States can fight back to protect their residents by defining enforced disappearances, criminalizing it, ensuring accountability for perpetrators, and creating pathways to recourse for victims and survivors.

Even when the disappearance lasts a short period of time, a lot of harm is done. There is psychological harm to the disappeared and their panicked families. But law enforcement can also accomplish other illegal acts when nobody knows where you are and cannot reach out to help.

But we also need legal protections. Did you know that enforced disappearance is not defined in US law? We need state legislatures to pass laws criminalizing the practice of state agents abducting people and not providing information about their fate or whereabouts.

When we see this happen in our communities, please, report it immediately to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. It’s is very quick and easy to do. Info here: www.ohchr.org/en/special-p...

My research thus far has focused on enforced disappearances of non-citizens in the US, but the practice is quickly spreading to abuses committed against US citizens, especially Latine and other people of color. What we permit to be done at the border always spreads eventually to the interior.