Browsing the internet in my dorm room one night in 2003 or 2004 (I can’t recall), I happened upon a chilling video. It featured a group of Iraq war protestors who were suddenly interrupted by a car abruptly pulling up to them. Two men in combat fatigues exited the vehicle, grabbed a protestor, threw the person in the back seat, and drove off.

After sitting in stunned silence for a couple of minutes, I concluded that this video had to be a bit of theater and that whoever was involved was making a statement about the war, the burgeoning surveillance state, free speech, or all three. First, the camera’s angle and timing were too convenient; it all just seemed off. Second, this is America, I thought. No matter how many conservatives demanded that anti-war protestors “shut up,” the government was not in the business of snatching people off the streets and taking them to undisclosed locations merely for speaking out against a war.

Fast-forward just over two decades later, and the second observation no longer holds. Over the last several weeks, we have seen chilling videos – these ones all too real – of federal goons accosting, handcuffing, and hauling people away to detention facilities. Their crime? Speaking out against Israel’s war – Israel’s genocide – in Gaza.

Mahmoud Khalil – a recent Columbia University graduate – and Rumeysa Ozturk – a Tufts University student – are the most notable examples because their arrests were caught on camera. Khalil dared to organize campus protests last year to support the Palestinians. Ozturk co-authored a column to this effect in her student newspaper. Neither has been accused of a crime, though the right has gleefully depicted them as Hamas supporters.

It’s important to note that Khalil and Ozturk were abducted without forewarning. They were never told that the government had suddenly pulled the rug out from underneath them. That’s because it’s not enough for the Trump administration to deport immigrants for thoughtcrime while not giving them advanced notice and thus, a chance to get their affairs in order before “self-deporting.” No, the regime wants to arrest these people. It wants to haul them away in front of their pregnant wife at their home or in front of shocked bystanders on the street in broad daylight. It wants to keep them incommunicado to undermine their ability to fight deportation. It wants immigrants to live in a state of fear, including those who broke no laws.

They are far from the only ones to have their legal statuses terminated. Nearly 300 students have suddenly had their visas and/or green cards revoked.

Twenty-something years later, the kind of street theater I watched in my dorm room that night has become real. It’s an authoritarian aesthetic designed to send a message to immigrants that you can have your immigration status abruptly revoked without warning, you can be black-bagged, and you can be deported at any time – even if you are in the country legally.

Speaking of theater, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the other monstrosity, in which the Trump administration has rounded up immigrants it claims are in gangs and deported them without due process to a gulag in El Salvador, where most of the deportees – mainly Venezuelan – are not even from. Last month, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem traveled to the prison to shoot an outrageous video, the backdrop of which was shirtless inmates being held in said facility where a Salvadoran civil rights organization has alleged that inmates are tortured.

In the video, Noem, who is sporting a $50,000 watch, brags about the men her department has sent there because, she says, – they are gangbangers. But that’s hard to know considering these prisoners were given no opportunity to challenge that claim in court. In fact, 60 Minutes reviewed the histories of the men Noem and Trump deported and could not find any criminal record for 75% of the deportees-turned-prisoners. Those deportees include a Maryland father of three and a makeup artist, neither of whom has a criminal record.

This is all very grim and it’s only going to get worse. More immigrants – undocumented and documented – will be deported. Will citizens be next?

We scoff at the notion at our own peril.