ON MARCH 25, federal agents detained and took into custody Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University graduate student, as she left her apartment. It happened in broad daylight on a Somerville street, just across the city line from Medford, where I live and serve as a city councilor.  

Rumeysa, a Turkish national, has not been charged with a crime; there was no warrant for her arrest. Nevertheless, she was surveilled for several days before being surrounded and taken away by federal agents. She has since been transported to custody in Louisiana, her student visa terminated.  

Why? Because last year Rumeysa co-authored an op-ed for the student-run Tufts Daily calling upon the university to acknowledge Israel’s genocide in Palestine, and urging the university to divest its holdings from Israeli companies. Apparently, writing an essay for a student newspaper is now tantamount to literal terrorism.  

I am Jewish, so according to President Trump and his “border czar,” Tom Homan, I should be grateful for this inhumane breach of constitutionally guaranteed rights. Indeed, the current administration would have us all believe that Rumeysa’s seizure leaves me, and American Jews like me, all a little bit safer and freer.  

It is difficult to fully capture how offensive and disrespectful it is to see my religious identity co-opted and used as a tool by dictators and their allies to erode our constitutional rights. It is repellent that the rhetoric of Jewish safety continues to be weaponized to justify genocide abroad and political kidnappings at home.  

But none of this matters to them – Jews simply provide a premise through which to take formerly inalienable rights and render them conditional. They are insisting that this is necessary — that we should feel endangered, alone, and welcome an overbearing protector. The truth is much darker.  

Jews are not alone at all when we are, all of us, united in being seen by this administration as nothing more than either pawns or targets, in a ploy to divorce us all of our rights.  

Right now, Trump’s administration is detaining, vilifying, and deporting the most vulnerable in our society: from pro-Palestine student activists like Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil, to outspoken labor organizers like Jeanette Vizguerra and Alfredo Juarez. In their propaganda, our leaders spread fantastical lies about these people’s doings and the supposed danger that they pose.  

Their goals are so obvious: to intimidate activists into hiding, to intimidate labor organizers into silence, to make everyone afraid to speak up, out of fear of being next. Inventing scapegoats, poisoning neighbor against neighbor.  

It is a sick and sinister strategy to distract us from the real danger to Americans: the Trump administration’s systemic attack on our system of checks and balances and their catastrophic economic agenda. 

They know that the more that Americans are preoccupied by false enemies and straw men, the more vulnerable we will be to their campaign to dismantle our democracy, strip us of our rights and our privacy, and funnel wealth from everyday Americans to the billionaire class.  

If our leaders were actually invested in Americans’ security and prosperity, I could point to a long list of problems – from the severe shortage of affordable housing to the punishing cost of health care – where action from the federal government could improve people’s lives dramatically.   

But matters of actual public interest are apparently of no interest. While regular people’s lives get more and more expensive, the Trump administration expedites billions to oppressive governments and handily funds the ICE apparatus. Not to mention, threatening to revoke federal funding to sanctuary cities or otherwise ornery cities as a coercion tactic. 

I am scared for Rumeysa and all of Trump’s and Homan’s political prisoners; I am furious at how our identities are being trafficked for Trump’s and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political goals; and I am furious that our fates are nothing more than a game to these people.  

But even so, somehow, I am still hopeful and filled with resolve. Because when I look around, in Medford, Somerville, all throughout Greater Boston, what I see is regular people working together to provide the safety, protection, defense, and resources that the federal government is actively taking away. Mass protests; ICE watch groups; a wellspring of mutual aid; and more. And it all just comes from normal, garden-variety human compassion and neighborliness. 

The Trump administration will continue to tell us that we are under attack. They will continue to try and convince us that the price for our own safety and futures is selling out our neighbors and letting our rights be taken away. They will continue to try to cow city and state governments into submission and collaboration.  

They are counting on us just standing by. They are counting on us falling for the lies.  

But it won’t work. We know that our neighbor here on a work visa is not our enemy. We know that the student exercising their right to free speech is not our enemy. We know that the activist protesting our tax dollars funding genocide while Americans at home go hungry and homeless is not our enemy. We know we have one common enemy, and it’s the administration that’s snatching our neighbors and stealing our rights.  

Massachusetts, it’s time to meet the moment. Fascism is back, but we have some advantages: a long history of standing up to bullies and the defiant “Masshole” spirit, to name a couple. And to my fellow elected officials – right now, once again, the people of our communities are showing us what bravery looks like. Let’s follow their lead. 

Kit Collins is vice president of the Medford City Council.