails less surveillance and allows people to exit without foreknowledge of the U.S. government.
The checkpoints currently reported by travelers to Canada have popped up near the border between Washington state and British Columbia, but lawyers have expressed concern that the measures could soon expand to other crossings. The government has also ramped up enforcement measures as part of a crackdown on undocumented immigrants across the country.
“In their heads, many students are thinking that they can at least drive out of the country if needed—especially those based at schools in New York, Boston, Michigan, or other northeastern states. If the government is going to be checking people as they are leaving, using facial recognition, ID technology to track that is something that would alarm many people,” a lawyer told Drop Site.
The lawyer. who has represented students who left the country through Canada, elaborated that “DHS has the ability to access flight logs. They don't have the ability—barring some kind of partnership we don't know about with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—to know when people are leaving. If the government wants to know who is leaving the country, that can only mean that they are considering other alternatives for suppressing their speech.”
An Expanding Dragnet
In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the government was implementing an AI-assisted “catch and revoke” program to comb through the social media accounts of foreign students deemed to be supportive of Hamas and revoke their immigration status. The government is also believed to have relied on submissions of student names by private sector activist groups like Canary Mission and Beitar, that have collected data on students to target for both immigration and criminal punishment. U.S. officials and private-sector organizations involved in the crackdown have promised to use material support of terrorism charges as a means to further suppress speech over Gaza.
In addition to the promised use of artificial intelligence, including facial recognition technology allowing for rapid verification of identities, exit controls would be another major step in helping to track down and charge students whom the government wants to punish over its involvement in protests.
The U.S. government has not acknowledged whether its new border measures are aimed at stopping pro-Palestinian students from leaving the country. The use of checkpoints to halt or inspect outbound traffic from the country is rare, but it is occasionally employed when searching for wanted individuals or contraband. The reported plans to use photographic verification and artificial intelligence on people attempting to leave the country would be another major escalation in the ability of the government to find and potentially detain people.
In a heated exchange this week with Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen over the detention of Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, who had been taken into ICE custody after co-writing an op-ed critical of Israel, Rubio vowed that the visa revocations and deportations of student critics of the war would continue. “We are going to do more. There are more coming. We are going to continue to revoke the visas of people who are here as guests, and who are disrupting our higher education facilities,” Rubio declared. “I want to do more. I hope we can find more of these people.”
The U.S. government has faced some setbacks in its crackdown, including the court-ordered release of Ozturk, as well as Palestinian student Mohsen Mahdawi, both of whom had been detained by ICE over their political activities on campus. In a ruling ordering the release of Mahdawi while his deportation hearings proceed, U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford rebuked the Trump administration while comparing its policies to the abuses of the McCarthy era. “Legal residents—not charged with crimes or misconduct—are being arrested and threatened with deportation for stating their views on the political issues of the day,” Crawford wrote in his judgement. “The wheel of history has come around again, but as before, these times of excess will pass.”
In addition to these legal challenges, the crackdown shows signs that the measures are not shoring up support for Israel., Students continue to express public anger at the detention of their classmates and in defense of their First Amendment protected activity.
At a graduation ceremony at Columbia University on Tuesday, students booed the university’s acting president as she introduced the ceremony, chanting “Free Mahmoud” in protest over the detention of Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, who remains in ICE detention in Louisiana for his involvement in the protests. “I know that many of you feel some amount of frustration with me, and I know you feel it with the administration,” Shipman said to the crowd over the chorus of boos. “And I know that we have a strong, strong tradition of free speech at this university. And I am always open to feedback, which I am getting right now.”
The Columbia protests were far from the only expression of discontent. A student at New York University named Logan Rozo drew standing applause for stating that "the genocide currently occurring is supported politically and militarily by the United States, is paid for by our tax dollars, and has been livestreamed to our phones for the past 18 months,” during their graduation speech, after which the school reportedly announced that it had suspended his diploma. Another George Washington University student named Cecilia Culver was also reportedly censured by the school this week after calling for divestment from Israel over they genocide in Gaza.
In the face of this persistent backlash, the U.S. government has continued to vow that it will escalate its measures at suppressing speech—up to and potentially including criminal charges against student protestors. The possibility that exit controls are being tightened at the border is only the latest sign that the crackdown may just be in its early phases.
“I think that the U.S. government is moving in a very troubling direction when you put together all the different programs that have been launched to remove non-citizens from the U.S. It is monitoring everything that people say online, which of course means the monitoring of those with whom they interact on social media, including U.S. citizens, and it is asserting the authority to remove people who disagree with U.S. policy,” said Nojeim. “This is sowing fear in immigrant communities, and particularly among international students, so much so that we may be losing a lot of foreign talent to other countries. This is a troubling direction for the U.S.”
When Trump hosts bitcoin bribers to a gala who are virulently antisemitic, it puts the lie to the illegal deportation of those peacefully protesting [aka it's free speech], what is now arguably a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel. The hypocrisy and lawlessness of Trump and his Gestapo are all about curtailing free speech and establishing an authoritarian state.
Freedom on speech is being signficantly curtailed now as it was even under Biden. It has never been treated this way since McCarty.
AS studernts we protested the Vietnam War until it was stopped.
The Israel/Palestine war is even wose. The International Court declared it a war crime and we all know it is genocide. Since when do we do genocide with our tax dollars!