I finally brought myself to watch the video of ICE’s abduction of Tufts PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk. It’s even more disturbing than I expected after reading the story because, watching, it looks exactly like a random kidnapping off the streets—plainclothes men and women, with masks, approaching a woman and coercing her into an SUV. It was simply done quietly, with badges and handcuffs, instead of loudly, with guns and chloroform-soaked handkerchiefs.

Opportunistic criminals with two-bit tin badges can now confidently disappear someone off the street, and we’ll simply assume they’re with ICE. 

That ambushing people on the street or at home is tolerated, even applauded by a fraction of Americans—and defended by our government officials, no less—is profoundly alarming. That it’s done in such a casual manner is equally disturbing.

At what point does ICE become indistinguishable from the Gestapo?