I read with great dismay and heartbreak about the recent arrests and detentions by heavily armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents of immigrant families, including young children, enjoying a beautiful Sunday in Millennium Park or simply running everyday errands like grocery shopping (“Mother and children detained by ICE at Millennium Park now held at O’Hare,” Sept. 30). A 5-year-old child was left crying hysterically as she witnessed her father being handcuffed and separated from his wife and children. Images of families ripped apart by marauding armed and masked men have become commonplace in our country.
How does this make us safer? How does this improve our lives? The Donald Trump administration would have us believe, without evidence, that it is going after the “worst of the worst” when, in fact, the vast majority of immigrants terrorized by ICE are law-abiding, hardworking people who fuel our economy and enrich our culture. The idea that this immigration crackdown is about public safety, law and order or national security is farcical.
Just a few examples of the rampant hypocrisy of this administration: Trump granted clemency to some 1,500 people who were convicted of or charged with violently storming the Capitol in 2021, many of whom had prior convictions. A former Jan. 6 defendant was rewarded with a prominent role in the Trump Justice Department. The president pardoned the founder of an underground online marketplace who was convicted in 2015 of drug trafficking and money laundering and sentenced to life in prison. As part of its Venezuela-El Salvador prisoner exchange, this administration had freed a convicted triple murderer serving time in Venezuela and allowed him back into this country to walk among the free.
This brutal immigration crackdown is not about law and order, public safety or national security. It is a cruel, xenophobic and racist attack on humanity.
— Sandra Lovestrand, Lincolnwood
Results of federal policy
I was disappointed not to see more coverage of Tuesday night’s dramatic, traumatizing and wholly unnecessary raid at a South Shore apartment building in which federal agents arrested almost 40 Black and brown people.
If this isn’t federal policy impacting the lives of folks on the ground, I don’t know what is!
— Steve Hetzel, Chicago
Don’t become indifferent
Now I understand how it could happen and fear it could happen again! My aunt-in-law was a German my uncle met at the end of the war while stationed in Germany. Many years ago, I asked her how the German people could allow Adolf Hitler to send Jewish men, women and children to concentration and death camps. She said, “We lived in a small town. People didn’t pay attention to what their government was doing and didn’t know what was going on.” This was hard for me to understand.
In later years, it occurred to me she was likely too young (born in 1925) to recognize what was happening. Her parents, who certainly heard and knew more, had likely shielded her from the truth with sanitized explanations, as many parents will do. And the extermination process was subtle, initially. It began with the vilification of Jews (“dirty,” “deceitful” and “dangerous”). Jews were the scapegoats for the economic, cultural and political problems in Germany. Significantly, a relentless stream of propaganda was introduced, designed to normalize indifference to the plight of these people, leading to a passive acceptance of the ensuing persecution.
Is it happening again? I’m seeing large contingents of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents coming to our cities dressed in combat uniforms and carrying assault weapons, combing our streets, parks and places of business, where they grab immigrants — men, women and children — and haul them away. I’m seeing streams of biased and/or misleading characterizations (“illegal criminals,” “killers,” “rapists,” “child abusers”) of these people, yet it seems many are not any of those things, and some are actually legal citizens.
Is it happening again? Are you seeing what I’m seeing?
Let’s not be lulled into indifference to the plight of the immigrants. I believe immigration control is important and lawful but not the means used to accomplish this end. Examine your thoughts, your beliefs and your conscience. Exercise your freedom of speech and let your opinions be known, whatever they might be.
Just don’t be indifferent.
— Sandra J. Burk, Elmhurst
Obama’s deportations
On Sept. 30, letter writer Mike Rice of Chicago (“Media’s unfair depiction”) commented that in his first term President Donald Trump deported fewer than 932,000 immigrants and, in the first four months of his second term, 200,000. Rice asserts that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are “responsible for protecting our borders and enforcing American law,” and he complains that the media are demonizing them.
Rice then writes that up to 3.1 million immigrants were deported during Barack Obama’s presidency. Here’s my take on that. I believe it’s something to be applauded, admired and recognized that Obama accomplished those deportations without using armed and masked ICE agents, calling out the National Guard, or causing the havoc and fear we’re now experiencing.
— Lynn Barkinge, Westmont
Hegseth’s new standards
Hallelujah. No more separate standards for men and women in the military. In war, it’s life and death. And all troops must meet the same tough physical requirements, with no exceptions. They must be strong, healthy, and physically and mentally fit.
No doubt, the left will loudly air their grievances with cries of unfairness, along with accusing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of being anti-women, anti-gay and anti-transgender. But if we want the best military in the world, our troops must be in the best physical condition. There is no room for “woke.” The military never should have been allowed to sink to its current low level of moral and physical decay.
Bravo to Hegseth, who has declared war on his warriors, with commanding orders to shape up (or ship out) to commonsense standards.
— JoAnn Lee Frank, Clearwater, Florida
Judging Trump’s choices
I caught an immense amount of flak from friends after the 2016 election when I said, “Look. He’s the president of my country and, as such, deserves the respect that is due that office.” I also said, “I hope he is successful, because if he is, then our country is.” I didn’t vote for him, but he became our leader, and until the next election, I was prepared to put aside my personal opinion of him and give him the deference that the person holding the office is automatically entitled to.
But Donald Trump makes it tough.
Time was, lots of folks would point to the president of the United States as a role model and, if not that, then certainly take pride in his utterances and actions on the world stage; after all, it is he who represents us to the rest of the world. I could look past the public live-mic swearing and commiserate with parents who had to explain to their kids why such things were OK. He was, after all, a political outsider not playing by the insider rules.
I tried to ignore his comments on Arnold Palmer’s genitalia, and I danced around his claim that 300 million people died from drug overdoses in one year as “exuberance.” I dismissed the claim that immigrants were “eating the dogs (and) the cats” in Springfield, Ohio, as just so much campaign nonsense.
I’ve long since given up waiting for an apology about Trump’s full-page ad calling for the Central Park Five to be publicly eviscerated. I’ve come to grips with his running the country via announcements on Truth Social and X, as if we’re all his “buds.” I’ve looked past the “s–thole countries” comment, and I am in the process of trying to find any redeeming value in his recent self-aggrandizing display before the United Nations.
But Trump posted a video, under his banner, of something so vile and so disturbing that I am now well past embarrassment for the citizens of this country, especially as the world sees us. I am now embarrassed for him.
There was a great comment during the Army-McCarthy hearings 70 years ago or so, in which the counsel for the Army, Joseph Welch, finally shut the door on the out-of-control senator, Joseph McCarthy, when he said, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
— Stuart Linderman, Wilmette
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https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/03/letters-100325-ice-chicago/