When your eight-months-pregnant spouse, who is an American citizen, protests, they threaten to arrest them too if they don’t stay silent and go inside.

When you demand to see a warrant, one of the men holds up a phone and shows you a picture of a document. You know that’s not how warrants work, but there’s no time to argue. The men are already closing in.

For the entire next day, your spouse and lawyer search frantically for you—but there is no record of your arrest, no information on where you’ve been taken. You have effectively been disappeared.

Only after relentless efforts do they finally locate you. You’re being held in a privately owned ICE detention center—one that has been flagged by human rights organizations for severe medical neglect, as well as both physical and sexual assault.

The facility is notorious, yet it remains operational, profiting from the suffering of those trapped inside.

You are the first person this administration has disappeared for political reasons. The choice is deliberate. Defending you would come at a political cost—one they believe your university, your community, or any opposition party is unwilling to pay.

So far, they’re right. No one is coming. No headlines, no statements, just silence.

And then, you’re gone.

This is how authoritarian regimes test the waters. The first disappearance is a warning. If no one fights back, the next one comes easier. And the one after that. Until fear replaces resistance.

Now, imagine this happening to you. Would anyone fight for you?

We believe that all people—regardless of nationality, immigration status, or political affiliation—deserve equal rights and due process under the law. The Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees that “No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

The Fourteenth Amendment reinforces this by stating that “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

These rights are not conditional. They are fundamental. And when they are violated for one person, they are threatened for all of us.

We uphold the Constitution. That is why we speak up.