With respect to the Vermont detentions of legal U.S. residents Mohsen Mahdawi and Rümeysa Öztürk — without criminal charges or opportunity for due process: You don’t have to agree with their politics at all to be dismayed at how our federal government is treating them. Although for some this is primarily an issue of supporting Palestine or not, it is also very much an issue of constitutional behavior by our government, of respecting free speech and access to due process.

Please make your voice heard on this matter, to our representatives in Congress and to any other elected official who will listen. If these legal residents can be abducted because of what they say and believe, then so can you and I.

Richard Hopkins

Middlebury