The Border Is Everywhere Now

Paperless, Powerless, Voiceless: The Quiet Collapse of Due Process

In a matter of days, the Trump administration has delivered a series of blows to the already battered concept of due process in the United States, each action aimed squarely at migrants, refugees, and now, international students.

First came the Supreme Court’s chilling 5–4 ruling, delivered with no signatures, no full briefing, and no accountability. In three terse pages, the Court allowed the Trump administration to deport 250 Venezuelan nationals under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, without any of the legal protections guaranteed by the Constitution. The Court’s majority claimed that future deportees must be allowed to file individual habeas corpus petitions, while making no mention at all of those already disappeared into the prison system of El Salvador. No recourse. No return. No justice. For them, the Constitution simply ceased to exist.

Then, within 48 hours, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was terminating parole protections for nearly one million migrants who entered the U.S. legally through the CBP One app, a tool created under the Biden administration to allow orderly, humane asylum appointments at border crossings. Trump had already suspended the app on his first day in office. Now, hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom have spent months building lives, contributing to local economies, and raising children in the U.S. are being told to self-deport using a newly rebranded version of the app, ominously titled CBP Home. The threat is clear: leave or face detention, removal, and a lifetime ban.

And now, student visas are being quietly revoked across the country, often with no warning. International students, some of the most talented minds from around the world, are being detained and deported, in some cases for nothing more than participating in pro-Palestinian activism or committing minor infractions. A Turkish graduate student at Tufts University was reportedly detained after co-authoring an article critical of the school’s handling of student protests. Others were flagged by an AI-powered program scanning social media for any posts that might suggest “support for Hamas.” Legal experts and civil rights groups warn this is an unprecedented erosion of academic freedom, free speech, and basic human rights.

There’s reason to believe this campaign is about more than domestic control, it may be laying the groundwork for an international land grab. Trump recently described Gaza as “an incredible piece of important real estate” and floated the idea that the U.S. should “own and control it” through a peacekeeping force. The visa crackdown, particularly against students voicing support for Palestinian rights, now appears to be part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent at home while enabling the projection of power abroad. In that context, silencing young, globally connected voices isn’t just political, it’s preparatory.

This is authoritarianism in slow motion.

A country that disappears people without a hearing, tells asylum-seekers to self-deport via an app, and uses artificial intelligence to monitor students’ speech is not securing its borders, it is burying its soul.

We are watching the deliberate dismantling of humanitarian values, one ruling, one policy, one erased life at a time. And if these injustices remain unchecked, the precedent they set will reach far beyond the border.