COME BACK TO YOUR HOMELAND!

The US government is rounding up dissidents on the streets. In a scene reminiscent of the US-backed dictatorships in Latin America throughout the 20th century, plainclothes ICE thugs recently detained Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk, ambush style, on the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts.

Accused of supporting Hamas by the Trump administration, Ozturk’s only apparent crime was co-authoring essays critical of the US-funded genocide against Palestinians. Ozturk’s detention follows a similar high-profile incident where US agents picked up Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil.

Besides persecuting anti-genocide activists from abroad, the Trump administration is attacking all non-citizens, regardless of their legal status. For migrants of Mexican origins, why stay?

“My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night,” wrote Khalil in a letter dictated to family from jail.

The persecution of Ozturk and Khalil is chilling enough on its own, but the Trump administration’s attempts to justify it legally send an incredibly distressing signal.

But perhaps the most worrying aspect of the government’s persecution of Ozturk is that she doesn’t even fit the profile of the hardline Palestine student activist — the Trump administration is taking a shotgun approach to silencing dissent.

Besides persecuting anti-genocide activists from abroad, the Trump administration is attacking all non-citizens, regardless of their legal status. It’s expanding expedited removals, reinstating the “Remain in Mexico” program and ending humanitarian parole programs. In their zeal for mass deportations, the Trump administration is rounding up innocent people over their tattoos, accusing them of ties to gangs and shipping them out to notorious El Salvador prisons, running roughshod over due process.

In the face of all this, my message to migrants, especially Mexicans, is: Why stay?

Come back to your homeland.

Here in Mexico, we will receive you with open arms.

Over on the other side of the border, you have likely accumulated an incredible array of skills that we could use here. We need your intelligence, expertise, competence, perspicacity and labor power to build Mexico’s economy and decrease dependence on the US. In other words, we need you.

I don’t claim it will be a walk in the park. In my own journey back to Mexico after living abroad my entire life, I encountered many obstacles. But where I am now, able to contribute to the development of my country, fills me with pride. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Starve the US of our talents. Let the reverse brain drain begin.