When Palestinian-American comedian Mo Amer debuted his Netflix series, Mo, in August 2022, its semi-fictionalised depiction of an asylum seeker from the Middle East living in perpetual dread of US immigration officials (the infamous “ICE”) in Texas was undeniably newsworthy – but did not feel entirely ripped from the headlines.
Three years on, all has changed – both in terms of the global profile of Palestine and of the treatment of migrants in Donald Trump’s America. Mo’s second and final season was filmed before Trump recaptured the White House and immediately declared war on the undocumented. Yet the series intersects chillingly with the Maga movement’s nightmarish new normal and the unleashing of a wave of ICE raids that have left migrants in a state of ever-deepening despair.
