As far as I can see nobody is sticking by the F1 students who are being deported.

The deportations are just flashy cruelty to obscure everything else.

It's also cruelty to folks who have absolutely nothing to defend themselves with. They are doing this just to deter people from practicing right to assembly and protest.

I think it's more of a typical tactic by authoritarian countries to do some high profile arrests with no recourse to strike fear into everyone's hearts that the same can happen to them and they'll have no recourse; which Ivy League grad students or faculty are going to join protests now?

Trump has repeatedly suggested that he will use the military on the "enemy from within". Protests could end up looking like what we see in Belarus and Russia - masked "police" shows up and they beat them up and / or take them away.

and that makes you scared? you are playing into his hand if so. that makes me want to go to the streets even more.

They didn't use the term scared, and being scared is not implicitly "going into hiding".

It's because I'm scared that I'm going to protest on April 5 in my state capital.

context clues suggest to me that the commenter is worried about militarized violence against protestors (scared)