How Do You Know Trump’s Minions Won’t Come for You?

What assurance do any of us have that government agents will not knock at our door, claiming authority to detain us? How do we know that masked agents will not abduct us on the street, taking us somewhere far away?

In ordinary times and places, it would be madness to ask such questions. Rumeysa Ozturk may well have thought so before masked, plainclothes government agents took her off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts and she ended up in Louisiana. Ms. Ozturk had been studying in the United States on a student visa.

Badar Khan Suri may have thought so before masked agents took him from the street outside his home in Virginia to a federal detention center where he “was issued used underwear and a bright red uniform that is usually reserved for detained individuals who have been classified as ‘high security’ based on their criminal history.” Dr. Suri, like Ms. Ozturk, was in the U.S. legally. Dr. Suri is married to a U.S. citizen; he and his wife have three young children, one of whom “spent days crying uncontrollably following this father’s disappearance, and [then] stopped speaking.”

I don’t know how anyone in the United States sleeps at night.

We are firmly in Martin Niemoller territory, and it may be too late. It is, of course, already too late in an important sense for Ms. Ozturk, Dr. Suri, and many others—some of whom had legal status in the United States, some of whom did not. Some have been taken to federal detention centers within the U.S. Others are in a foreign prison notorious for torture. Trump administration officials brag they are never coming back. President Donald Trump himself speaks openly of sending U.S. citizens there, and publicly asks that country’s dictator to build more prisons to hold those Trump sends.

There is no mystery here, and we cannot say we are surprised as this reign of terror extends further. Trump has openly told us that “homegrowns are next. You [El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele] gotta build about five more places.”

I don’t know how anyone in the United States sleeps at night. Like U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), I am afraid (unlike Sen. Murkowski, I do not have access to much power). FBI agents arrested a judge in Wisconsin last week. This is bone-chilling stuff.

We are always a step or two behind Donald Trump. Those of us who find him abhorrent may have thought of him as a joke when he first ran for president in 2015-16. That is understandable. Trump is a creature of reality television and the New York tabloids, manifestly unfit to hold any position of public trust. Even after a decade in politics, he remains painfully uninformed and incurious. That does not, however, render him innocuous in any way.

He has all the levers of power available to him that he needs to carry out the unspeakable things he has already done and more. All he needs is people willing to carry out his orders and no one capable of stopping him. He has his minions lined up, eager to do his bidding—people like Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and Tom Homan, as well as rank and file government officials who work for them. The U.S. Congress has rendered itself a nullity, thanks in large part to Republican senators and representatives who have made clear they will do nothing to stop Trump, no matter how far he goes. There are judges, especially lower federal court judges, who are doing the right thing and insisting on constitutional limits, but those limits mean nothing if they are not backed up by the Supreme Court and Congress.

We may like to think that we will have warning before it is too late. I know someone who lives in the northern U.S. and says he is just a couple of hours from Canada if things get too dangerous. How would proximity to the border have helped Ms. Ozturk, Dr. Suri, or others when federal agents descended upon them?

We have descended into darkness and, at the moment—unless and until others take action to stop them—an aspiring dictator and his followers will decide exactly how far we go. The first step in responding is describing precisely what we are experiencing and what it means. If you grew up in the U.S., like me, wondering what it might be like to live in a country where no one is assured of their security, where no one is truly safe, or if you lived in another country where this has already happened, then this will seem familiar. Organized action is needed—I am speaking of peaceful protest, lawful actions, starting with impeachment and removal of Donald Trump and his minions from office. That may sound laughable, and it certainly cannot happen yet. But it must happen if we are to delivered from this waking nightmare.