Life in Purgatory - the Lived Experience of An Asylum Holder in Trump’s America
Words: Ana Sumbo
A few days ago, the Trump administration released a memo opening up the possibility of refugees getting arrested. USCIS announced in November that all refugees admitted under the Biden administration could have their cases reopened, potentially putting their legal status at risk. The work permits of asylum seekers will be restricted if Trump’s new proposal goes through. Immigrants are being taken into custody at their green card interviews as cities across the US become more overrun with underqualified, over-militarised bandits given a blank check to brutalise anyone who stands in the way of “immigration enforcement”.
At the end of 2024, once the election was settled, I stopped talking about my political views publicly after my mother’s warnings about them making me a target. Having immigrated from Angola, my mother grew up with the understanding that being too open with your criticism against the government would eventually get you disappeared and, if unlucky, found dead.
One of the first lessons we learned after arriving in the US in 2007 was that the Pledge of Allegiance I recited every morning before our classes guaranteed our freedoms, even as primary school children and non-nationals. As I grew into an outspoken teen, my political views never really became an issue. Growing up in a liberal Northern California suburb and eventually finding my way to further left politics in college, there was never any reason to fear public acknowledgement of what I believed in. When the ICE raids started, unlike every other occasion in my life, no one at my corporate job talked about it. Eventually, I worked up enough courage to share what I was feeling with coworkers who seemed to share similar political views, which got us reprimanded for making others uncomfortable by being so vocal.
I started to fear what my mother had always warned: that there would be someone who felt strongly enough against everything that I am – a Black, Queer, African immigrant woman – that they would report me. That despite my legal status as asylee, ICE agents could one day show up to my office, dragging me to an unknown facility. I stopped talking about my political views, praying it would shield me from that reality, but the ICE raids kept happening.
“What safety can silence bring us if we’ve seen what they’re willing to do to citizens who, in theory, have more protected rights than the rest of us? What safety can our silence guarantee if they are already kidnapping us at our immigration appointments while we attempt to follow the legal channels they established when selling us the dream of the great American immigrant melting pot?”
Watching the reaction in Minneapolis to ICE presence permanently shook me out of a state of inaction. The disruption of what the current presidential administration is attempting to make the status quo has reminded me of something that we should all remember: there is no real safety under this administration. We may be lulled into silence as the news cycle moves on, but our fears will keep being realised even if we avert our eyes.
As immigrants, we are told or become convinced, especially with this open targeting, that the only safety we can afford is one bought by our compliance. With our ability to keep our heads down, work, and keep hoping we don’t become the grandfather who was dragged out of his home in boxers or a name added to the list of those whose lives have been taken by ICE (rest in peace Linda Davis, Keith Porter, Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and all those who haven’t made it to the newscycle). But our silence is exactly what they want. This administration and all the people urging for the expansion of these ICE raids want me to put my head down and cower as the power structures call for my removal and even death. I refuse.
What safety can silence bring us if we’ve seen what they’re willing to do to citizens who, in theory, have more protected rights than the rest of us? What safety can our silence guarantee if they are already kidnapping us at our immigration appointments while we attempt to follow the legal channels they established when selling us the dream of the great American immigrant melting pot?
To stay quiet in this crucial time, when more dissenting voices are needed, is granting permission for these raids, these kidnappings, these killings to continue. I refuse to let this moment stall me into inaction. I refuse to lose my voice because it is exactly through it that I have any semblance of power. It is through my refusal to cower that I can speak clearly and say that I am not bound by the hatred of those who wish to see me expunged from existence. I am not a threat to anyone but those who uphold the belief that I should be forcefully removed because my family arrived in the 21st century and theirs in the 20th. And I am not less deserving of vocally defending the freedoms promised to me because my family arrived from Angola and theirs from Germany.
This state of purgatory, pinned between a false sense of safety that comes from remaining silent and the potential of opening yourself up to be targeted by speaking out, is within itself an illusion because, in reality, we have no choice but to speak. Here’s the truth: if they want to find me, find you, and develop a reason to deport me, despite my legal status, they would and have done it to others. I will not mute myself, mold myself into a good little conforming immigrant that lies down and waits for when it’s her turn to experience the violence directly, because it gives me an illusion of safety. So, I must speak because I still can. It still matters that I say, you say, we say, we are against this. One more voice crying out against lives being lost due to the recklessness of ICE, one more voice crying out against the detention of people without due process. One more point of view matters because, if they can find you in your silence, you might as well go down kicking and screaming.
