LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Money for ICE Raids

Every immigrant picked up during Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and put into a detention facility puts $750 of taxpayer money, per day, per detainee in the pockets of the owners of the for-profit detention facilities.

That is where our tax dollars are going instead of this nation’s desperately needed infrastructure repairs.

The Trump administration sees it as more important to detain these immigrants, build more facilities and, if the president has his way, build a wall.

The administration doesn’t seem to care about our deteriorating roads, collapsing bridges, crumbling airports and schools and ruined inner city neighborhoods.

Infrastructure was a good Trump campaign slogan — and nothing else.

Trump talks a big game, but he’s destroying the country with his greed and ignorance.

Christine DeSena, Plantation

Aiding and abetting undocumented immigrants

The Sun Sentinel stoops to a new low by publishing Yvonne Valdez’s article on how to beat the justified arrests of undocumented immigrants.

Such aiding and abetting is tantamount to harboring law breakers and all those trying to help criminal elements in our society avoid prosecution should be accountable.

Freedom of speech does not include aiding and abetting criminal elements of society.

American citizens are grateful to ICE and Homeland Security and they are both a necessity to combat the invasion of our country, costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars per year, wasted by and allowed by the Democrats in Congress with their dereliction in providing for protection and safety for we the people. Illegal immigrants here unjustly and should all be removed.

John Coleman, Fort Lauderdale

Asylum seekers have rights

Any foreign national has the legal right to request asylum. Crossing our border without documents is a civil infraction.

Certain temporary visas allow Mexican nationals to work in America and their families to join them. They must check in with ICE regularly; failing to do so is a civil infraction. These “crimes” are more like jaywalking, if even that, than robbing a bank.

The current administration changed requirements for these visa holders, requiring monthly check-ins instead of yearly, overwhelming ICE’s ability to process check-ins. They closed many official border entry points, hindering the ability of asylum-seekers to arrive “correctly.”

They treat it all as “criminal offenses,” a pretext to imprison immigrants and their children. They then deny their prisoners legal counsel since the “offenses” are civil infractions.

I can only imagine the conditions that would cause people to abandon their homes and undertake a dangerous 1000+ mile journey with young children to seek asylum. I cannot imagine the lack of compassion and basic humanity that insists people should be imprisoned for doing so.

Michael Brown, Tamarac

Not concentration camps

There is a certain irony in the juxtaposition of Steve Bousquet’s column and the letter from a reader who shows a complete lack of understanding of the meaning of “concentration camp.”

Bousquet stresses the need for understanding of and education about the Holocaust. The letter write misquotes the Webster’s dictionary definition of concentration camp. She removes the historical context of the Nazi era and replaces it with a period.

The misquoting makes it appear that that the United States immigration detention camps are comparable to concentration camps.

While our detention camps are arguably a stain on this country’s ideals, to compare them to concentration camps — where Jews, homosexuals, and gypsies were used as slave labor — reeks of either gross ignorance or the worst antiSemitism.

Hopefully, a renewed effort in teaching about the Holocaust will help to cure both.

Gene Klein, Deerfield Beach