Disappearances, due process and democracy

By Lauren Necochea
Reader Contributor

Liberty and justice are under attack as the Trump regime’s assault on due process and unlawful deportations escalates. It’s happening in plain sight, with little to no resistance from the Republican-controlled Congress.

Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk, a Fulbright scholar studying child development at Tufts University, was walking down the street when six men in plain clothes and face masks handcuffed her, put her in an unmarked van, and transported her across three states before locking her up in Louisiana. No charges. No explanation. Their excuse? She signed a student newspaper letter sympathetic to the Palestinian people.

Lauren Necochea. File photo.

It sounds criminal because it is. Yet your tax dollars funded it as part of the Trump regime’s cruel, lawless agenda. They could have informed her that her visa had been terminated and allowed her to leave the country. Instead, they chose to terrorize her.

They did the same to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father of three. He was ripped from his family and sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador known for human rights abuses like torture, even though a court order barred the government from removing him. When caught, Trump’s enforcers shrugged and said, “It’s up to El Salvador now.”

Trump still defies a unanimous 9-0 order from the conservative U.S. Supreme Court demanding that Abrego Garcia be returned. Why? Because showing he can ignore even the highest court is part of the authoritarian power grab.

Abrego Garcia is just one of hundreds. One was targeted for a tattoo showing autism awareness. Others were food delivery drivers, students or makeup artists. None of them had trials or the opportunity to consult lawyers. All disappeared into a legal black hole, ripped from their families by a regime hellbent on breaking the law.

And it’s happening right here in Idaho. Two international students lost their visas, likely for participating in a peaceful campus protest.

“Due process” isn’t just a fancy term in our Constitution. It’s a fundamental promise that nobody can be imprisoned without reason, trial or defense.

Even if you don’t look like, think like or worship like the people targeted today, you should still be alarmed. When this regime rips away someone else’s rights, it erodes the ground beneath us all. Tomorrow, it could be speaking out against Trump’s tariffs or Medicaid cuts that make you a target. And his allies now talk openly about revoking the citizenship of those they consider “disloyal.”

Terrorizing people is the point. And tyranny thrives when we stay quiet. Our representatives swore an oath to the Constitution, not to Trump. They must act now. If this regime keeps defying court orders unchecked, they will break more laws until the Constitution becomes meaningless.

Our American freedoms are slipping away. We must fight to get them back.

Lauren Necochea is chair of the Idaho Democratic Party and a former District 19 legislator. Necochea spent a decade leading nonprofit programs dedicated to research and advocacy in tax policy, health care and children’s issues.