I opened this document weeks ago. Typed two sentences. Deleted one.
Scrolled through Mahmoud Khalil’s story again. Watched Rümeysa Öztürk’s video disappear from my feed.
Then I shut my laptop.
I was raised in South Asia. And while my U.S. citizenship has always felt like a gift, lately, it feels more like a fragile permission slip. Conditional. Revocable.
That feeling only deepened as I watched stories like Khalil’s unfold.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took Khalil from his New York City apartment — without warning — on March 8.
Öztürk’s arrest became one more reason for me not to write a single targeted word. She was taken by masked immigration officials while walking down a street in Somerville, Massachusetts. No warning. No explanation. Just disappeared somewhere in Louisiana.
As students at Columbia and Tufts University, both Khalil and Öztürk believed in the promise of American education. And both of them were punished. The extent of their public engagement varied; Khalil was a visible leader, and Ozturk’s public presence, by most accounts, was limited to a single op-ed she co-authored with four other students. Still, both were detained. They were made examples of what happens when you speak, or simply, write.
I’ve been grappling with a reality that often catches in my throat — one that feels especially sharp in the wake of the Trump administration’s turbulence. This era has indeed left many Americans — immigrant or not — on edge, concerned about what tomorrow might bring. But the uncertainty doesn’t fall on all of us equally.
I’ve seen classmates speak freely in class, post hot takes online and walk into protests without a second thought — because for them, there is little looming threat of visa checks or ICE raids. Notable cases of students currently targeted seem to be disproportionately composed by people of color. International students have been relentlessly targeted. In early 2025, over 300 visas were revoked. And now, with Trump proposing a renewed travel ban affecting several Muslim-majority countries, the threat facing international students — especially those who are non-white or from marginalized backgrounds – has escalated.
And though I am a second-generation immigrant and non-white, I recognize that my U.S. citizenship also holds a kind of privilege not often named — one that others, like Khalil and Öztürk were never afforded.
I would like to think that I am unlikely to see the inside of a detention center or face deportation. That may be an imperfect truth — but for now, it is a plausible one.
As of March 23, ICE was detaining 47,892 people — well over its funded capacity — with 48.1% having no criminal record. The vast majority were non-citizens, as ICE detention primarily targets those without legal status. While rare, even U.S. citizens have been mistakenly detained. In fact, Khalil’s wife is a U.S. citizen and yet she was apparently threatened with arrest just for asking where her husband was.
Still, I carry a passport that, most days, still means something.
I may be afraid, but I’m still speaking from a place of relative safety. So are many of us. And maybe that awareness is where something begins.
I’m starting to realize that discourse has power and silence may have its own kind of cost. The plausibility in that truth settled in slowly — but it started with Professor Eric Mlyn’s community forum.
That forum wasn’t just a panel talk, it was a deep exhale that professors, students and Durham community members collectively took as they all found themselves in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s policies, crafted from the comfort of the Oval Office.
What became clear — through the voices of professors like Eric Mlyn, Nancy MacLean, Richard Mooney and Toddi Steelman — is that this moment is not theoretical. It’s happening right now. Budgets are being slashed. Syllabi are being rewritten. International collaborations are being reconsidered. Postdocs are looking for jobs abroad. And in some cases, jobs have already vanished — standing offers have been rescinded in an instant.
I asked the panel a question, “What do you think Duke as an institution should be doing right now, and how can it set an example for other universities?” I told them how it felt like Duke was hiding — how the quiet approval of ICE presence at a campus career fair had left many of us terrified. What I really meant was: Please, tell me that this place will protect us.
As they passed the microphone around and let out a collective laugh, Mlyn took the stand and gave me an answer that, at the time, left me feeling hollow.
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I remember him saying, “We’re a university. And so we do this first,” gesturing to the forum itself. He added, “Learning and informing this community about what’s happening … that’s where our incredible comparative advantage is.”
He spoke, too, of the pressures universities now face in the wake of the Israel-Gaza war — how institutional neutrality has become a part of the conversation. But he also said that this moment does not call for neutrality. That when the mission of the university is threatened, leaders are obligated to act. In this case, they are obligated to, at the very least, speak about it.
At the time, it still felt too small. Too quiet. Too slow for the urgency I carry every time I scroll through MSNBC, Fox News or the New York Times.
But as I watched more jobs disappear and more stories like Khalil unfold, I realized: quiet doesn’t equal safety. And waiting doesn’t mean protection.
The forum reminded me: this isn’t the first time speech has been threatened in the halls of academia.
In 1903, John Spencer Bassett, a history professor at Trinity College, praised Booker T. Washington in a published editorial, calling him one of the greatest men born in the South in a hundred years. The statement sparked widespread public backlash, with political leaders and newspapers demanding his dismissal. Bassett offered his resignation, but the Trinity College Board of Trustees voted 18–7 to retain him, marking a significant early defense of academic freedom in the American South. This is an example that stands out because the institution chose to act when so many others might have folded under pressure.
In the 1950s, McCarthyism swept through American institutions, and universities weren’t spared. Professors were interrogated, blacklisted and silenced. But resistance didn’t die — it moved underground, into classrooms, into letters, into whispered conversations that later became movements.
After 9/11, Muslim voices were monitored, questioned and erased. But some kept speaking. Some taught classes on surveillance and civil liberties. Some wrote books. Some sat in rooms just like this one and said: We’re still here. That, too, was resistance.
The list goes on, both in retrospect and in real-time.
You don’t have to protest if that’s not where you are right now. Sometimes, it’s enough to ask a question out loud. To share a reading that made something click. To speak up in a room where no one else does. To start the conversation, even if you don’t know where it’ll go.
I opened this document weeks ago. Today, I finish it — not because I’m no longer afraid, but because staying quiet feels worse. For me, and for us.
Noor Nazir is a Trinity sophomore. Her pieces typically run on alternate Tuesdays.