'I'm Reeling from the Whiplash'

This interview is part of Broadly's Voices Against the Ban series. You can read more of these voices here.

Why do you oppose Trump's immigration restrictions?

Maryam, 29, Brooklyn: Using the false cover of national security, Trump's sweeping executive order calls for a cleansing of "undesireables" and signals a radical shift in our immigration policy in the spirit of an exclusionary "America First " ideology. The immigration crackdown emboldens white ethno-nationalist paranoia and contempt towards vulnerable minority groups that we have the moral obligation to protect. It's unconscionable that amidst a global human manitarian crisis, refugees will bear the additional burden of proving "exceptional" value or assimilation potential in the administrations' increasingly purist vision of America.

How do the immigration restrictions impact you or your loved ones?

As a queer South Asian brought up in a Muslim household in this country, I'm desperately trying to ground my role to protect vulnerable brown minorities amidst the administration's cruel immigration crackdown.

After years of internalizing the latent intolerance from schoolmates, colleagues, and neighbors, I dutifully followed the scripted "generational" turn away from family… and Islam. Only long after my personal defenses hardened did intersectional movements usher in a broader definition of bigotry to include Islamophobia. And now that brown folks are explicitly under siege by the Trump administration, we're expected to serve as authorities on triggering experiences that we've been conditioned to repress. It's as if now I've come back full circle— fiercely protective of my loved ones and armed with deep distrust of well-intentioned allies. I'm reeling from the whiplash.

This interview has been edited and condensed.