On the evening of Tuesday, March 25, Somerville resident and Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk was surrounded and taken away by masked federal agents on the streets of West Somerville. The incident was captured by a nearby security camera and a member of the community who filmed the encounter. The sharing of these videos put the practices of ICE under the Trump regime in the public eye, to the horror of every American who cares about things like freedom of speech and the rule of law.

When a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson then confirmed to the media the following day that this detention had occurred because Rümeysa had signed on to a March 2024 op-ed in The Tufts Daily critical of Israeli policy, it added a new shocking layer to the incident. We had witnessed a resident here legally on a student visa rounded up because the people running this country disagreed with an opinion she had expressed on international affairs.

I joined a community outraged by this happening on the streets of our city, putting out the following statement:

I also was one of thousands of community members at a hastily-planned protest in Powder House Park less than 24 hours after this abduction. Those gathered at the event stood as one to call out a policy by the Trump regime that flies in the face of everything this country purports to stand for. The same people who have shouted about freedom of speech on social media now find themselves actively stifling it when they disagree with it.

At the City Council's March 27 regular meeting the following night, I made the following remarks:

I can’t believe we’re sitting here talking about masked federal agents snatching someone with a valid student visa off of our streets for the alleged crime of publishing an op-ed on foreign affairs that the Trump regime didn’t like.

This is something out of a movie set in a dystopian future. But it’s our reality here in America now apparently. What a time to be alive.

And if you’re someone who is sitting there feeling like this is fine because you disagree with Rümeysa on foreign policy, I would just ask you to imagine if it were the other way around. How would you feel if she had criticized Palestinian authorities and a federal government hostile to that viewpoint then decided to take her away?

This is absolutely un-American and a total affront to our country’s basic principles around free speech and the order of law. It sets an absolutely chilling precedent and we need everyone standing up to this and speaking out against it.

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.

I want to amplify our community's voice calling for Rümeysa to be released and for the Trump regime to start respecting the basic freedoms this country was founded upon.