You Should Be Terrified That Federal Agents Just Kidnapped a Student and Disappeared Her

Rumeysa Ozturk, is a Ph.D. scholar on a student visa at Tufts University in Somerville, Massachusetts.

On Tuesday night, she was walking to meet up with friends to break her Ramadan fast.

Suddenly, a man in a dark hoodie and baseball cap crossed the street toward her, saying “Excuse me, ma’am.”

Ozturk hesitates and tries to walk past him, like most women would when walked up on by a strange man as night falls.

Another man in plain clothes appears across the street. One reaches for a radio. The other moves in.

One of the men goes for her phone.

The other grabs at her hands.

She screams.

Two masked women join in, grabbing at her backpack, and pulling the straps from her shoulders.

“I’m going somewhere, I need to call someone,” she pleads.

“We’re the police. Relax,” one of the men says callously.

They surround her.

Slowly, one by one, they pull their neck gaiters up to cover their faces. To hide their identities. All a mere few days after the Trump administration pressured Columbia University to ban masks at campus demonstrations.

“You don’t look like police. Why are you hiding your faces?”

The questions are ignored completely. The unidentified "police" put handcuffs on Ozturk, and drag her into an unmarked SUV.

No one informed her friends.

This happened on Tuesday night.

She's accused of breaking no law.

She was KIDNAPPED.

The Department of Homeland Security hasn’t given a reason for her detainment.

The New York Times reported she appeared to have been moved to a facility in central Louisiana, as with Mahmoud Khalil, whose own shadowy deportation case has been at the forefront of a constitutional crisis. Khalil, a Columbia graduate and lawful permanent U.S. resident, was also disappeared—was also accused without evidence—of supporting Hamas.

His green card was revoked, and he was taken away from his wife, a U.S. citizen, who was eight months pregnant with their child.

This should be the red line for everyone. It should not get worse than this. Elon Musk is wrong - empathy is not bad for us. It's the only thing keeping us human.