Checkpoint, U.S.A.: Crossing the Border Into Trump’s America

‘After an endless stream of Tim Hortons restaurants and the coniferous glacier-ironed Canadian lands that seem to exist only to separate them, our car finally eased into line at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint at Detroit, idling alongside other freedom-yearning automobiles queued before the heavily guarded passage, a brilliant orange smog-sky lit by the ambient neon of downtown Motor City.
My friend Elijah and his buddy Carl drove from Louisville, Kentucky, to Toronto International airport to ferry my girlfriend, our cat and me back to the United States after we spent nearly a year in the United Kingdom. I’d read with some trepidation the Supreme Court’s partial upholding of President Trump’s travel ban less than 24 hours prior, but I took bizarre comfort in the fact that, despite the dystopian nightmare set to unfold for Muslims without friends or family in the U.S., we, as white American citizens, would have little trouble coming back home.’
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