Who Gets to Be Human? Borders, Bombs, and Belonging from ICE Raids to Wars on Gaza and Iran

Yousef K. Baker

This talk examines the parallel logics behind the ICE raids across the United States, the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and the Israeli-American war against Iran. Though differing in scale, geography, and relationship to the state, these events share a foundation: the spectacle of state violence used to legitimize coercive power and deflect from deeper structural crises. Across these contexts, legality is mobilized selectively to mark migrants, Muslims, Arabs, and Iranians as threats to order. Together, they reveal a narrative architecture that renders such violence righteous. These parallels are personal to me. I am connected to these places and people not just through my study of them, but also familially and politically. Drawing on my travel to Mexico during the June 2025 bombing campaign against Iran and the ramp-up of ICE raids, this talk thinks through sovereignty, liberalism, and power in order to uncover how colonial legacies operate today. In addition, it uses these different cases to think about the nature of global capitalism and the contemporary nation-state system. It asks: How do we think outside these structures? Can we construct and conjure a borderless global public—or, better yet, a global commons? What would it take to cultivate a utopian political imaginary and disposition in the current context?