THE ERA OF VANISHING HAS BEGUN

They are not arresting people. They are vanishing them.

Rumeysa Ozturk wasn’t read her rights. She wasn’t told why she was being detained. She was walking to break her fast in Somerville, Massachusetts when masked men in an unmarked SUV pulled up, took her phone, slapped on handcuffs, and dragged her into a vehicle like she was some kind of national security threat.

She’s a doctoral student. A Fulbright scholar. A trauma researcher. But in Donald Trump’s America, she fit the profile: Muslim, foreign-born, sympathetic to Palestinians.

Now she’s locked in a for-profit detention center in Louisiana, hundreds of miles from her lawyer, after a federal judge specifically said she wasn’t to be moved.

They moved her anyway. Because rules no longer apply to those with badges — real or fake.

A MOVEMENT BUILT ON CHAINS AND COWARDS

Alireza Doroudi is gone too.

He’s a doctoral student at the University of Alabama, born in Iran, studying mechanical engineering. No criminal record. No warning. Just scooped off the grid.

ICE refuses to say where he’s being held. No public charge has been announced. His only crime appears to be existing in the wrong body, from the wrong country, in the wrong era.

Mahmoud Khalil was next — a Columbia student, arrested for leading pro-Palestinian protests. Trump labeled him a “radical foreign Hamas sympathizer” on Truth Social. Days later, he was gone.

Jeanette Vizguerra was taken from her Target shift in Colorado, chained at the waist.

Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez, a farmworker organizer, was dragged from his car at dawn in Washington. His window was smashed by federal agents. His voice silenced.

These aren’t isolated incidents. These are deliberate acts of political intimidation.

They are testing the system — testing us — to see how many people they can disappear before we stop calling it democracy.

WHEN ICE IS A BADGE — AND A COSTUME

While the real ICE disappears scholars, organizers, and mothers, the fakes are circling like vultures.

In South Carolina, Sean-Michael Johnson posed as an ICE officer. He pulled over a van of Latino men, screamed slurs, jiggled their keys, and knocked a phone out of someone’s hand. “You’re going back to Mexico!” he shouted. He wasn’t an agent — but he played one with conviction.

In North Carolina, Carl Thomas Bennett used a fake badge to sexually assault a woman at a motel. He told her if she didn’t comply, he’d have her deported. He held up a counterfeit ID and pretended to be the state.

And in Philadelphia, a Temple University student in an “ICE” shirt tried to storm a dorm building with two accomplices. They were dressed for the part, intoxicated by the illusion of authority, emboldened by the climate.

This is what happens when the state makes cruelty a brand. When a badge becomes a fetish object. When the line between enforcement and cosplay disappears altogether.

THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS THE CRIME

Let’s stop pretending this is a coincidence.

This is a unified strategy. The Trump administration is using ICE like a personal strike force — targeting international students, protest leaders, organizers, and mothers with surgical precision.

They invoke secret designations. They bypass due process. They manufacture pretexts out of thin air and rely on the fog of bureaucracy to hide the blood on the floor.

The point isn’t law enforcement. The point is deterrence. Spectacle. Control.

This is what political cleansing looks like when it’s dressed up in the language of national security.

They’re showing the world that resistance has a cost — and the cost is your freedom, your voice, your visibility, your future.

SILENCE IS CONSENT. AND WE ARE LOUD.

There is no middle ground here. No fence to sit on. No neutral position when people are being kidnapped in the name of the state.

ICE doesn’t need your applause. It needs your silence. Every time a student vanishes and the media shrugs, every time a woman is cuffed and the public looks away, the machine gets stronger.

They are daring us to ignore it. They are counting on our numbness. They are betting that we’ll keep scrolling.

We cannot let them win.

This is not border policy. This is not visa enforcement. This is not safety.This is authoritarianism with a PowerPoint presentation.This is fascism disguised as formality.

This is the state stripping people from the land and pretending it’s order.

Let the record show:

They took people.

And we did not look away.

We saw it.

We named it.

We raised hell.

And we did not stop.

(I didn’t write this. Credit goes to Fear and Loathing: Closer to the Edge)

More Posts from Gothamizhome and Others

gothamizhome

1 month ago

Fudge is too chocolatey. Otherwise I like all the ones I've tried

I'm disqualifying the peanut butter chocolate due to my peanut allergy. Out of the rest the cherry cordial is easily the worst.

12K notes View Post

gothamizhome

1 month ago

Reposting this from a friend bc I think it is VERY important to know of this, and for immigrants, and other possible victims of the ICE Raids happening right now

18K notes View Post

gothamizhome

4 weeks ago

He looks very confused,hesitant to eat any of the food the skeletons are offering him, from the kitchens instead of the piles of sacrifices.

"Um... What?"

Danny doesn't have a response except, "who sent me a whole ass child?"

Robin just blinks at him, not sure how to react to this obviously powerful being he was sent to. The cult had heard of this message every sacrifice elicits, and had sent him with a letter. He does not want to show the being the letter. Danny doesn't try to take it from him, not wanting to make him feel any more unsafe than he already does. Once he calms down enough to properly address the kid, he just sits down in front of him.

"Hi. I'm Danny. You wanna tell me who sent you?"

Robin hesitates only a second before saying, "Evil immortal death cult leader who doesn't know how to take no for an answer. He wants to challenge you for the throne." his eyes fall on the letter in his hands, almost more afraid of it than he is of Danny. Eventually though, he hands it over. The contents make Danny sick. Not only is this a challenge for the throne, which is a problem in and of itself, it also specifies that Robin had been sent to become a concubine to the Ghost King, whoever that may be after the challenge.

"Kid... No... This... This won't happen. Cults lose all authority over their sacrifices once they arrive here. I can promise you, you're safe." Robin's shoulders drop in relief. Geez, he's just a kid, maybe seventeen at the oldest. Danny decides to answer the challenge, if only to beat up the person who dared to do this. He is a protector spirit, after all. He'll figure out what to do with the kid once that's done, because unfortunately, sacrifices cannot be returned. He orders the skeletons to prepare an actual bedroom for the kid before disappearing.

The battle doesn't take long.

The creep is smug at first, but he's not prepared for the sheer fury of one Danny Phantom. Within five minutes, he's barely breathing on the floor.

"Remember this next time you decide to mess with a kid."

Then he's back at the Stronghold, knocking on Robin's new bedroom door, trying to figure out what to say to him. He answers immediately, looking anxious and then relieved when he sees that it's Danny and not Ra's.

"Hey kiddo. So, I can't just bring you home since that's not really how sacrifices work, so let's figure out some options, yeah?"

Tim, a younge detective, quickly decides he wants to work for Phantom somehow, preferably in a way that let's him do good for the people. Danny, though, has already mentally adopted him.

And that is how Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne becomes Prince Tim of the Ghost Zone. He's a good prince, always aware of his people's needs, and he loves the unconditional care he gets from Danny. Plus, this gives him the freedom to go anywhere in the Realms, and, well, if he chooses to spend most of his time in Gotham with the bats, that's nobody's business but his own.

DPxDC Prompt #17

There is a room Danny's Keep he set up shortly after defeating Pariah Dark. It became necessary when the broader magical community realized Pariah had be defeated and therefore a new King took his throne. Danny found himself briefly bombarded with waves of attempted summonings.

Which, the summonings themselves, wouldn't have been so bad. Turns out people can't just drag the King of Ghosts to themselves on a whim. Danny has to actively accept a summoning to get pulled to it. And if he just decides "No," the pull and whispers go away. No problem there.

No, the problem is the offerings. And sacrifices. The things that people put in the circle as payment for even attempting to summon him. Like having to put a quarter in the payphone just to listen to it ring and ring and ring as the person on the other end of the call doesn't pick up. Since the summoning magic regarded these things as belonging to Danny even if he rejected the summons, they usually ended up just materializing in front of him if he didn't go to them.

Which, okay. It was funny that time he got to end a fight with Vlad very fast when a whole gold bar materialized and dropped on his head. And the food was nice sometimes when it was late and everywhere was closed and his parents had left samples in the fridge to contaminate everything into animation again. But the goat head dropping from the ceiling onto his desk during on of Lancer's English tests was not appreciated. Even if it did get the test rescheduled and the whole school shut down for a few days to investigate the "potentially satanic activity."

So, yeah, it was a bit of a problem. Fortunately, it was a problem with a relatively simple solution. Danny set up an inbox. With a bit of help from Tucker and Pandora, and a couple tips from Clockwork; all summoning offerings and sacrifices would now go straight to the dedicated room in the Keep.

And! As a special touch, the summoners would also get a chipper, automated voice saying, "The Ghost King you are trying to summon has more important things to do than answer you right now. Please leave a message in the circle with your name, date, location, contact information, and reason for summoning. The Ghost King will get back to you at his earliest convenience." Sam's stupid fancy girl gala voice had been perfect for that little message.

It was the perfect solution. Danny no longer had to deal with randomly materializing offerings putting his secret identity at risk. Pariah's skeletons, who had been antsy for something to do now that they were no longer bent under the thumb of a cruel tyrant, were instructed to take care of all the offerings; making sure everything was always cleaned up and put away. And all Danny had to do was stop by periodically to check in and "Officially respond" -ie, write a fuck off note- to the summoning messages (Clockwork's insistence).

A perfect solution. Up until Danny checked in one day to find the skellies pampering a whole ass boy. No. Not just any boy. Danny recognizes that costume.

"Why is Robin here?"

5K notes View Post

gothamizhome

1 month ago