United States Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) called President Donald Trump a “dictator” in response to a Tufts University PhD student being snatched off the sidewalk by Department of Homeland Security officials and thrown into Immigrations and Customs Enforcement custody.

“It is chilling that people could be disappeared, kidnapped, kidnapped in plain view, simply for dissenting opinion, and that’s what a dictator does,” Pressley told Boston Public Radio host Jim Braude on Friday.

Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national legally in the U.S. under an F-1 student visa, had expressed viewpoints opposing Israel’s military action in Gaza.

On Wednesday, Ozturk was walking down the street near her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts. An immigration official in plain clothes grabbed her before she was surrounded by other officials, also in plain clothes, as seen in a widely shared video.

“She is fearful, you can hear her on the audio, that she might be a victim of a crime herself and says, ‘I’m calling the police.’ To which they reply, ’We are the police,” Pressley said.

A petition filed on Friday by Ozturk’s attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai, revealed that her client was taken away in an unmarked vehicle and her friends “frantically tried to find out more information about what had happened to her.”

Ozturk’s friends, family, lawyer, and a representative of the Turkish consulate grew concerned she would become ill without her asthma medication, and spent nearly 24 hours trying to locate her, according to the petition. They later learned that Ozturk had been sent more than 1,300 miles away to an ICE detention facility in Louisiana and suffered an asthma attack while traveling.

She remains in ICE custody, though a federal judge temporarily halted her deportation on Friday.

Pressley said Ozturk’s rights to due process were violated, noting that she was not taken before a judge and “there’s no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.”

U.S Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed Thursday that Ozturk’s visa had been terminated.

Last year, Ozturk co-authored an op-ed in a student newspaper that urged Tufts University to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.” Last month, Ozturk was targeted by Canary Mission, a pro-Israel organization the publishes information about pro-Palestinian students and professors. The group characterized the op-ed as “anti-Israel” activism.

Pressley said on Friday that Ozturk had “every right” to express her views “under the First Amendment.”

The rep continued, “What the Trump administration wants is to silence dissenting voices that are alternative to their own world view and their belief system. Those are the actions of a dictator.”

Pressley urged people to stand up to the administration.

“The only way to respond to a dictator, which is what Donald Trump is, is with defiance,” she said.