Politics
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Hiding in Plain Sight
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August 6, 2025
Stephen Miller’s dystopian immigrant-hunting system is selecting up tempo, and asylum seekers like Mohamed Naser are more and more susceptible.
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Fifty-year-old Libyan asylum seeker Mohamed Naser was detained in a privately run immigrant detention facility in Lumpkin, Georgia, an eight-hour drive from his dwelling.
(Andrea McCormack)
Three weeks in the past, Helen Parsonage, a North Carolina immigration lawyer, obtained a name from a Greensboro neighborhood member informing her that unidentified authorities brokers have been making an attempt to seize an immigrant father of 5 from out of his dwelling.
The person the brokers wished to arrest was a 50-year-old Libyan asylum seeker named Mohamed Naser. Fifteen years in the past, Naser entered the nation legally and utilized for asylum. He has been going by means of the courtroom course of ever since and has a piece allow. On the day in query, he was working for a contractor who mounted kitchen home equipment for the Wendy’s fast-food chain.
Naser’s solely earlier involvement with the legislation got here almost a decade in the past, when he was pulled over on a site visitors cease and issued three tickets, for expired registration and insurance coverage, and for not carrying a seatbelt. The tickets have been in the end dismissed, Parsonage says. However in an period during which ICE and CBP brokers are working below Stephen Miller’s orders (which the DOJ denies are literally orders) to satisfy arrest quotas of upwards of three,000 immigrants per day nationwide, it’s presumably these dismissed tickets that have been sufficient to carry the daddy to their consideration.
Present Situation
The brokers, in plainclothes and with no identification, first approached Naser’s home at 9 am on July 15. He was out at work, so the lads reportedly instructed his spouse that they’d return with reinforcements. When Naser got here again for his lunch break, brokers carrying camo outfits adorned with the block letters “Police” lunged towards him. Naser, who had learn a number of reviews of criminals impersonating ICE groups within the months since Trump’s inauguration, was terrified and made a touch for the protection of his home. He made it inside, however when he and his spouse tried to slam the door, an agent secured a foothold, protecting his boot within the opening to cease them from with the ability to absolutely shut it. For greater than an hour, as neighbors poured into the road to movie the standoff, the brokers tried to power their method into the home, although they apparently had no warrant that might enable them to enter the property legally in pursuit of Naser. Lastly, they gave up and left.
Two days later, nevertheless, the snatch-and-grab crew had extra luck, discovering Naser on certainly one of his work routes, as he headed towards a Wendy’s. They arrested and detained him.
An ICE agent contacted Parsonage and instructed her that his superiors had ordered him to ask Naser a collection of questions on his data of, and involvement with, Iranian authorities covert operations in america and abroad, and about plans the Iranian management might need to close the Straits of Hormuz within the aftermath of the current US and Israeli bombings of Iran.
Repeatedly, Parsonage, who was current for the interrogation, defined that her consumer was Libyan, not Iranian, that he had by no means been to Iran, and that he didn’t know something concerning the nation. Every time, the agent reportedly responded to her that he understood this however that he and his colleagues have been below orders to ask detainees these questions. On the finish of the interview, the lawyer instructed the presiding ICE officer that since they clearly had the improper man, her consumer ought to now be launched.
The officer’s reply shocked Parsonage. In a very Kafkaesque flip of phrase, she says that he knowledgeable her that when ICE or the CBP had an immigrant of their possession, they’d not let her or him go, even when that they had been arrested on a misunderstanding, as was apparently the case right here. As a substitute, as soon as the interrogation was over, they’d switch Naser to a detention facility.
The subsequent factor his household knew, Naser was detained in a privately run immigrant detention facility in Lumpkin, Georgia, an eight-hour drive from his dwelling. “They’ve obtained a zero-release coverage,” Parsonage instructed me.
The Kafkaesque journey by means of America’s more and more dystopian immigrant-hunting system picked up tempo. At a bond listening to on July 29, about 100 neighborhood members attended the WebX streaming session to point out their assist for Naser. These women and men had already contributed to a GoFundMe to boost bond cash to get their neighbor out of the detention web site and again dwelling along with his household. The federal government argued towards Naser’s launch on bond, claiming that he was a flight threat as a result of he had fled into his own residence within the face of an assault towards him by unidentified brokers, and that he was a hazard to society as a result of he had—in what, given the circumstances, appears traditional understatement—referred to as the brokers making an attempt to arrest him “very dangerous males.”
The decide didn’t purchase the federal government’s flimsy arguments and ordered Naser launched on $20,000 bond—cash that had already been raised by his neighbors and mates. And so, Naser’s household readied to choose him up and produce him dwelling. However as a substitute of letting him go, ICE filed for an computerized keep on his launch, a submitting that was shrouded in secrecy, Parsonage defined. The company offered no details about why it wished to bypass the courtroom ruling.
Final Friday, backed by a rising refrain of shock from Democratic state political representatives, Parsonage and her colleagues filed a habeas petition, and the subsequent morning, as instantly as that they had filed the automated keep paperwork, the federal government withdrew that declare. As a substitute, it filed for a “discretionary” keep on Naser’s launch, basically asking the decide to aspect with them in denying Naser his freedom. Over the weekend, Parsonage’s group of attorneys filed one other software for his or her consumer to be launched on bond. Naser instructed the attorneys that in this time authorities brokers repeatedly tried to stress him into agreeing to “self-deport.”
Lastly, on Tuesday evening, after days of protests, rallies, and letter-writing campaigns by lots of of neighbors, native politicians, and clergy, Naser was launched. But his celebrations could also be short-lived. Naser nonetheless faces elimination proceedings that might lead to his deportation to war-torn Libya, the nation he fled 15 years in the past.
Kafka would have understood this second all too effectively: this America the place masked males can seize residents off the road, virtually no matter their authorized standing; can interrogate them about issues they haven’t any data of; can detain them not as a result of their solutions rendered them suspicious however as a result of their arrest must in some way be justified after the very fact; and might then deny their launch for no purpose aside from that the federal government is now working on an arrest-and-deport quota system. He would acknowledge the vindictive impulses of a authorities defeated within the courts that also pursues deportation for the sake of deportation towards a hard-working household man.
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Across the nation, snatch squads are roaming the streets with impunity, with new ICE recruits reportedly paid a $50,000 signing-on bonus. The federal government has additionally reportedly flirted with—after which apparently withdrawn—a “pilot program” providing money incentives to brokers for every migrants they swiftly deport by means of circumventing due course of protections. A current CNN evaluation steered that Democratic-run cities and states are bearing the brunt of those arrests because the Trump administration seeks to punish so-called sanctuary jurisdictions. And Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino boasted on Fox Information that his brokers “will go wherever, anytime we wish in Los Angeles.” The administration has made clear that if states gained’t let ICE into their jails, they are going to conduct elevated numbers of raids out locally.
And in locations like North Carolina, with a Republican legislature and full legislation enforcement cooperation with ICE, law-abiding immigrants like Naser are more and more susceptible.
There isn’t a rhyme or purpose to who will get caught within the sweeping anti-immigrant dragnet that the administration has solid. It doesn’t matter in case you are not the particular person ICE thought you have been once they swept you up. What issues is that your arrest contributes to the required day by day quota dreamt up by the sadistic zealots who now rule the roost in Washington.
Sasha Abramsky
Sasha Abramsky is The Nation’s Western correspondent. He’s the writer of a number of books, together with The American Method of Poverty, The Home of Twenty Thousand Books, Little Surprise: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Feminine Sports activities Celebrity, and most lately Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle In opposition to the Far-Proper Takeover of Small-City America. Observe him on Bluesky at @sashaabramsky.bsky.social.
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