A woman who escaped danger in Afghanistan reflects on what life is like under ICE.

By Lima Halima-Khalil

I drop my three-year-old daughter off at library classes every morning. The library is two minutes from our home in Ashburn, Virginia. Each time, the same thought crosses my mind: Do I have my ID on me? Will my driver’s license be enough if I am stopped?

It is highly unlikely that I will encounter ICE on a two-minute drive to the library. Ashburn isn’t exactly an ICE hub. And yet my fear is constant, embodied, and real. And by the way, I am an American citizen.

I grew up believing America was a mighty country, one so powerful that the rest of the world stood intimidated by its strength. When I first came to the United States in 2006 for an education program from Afghanistan, a country still at war, the vastness of this place revealed itself not only in its size, but in the generosity of the people I met. After that, America became a place I always returned to. I have been part of the American education system since 2010, returning several times for various degrees. I’ve witnessed multiple presidential elections, and participated in the most recent one as an American citizen myself.

But after all these years, one lesson about my new home stands out above the rest: This country is led, shaped, and sustained by fear. Outside this country, nations tremble at the military and economic power of the United States, but inside it, people live as though danger is always lurking.
Fear raises money and sustains campaigns. Fear keeps people glued to screens and locked into cycles of outrage. Fear sells guns, justifies surveillance, expands borders and prisons. Much of this fear is not grounded in lived reality but manufactured and amplified by politicians who rely on it to govern. Fear spills into kitchens, sidewalks, classrooms, and moments meant to be ordinary and human.

One of the most brutal tools in this ecosystem right now is ICE. Raids, detentions, and aggressive enforcement practices operate not simply as immigration policy, but as a mechanism of fear, reminding entire communities that their sense of belonging is fragile and conditional. ICE does not need to be everywhere to be effective. The possibility of its presence is enough.

This pervasive fear turns ordinary routines into sites of anxiety. I remember hesitating before offering to share our Thanksgiving meal with our nosy white neighbor, suddenly gripped by thoughts I never imagined I would carry. What if he calls the police on us and claims I was  trying to poison him? What if kindness itself is misread as a threat, or hospitality as danger?

Afghans discovered how quickly they could become the “other,” regardless of their sacrifices, their loyalty, and their love for this country.

I recognize these impulses, because fear is not new to me. I lost my school, my home, my loved ones, and eventually my country because I wanted freedom from fear. Millions of Afghans had believed in democracy when America promised it to us for 20 years, until the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. We voted, we hoped, we worked alongside our American partners for a shared dream, but that freedom never came. In 2020, when my 24-year-old sister was killed by the Taliban in an IED attack in her car, that truth became undeniable. I understood then that Afghanistan was no longer safe, and that realization is what led me to come to the United States permanently.

When the Taliban returned to power in 2021, many Afghans, including members of my own family, were evacuated and brought into this country by our American allies. They arrived in this country under extremely harsh circumstances, believing they would find dignity, safety, and a chance to contribute. Instead, they discovered how quickly they could become the “other,” regardless of their sacrifices, their loyalty, and their love for this country.

I was reminded of this again in November of last year, after a man from Afghanistan, who had been trained and worked for the CIA in his country, shot two National Guard members in Washington, D.C. Overnight, an entire community began to be seen, once again, as terrorists. Instead of a careful and humane conversation about mental health, trauma, or resettlement failures, the Trump administration halted all immigration from Afghanistan and pledged to re-examine green card holders from 19 countries. Afghans, many of whom fled the very forces America claims to oppose, were once again forced to prove their innocence.

This is how fear functions. It identifies a moment of tragedy, strips it of context, assigns collective guilt, and converts pain into political currency.

For a long time, I believed that fear in this country belonged primarily to people of color, that violence was uneven, predictable, and racialized. Then the killings of Renée Good and later Alex Pretti shattered that belief. They forced a painful realization that in today’s America, no one is safe, not five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, not women citizens like Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales and Nasra Ahmed, not elderly citizens like Scott Thao or longtime residents like Harjit Kaur, not white Americans, either.

Lately, I have felt fear settle into my own body in a way I did not expect. I realized I had been going to sleep holding fear, living with the same quiet dread that so many people here carry without ever naming it. One night, I caught myself thinking, almost with disbelief: Congratulations, Lima, you are an American now.

But it does not have to be this way. Americans deserve more than this constant weight of dread, clinging to them like a second skin. We deserve a country where fear is not the engine that keeps the system running, where safety is not promised to some by threatening others, and where power is not sustained by keeping people afraid.

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Lima Halima-Khalil, Ph.D., is the program director of the “I Stand With You” campaign at ArtLords, a collective she co-founded, where she mobilizes global awareness against gender apartheid in Afghanistan. Her research explores youth resilience amid violence and displacement. Her writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, TRT World, and academic publications.