DHS WAS BUILT TO COME AFTER PEOPLE LIKE ME. NOW, THEY ARE AFTER ALL OF US.
After 9/11, fear changed the U.S. That fear was exploited by our government, fostering a culture of complacency and turning Americans against one another in pursuit of “securing the homeland.” As a first-generation Iraqi American, I understand that on a deeply personal level.
On September 11, 2001, I was a senior in high school. What happened that day set off a chain of events that uprooted my sense of belonging in this country. Quickly, our society incubated an ugly and pervasive reward system for stoking fear of the “other.” As Muslims and people of color were targeted indiscriminately under the Patriot Act, I was forced to reckon with the reality that we had become the enemy. Even if you were born long after 9/11, it’s hard to miss the ways that Islamophobia and xenophobia have shaped national policymaking.
In the weeks after that fateful day, we ceded ground on the constitutional rights that protected all of us. That oft-exploited fear and mistrust of those of us who have been broadly cast as “foreigners” — even when we were born in America or are naturalized citizens — led us exactly to where we are today, with state-sanctioned violence being perpetrated en masse against immigrants and citizens alike. The violence being wielded against our neighbors and in our streets is born out of a lasting vestige of our nation’s post-9/11 pandemonium: the Department of Homeland Security …
