There are so many outrages that President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are perpetuating that it’s hard to know what to focus on. But Rumeysa Ozturk’s arrest really affects me deeply.

She is a Turkish graduate student, a Fulbright scholar, at Tufts University. She was literally snatched off the street in Somerville by masked plainclothes ICE agents. Watch the shocking video online. She hasn’t even been charged.

What was her so-called crime? She co-wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper a year ago urging the university to support their own Student Senate resolutions to recognize genocide in Gaza, and urging Tufts to divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.

There is absolutely no evidence that she supports Hamas. In the op-ed, she affirmed “the equal dignity and humanity of all people.” It is not anti-Jewish or antisemitic to speak out against Israeli government policies and actions.

What happened to our First Amendment, our right to free speech? This is our treasured freedom to express our opinions and ideas without government interference or censorship.

I am a child of Holocaust survivors. My parents were snatched off the street by an authoritarian regime. We are now rapidly becoming that kind of regime. Join the national day of protest, Hands Off, Saturday, April 5. Look it up for an event near you.

Ava Gips

Deerfield