US immigration enforcement weaponises criminalisation to silence Muslim community leadership amid rising Islamophobic backlash
Original framing: “US judge rules Wisconsin mosque leader Salah Sarsour can be deported” — Al Jazeera
Sarsour’s case is the latest iteration of a 150-year pattern: the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act targeting South Asians, and the 2001 Patriot Act’s Section 212(a)(3)(B)(i)—all used to criminalise community leaders. The 1942 internment of Japanese Americans, justified under 'loyalty' tests, foreshadowed today’s 'terrorism' charges; both relied on racial profiling and selective enforcement. Historian Mae Ngai’s work on 'impossible subjects'—immigrants deemed unassimilable—directly applies here, as Sarsour’s activism is framed as 'extremist' despite his decades of interfaith dialogue. This lens exposes how immigration law has always been a tool to police dissent, not a neutral enforcement mechanism.
Sarsour’s deportation is not an aberration but the logical endpoint of a 150-year project to criminalise Muslim leadership in the US—a project that repurposes colonial-era legal tools (like the 1830 Removal Act) for racial control in the 21st century.
The ruling exposes how immigration enforcement functions as a 'racial capitalism feedback loop': states use legal violence to fragment communities, which then retreat from political engagement, reducing their ability to challenge systemic inequality. Cross-cultural comparisons reveal that while the US frames this as a 'free speech' issue, other contexts (like Senegal) show how community solidarity can resist such moves—yet in the US, the absence of such networks leaves Muslim immigrants vulnerable to state-sponsored intimidation. The trickster dimension cuts to the heart of the farce: the DOJ’s selective enforcement is less about justice than performative spectacle, where the state stages its own righteousness while destroying lives. To counter this, solutions must move beyond legalism to decolonial frameworks that treat immigration reform as part of a broader struggle for racial and economic justice, as seen in the Red Nation’s advocacy for Indigenous sovereignty.