Last March, a fog took hold in my head and never left. It settled there somewhere between the moment a DHS agent asked me, “Are you Mahmoud Khalil?” and the moment I realized that I would miss the birth of my first child. The fog is not confusion. It is vigilance, a form of hyperawareness. The endless, involuntary calculation of danger, exposure, contingency. Which street, which restaurant. Which search term, which like, which comment. And beneath it, the questions I cannot stop asking: Why did this happen to me? What comes next? Will I be detained again? Or deported? 

A year ago, the Trump administration unlawfully arrested me at my home and detained me for 104 days. I walk free now, only after an army of lawyers sued the administration for targeting me because of my pro-Palestine speech. But the government is relentless in targeting me, still using every road and alleyway it can find to punish me with the legal system and bureaucracy. So when I walk, I watch my back. When someone falls in step behind me, I stop, tie my shoe, check my phone, and wait until they pass.

Before I leave home, I put on sunglasses and a baseball cap, a different color each day. I can’t afford cabs every day, so I ride in the last subway car — less crowded, fewer eyes. I keep my head down, reading a book so I don’t have to look up. My face may not be widely recognizable, but it takes only one person to ruin my day. Or my life.

At home, I catch myself mid-sentence, mid-bite, mid-laugh, gone somewhere else. My wife, Noor, will say something and I’ll nod. I am on the sofa but not in the room: always thinking, planning, reading, writing, scrolling, while time ticks away. Am I being a good father? A good husband? How can I be when I cannot take walks alone with my son? How can I explain to Noor that I take her out less now because when we are together, people recognize us more?

This past December, Noor and I were having dinner at a restaurant. I had not Googled it beforehand to get a sense of the political temperature of the space. We were almost finished with our meal when a group of customers who had been watching us stood to leave. On their way out, they stopped across from our table and began singing “Am Yisrael Chai” over our heads for two minutes — an Israeli nationalist anthem often chanted by racist mobs while harassing Palestinians. It went on long enough to make clear that this was not a........

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