Citizenship, then captivity fear: Jayapal’s warning

Jayapal’s citizenship – Rep. Pramila Jayapal recounts how she fought for U.S. citizenship after a premature birth derailed her immigration timeline—then argues the modern immigration system is again using fear and force against families, ending paths she says once existed for immigra

By the time Pramila Jayapal stood in the cavernous hall of the historic Immigration and Naturalization Service building in Seattle. she had already lived the long arc of American bureaucracy for 17 years. She had spent those years moving through several degrees and an alphabet soup of visas. only reaching her citizenship after a final sequence that included marriage to a U.S. citizen—followed by a green card around the same time she received a prestigious two-year fellowship to live in India.

Her plan. she says. depended on timing: get pregnant toward the end of the fellowship. return to the United States just in time to give birth. and retain her permanent-resident status. It unraveled after her daughter was born prematurely in India at 26 and a half weeks. The baby weighed one pound, 14 ounces. Doctors gave her a 40 percent chance of survival. and Jayapal refused to leave her side—even if it meant she might lose her green card.

With “incredible advocacy” from her institute, she says, a deal was cut with the U.S. embassy to restore her green card. There was a catch: the years she had spent qualifying for citizenship would be erased from the record. So the path she had fought through all over again became the only path she could accept. “I didn’t care,” she wrote. “It allowed me to not be separated from my daughter and to return to the US once she was stable enough to fly.”.

After that, she waited the requisite three years, passed her citizenship tests, and received her approval. Even 26 years later. she has not forgotten what the ceremony felt like—standing with hundreds of people from all over the world. many of whom had also waited decades. Some were refugees escaping war and persecution. Others came to join immediate family or take new jobs. In the moment. she waved a small American flag. renounced her citizenship to her birth country. and pledged allegiance to the new land of immigrants welcoming her.

Tears, she said, came with a double weight: pride in becoming an American, and sorrow in renouncing her Indian citizenship. She also says she understood in that instant that she would never live on the same continent as her parents again—and that citizenship was “the most coveted of opportunities.”

But the pride did not end the story. Jayapal writes that the conferring of citizenship brought “a new sense of responsibility” to participate in the democracy and make sure those opportunities remain available to others. Her life. she says. became public service—from activism and organizing pushing for immigration reform. higher minimum wages. and a better life for all Americans; to serving as a Washington state senator. the only woman of color in the Senate at the time; and then as the first and only South Asian American woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In a full-circle moment, she writes, she is now the first naturalized citizen to serve as the ranking member of the Immigration Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.

For Jayapal, the personal story is inseparable from the politics she now argues America is living through. As the country marks its 250th anniversary. she says the American dream she experienced is “out of reach for most people.” She describes a “nativist. fascist administration” that. in her account. has used federal power to “terrorize immigrants and citizens alike. ” sending “armed. masked agents” into cities to “kidnap and incarcerate thousands of people in for-profit jails. ” “murder US citizens. ” attack constitutional free-speech rights. and “rip apart families” that have been part of communities for decades.

She says almost every legal path to citizenship that once existed for immigrants like her has been ended. And she places the blame in Congress as well. writing that the immigration system has failed to be modernized for more than 30 years—pointing to 2013 as the last time the Senate passed a true bipartisan immigration-reform bill. while House Republicans refused to bring it to a vote because doing so would have “taken away their ability to use immigration as an election issue.”.

The crux of her argument is that what once operated as a civil system is being treated as something closer to criminal punishment. She writes that immigration has “always been a civil system. ” but that Donald Trump tried to “criminalize every form of it. ” including an effort to strip birthright citizenship.

Even as she makes those claims, she says public attitudes are shifting. “Americans remain deeply convinced that immigration is a good thing. ” she writes. and that the horrors associated with Trump have led to record levels of public support for reining in and dismantling Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She also says majorities support providing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and eliminating for-profit detention centers.

Jayapal also describes her own work as she tries to turn outrage into policy. She has held a series of congressional hearings titled “Kidnapped and Disappeared” to expose ICE abuses. elevate frontline organizers. and build support for immigration reform. She writes that people testified about “these horrors” and about their refusal to give in to what she calls the cruelty and chaos. And she says organizing across the country against ICE and Customs and Border Protection has changed the meaning of confronting government violence with nonviolent action—adding that such pressure has helped lead to the ouster of Kristi Noem.

What comes next. in her view. is legislation “that fixes our immigration system once and for all.” She frames it as a matter of keeping America’s promise. Quoting Benjamin Franklin’s 1787 warning that the country would be a “republic. if you can keep it. ” she writes that America has always been a promise rather than a guarantee—and that protecting it depends on each person.

In the closing notes of her piece. Jayapal returns to the people who. she writes. have carried her work: “the African immigrants who walked across deserts in bare feet to escape war. ” “the undocumented grandmothers who risked everything for a better life for the next generations. ” and “the many Dreamers who dared to demand more of their country.” Their resilience. she says. is what strengthens her. and it is the same responsibility she felt on the day she stood at her naturalization ceremony. waving the American flag. pledging to defend that promise.

The final section of the article pivots from her personal testimony into the broader electoral moment. With midterm elections “now firmly upon us. ” it asks whether Democratic candidates will do more than occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to what it calls “the red-hot crisis” of Donald Trump. The piece says Trump spends “over $1 billion a day” on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and that Trump “admits that he doesn’t ‘think about Americans’ financial situation. ’” adding that millions face surging costs of essentials.

It argues Democrats must take the moment and advance “bold. small-‘d’ populist ideas.” It also points to The Nation’s coverage priorities. saying the publication is elevating progressive ideas. movements. and elected officials achieving real change across the country. It says its journalists are exposing how crypto and AI-funded super PACs are spending “hundreds of millions of dollars” to knock out candidates the publication opposes. reporting on the Supreme Court’s “evisceration of the Voting Rights Act. ” and sounding the alarm on attempts by red states to quickly redraw electoral maps to disenfranchise Southern Black voters.

The piece ends with a fundraising appeal. It says The Nation is raising $20. 000 in June to power independent journalism in the run-up to November’s elections. and that readers’ support brings the publication closer to a “bold vision.” It is signed by Katrina vanden Heuvel as editor and publisher of The Nation.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal is identified as the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the U.S. representative for Washington’s Seventh Congressional District.

Pramila Jayapal U.S. citizenship immigration reform ICE Customs and Border Protection for-profit detention House Judiciary Committee Immigration Subcommittee Dreamers Kristi Noem Supreme Court Voting Rights Act midterm elections