Border Patrol Becky Deports Palestinian Harvard Hope Scholar

By Aliza Worthington — August 28, 2019

In the today's episode of the Administration's "We Hate Brown People" Chronicles, we have the Customs and Border Protection officers exercising complete totalitarian control over a young Palestinian student's life. One who had every legal right to enter the country, but was instead turned away and sent back to Lebanon. Ismail Ajjawi earned that right with a scholarship to Harvard University, but Border Patrol Becky decided she didn't like the looks of Ajjawi, or the fact that a brown person was entering 'Murica, and if she was able to find a way to stop it, by god, she was gonna stop it.

Chris Hayes reported that Ajjawi was detained at Logan Airport by the CBP officer, who demanded access to his laptop, and after searching the computer for five — FIVE! — hours, came back to him screaming about some social media postings. Not HIS postings, mind you. Postings of his friends, and posts with which he hadn't even interacted in the slightest. But some of his friends had posted viewpoints that were critical of the U.S., and THAT was enough for this officer to deny him entry and send him back to Lebanon, even though he had earned a scholarship to Harvard University.

Harvard is working with his family and the "appropriate authorities" to get the student back, and remedy this egregious abuse of power on the part of white supremacists gone wild. But Chris Hayes asked exactly the right questions, and he ended with a quote from Faiza Patel (of the Brennan Center) which should send shivers down your spine.

CHRIS HAYES: But once again, we have to ask the question, how exactly does this make America great? What single solitary American is helped by this? Does this do anything for the soybean farmers or the steelworkers or anyone else? No, of course not. Ohio farmers get soybean tariffs, rich people get boatloads of tax cuts and a Palestinian teenager with a bright future gets his life turned upside down for no reason. That's what MAGA means. And it's not just this one case. Harvard's president wrote to the State Department in July complaining about the president's immigration policies. Quote, "students report difficulties getting initial visas from delays to denials. Scholars have experienced postponements and disruptions for what have previously been routine immigration processes, such as family visas, renewals of status or clearance for international travel." According to the Brennan Center's Faiza Patel, quote, we're likely to see more and more of these cases as the government is, quote, rapidly expanding its collection of social media information and using it to evaluate the security risks posed by foreign and American travelers. So. If you have friends visiting from abroad, or family or workers or colleagues, hey might want to check their social media feed because under Donald Trump, nearly anything can be a pretext to up end their life, even what their friends post on Facebook.

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