I was going to write about Frieren, which is a wonderfully chill and cozy anime all about the bittersweet mixture of love, regret, grief, and joy found in coming to terms with the mortality of those who mean so much to us.

Instead, this week I’m going to tell you about ICE disappearing a Tufts student off the street in a neighborhood near me. If you haven’t seen the video, suffice to say it’s both chilling and infuriating. A group of masked figures approach a lone woman, lay hands on her, rob her of her backpack and phone, and herd her away to an unmarked car.

Her name is Rumeysa Ozturk. She’s a graduate student at Tufts, here on a student visa. She has been disappeared.

These masked figures briefly claim to be police. A few of them pull out hidden badges. At  no point do any of them identify themselves—nearly all of them remain masked, they do not give their names or their badge numbers, they actively resist taking steps that might allow them to be held accountable for their actions. They show up, grab someone off the street, and then roll away.

This is a fucking disgrace.

I am not surprised by this. These scare tactics seem like the natural outgrowth of the abductions performed in Portland, Oregon, during the summer of 2020 (fine, if you want me to mince words, call them “sudden detentions with unmarked vehicles and personnel”). They’re designed to intimidate, to instill fear, and to prevent anyone from holding the (ostensible) law enforcement agents involved responsible for any action they might take. 

This is antithetical to our American democracy. I’ve been furious about so many other things going on in our country, but this one hits especially close to home (literally). Someone has been pulled from my community and dragged over 2000 miles to Louisiana in what looks like a clear attempt by the authorities involved to avoid the consequences of their actions: if they can just do the thing they know the judge won’t allow fast enough, before the judge can rule on it, then they can (probably) get away with it. If this is not criminal, it should be. 

There is no way to have an open and free society when people are pulled off the streets by masked figures and disappeared into unmarked cars. There is no way to have an open and free society when those we charge with protecting us cannot be held accountable by us. There is no way to have an open and free society when you can abduct someone by wearing a mask, waving a shiny prop badge, and moving fast enough that no one can prove you aren’t a cop.

It doesn’t matter that Rumeysa Ozturk is not an American citizen. If you think our laws and our ideals are only for American citizens when on American soil, you have already lost the ideal of America. If you think that the government should only avoid impinging on free speech when you agree with that speech, you’ve already lost the dream of America. If you think someone writing that they “affirm the equal dignity and humanity of all people” while talking about Palestinians, and that they urge their university president to “embrace efforts by students to evaluate ‘diverse and sometimes contradictory ideas and opinions’” should cause them to lose their visa and be deported, then you are the narrowest, most selfish and short-sighted fool and you are embracing your own destruction.

All of my other thoughts and words here are fury and disgust and bile. I am angry. You should be angry too.

Act. Let your congress people know your thoughts. And show up.