The “War on Terror” has been the operating framework of US imperial domination for over a decade. Its sweep across the globe has meant mass imprisonment, arbitrary detention, torture, extraordinary rendition, and widespread surveillance. Through such repression, it has ushered in a state of global terror, centered on the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.

On October 22, the legal arm of this campaign came for Palestinian community organizer and feminist Rasmea Yousef Odeh. The sixty-six-year-old was arrested at dawn at her Chicago-area home and charged with immigration fraud.

The indictment is a lengthy document, purporting to demonstrate that Odeh did not disclose on her immigration application that she was a former Palestinian political prisoner, held in Israeli jails from 1969 until 1979.