Mona Kareem is a Kuwaiti born writer, translator, and literary scholar who has been a vocal advocate for the rights of the Bedoon, Kuwait’s stateless community. On 03 January 2023, upon arriving at Kuwait International Airport to visit her family, Mona Kareem was detained by security authorities and subsequently deported to Lebanon, despite holding U.S. citizenship and having previously entered Kuwait without incident in July 2022. Her deportation was reportedly linked to her activism on behalf of the Bedoon community. Mona Kareem left Kuwait in 2011 on a scholarship with temporary travel documents, later obtaining a PHD in comparative literature from the State University of New York and serving as a visiting professor of translation studies at Princeton University. Following her deportation, she expressed her distress on social media, highlighting the emotional toll of being separated from her family for over a decade.