When a government begins to imprison writers for their words, when it brazenly disregards the law in favor of an authoritarian political agenda, when it cloaks oppression in the language of national security, alarm bells must ring. Loudly.
My colleagues Senator Markey, Congressman McGovern, and I recently visited my constituent Rümeysa Öztürk — who is being unlawfully detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana.
We will NOT stand by as our neighbors are disappeared and detained. Please read our Op-Ed in the New York Times below uplifting Rümeysa’s story, calling on the Department of Homeland Security for her immediate release, and signaling our warning for all Americans. And please forward this message along to your friends and family.
Ayanna
By Edward J. Markey, Jim McGovern and Ayanna Pressley
A young woman walked casually down a public street only to find herself suddenly surrounded by masked law enforcement officers in plain clothes. Without explanation — and in the absence of criminal charges and any due process — she was forced into a waiting vehicle and vanished into the labyrinth of the state security system.
Sound familiar? You’d be forgiven for thinking we’re recounting what happened to the Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk in Somerville, Mass., last month. But no: That was the September 2020 abduction of the political activist Maria Kolesnikova in the capital of Belarus, the former Soviet republic that is home to one of the most repressive governments in the world.
Disappearances like Ms. Kolesnikova’s are disturbingly common under authoritarian regimes where dissent is quashed and the rule of law is more fiction than fact. That a similar scene would unfold in Somerville in March 2025 as part of the Trump administration’s revived immigration crackdown should send a chill down the spine of every American.
Click here to read the full Op-Ed in the New York Times >>
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