I’m not going to Rotary convention; without due process, I’ll be at risk crossing Canada border

Current Evanston Nouveau Rotary Club President Rashid Abdullah shakes hands with Past President David Peterson. Photo: Gerald Farinas.

It should have been one of the proudest moments of my life.

I was elected president of the Evanston Nouveau Rotary Club—a hometown chapter of the legendary global service organization that has been headquartered in Evanston, Illinois, for over a century.

This year’s Rotary International Convention is just across the border in Calgary, Alberta.

As president, attending would’ve been both an honor and a celebration. It was supposed to be my moment to represent my club, my city, and my values—especially as an LGBTQ president and a person of color in a U.S. club.

But I’m not going.

And it’s not because I don’t want to.

It’s because I can’t risk it—not under this presidential administration.

Not under the weight of policies that have turned brown skin into probable cause.

Not in a United States where citizenship no longer guarantees protection from the government that’s supposed to defend it.

I am a U.S. citizen.

I was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, raised in the same America I love and serve.

But under the second Trump administration, even that is not enough.

We’ve entered a nightmare realm—one where U.S. citizens of color have already been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), stripped of their rights, denied due process, and held without cause.

This isn’t fear-mongering.

It’s documented reality.

Take the case of Francisco Erwin Galicia, a U.S. citizen who was held by ICE for nearly a month in the first Trump administration, despite having valid documentation.

Or Peter Sean Brown, a man from Florida wrongly detained and nearly deported to Jamaica—a country he’d never been to—because of a bureaucratic error and the color of his skin.

These aren’t isolated stories.

They are warnings.

Without due process protections, I could be next.

Any one of us could.

So I made the heartbreaking decision to stay.

Because if I cross the border into Canada, I may not be able to return without harassment, detainment, or worse.

The idea that my citizenship might not be enough to shield me is not just terrifying—it’s enraging.

This is not how it’s supposed to be.

I am an American.

I’ve given back to my community.

I serve.

I lead.

I uplift others.

But the Trump administration has unleashed a machinery of cruelty that casts people like me—brown, immigrant-descended, “foreign-looking”—as threats.

They’ve created a horror movie scenario, and the script is already being acted out on our soil.

What kind of nation denies its own people their basic rights because of how they look?

Rotary International’s motto is Service Above Self. And part of that service, for me, is raising the alarm when our democratic institutions are being dismantled by racism, fear, and authoritarianism.

I wish I could be in Calgary, shaking hands with other Rotary leaders from around the world.

Instead, I’ll be here, fighting to make sure the country I was born in doesn’t forget that people like me are its own.

I’m not staying home out of fear.

I’m staying home to tell the truth.

And the truth is this: Until all Americans—all of us—can cross our own borders without fearing arrest, interrogation, or disappearance, none of us are truly free.