Immigrants are our neighbors, friends
The troubling deaths of two men in ICE custody highlight the ongoing indiscriminate detentions and deportations of undocumented immigrants.
The way immigrants are being targeted should concern us all, for four reasons. First, it is unnecessary. Most of those detained pose zero threat. Their “crime” is wanting a better life for their children. Second, it separates families and victimizes children, violating core principles. Third, these are our neighbors. Many have lived here for years and raised their children here. Their forced removal diminishes us. Fourth, if we let our government seize immigrants at traffic stops, stash them in remote detention facilities, and dump them in countries they barely know where their lives are in danger, none of us is safe. Any of us could become the next designated scapegoat.
This atrocity is being perpetrated in our name. Our silence makes us complicit. It’s time people of faith spoke out.
STEVE BABB, LAWRENCEVILLE
Police just trying to do duty in schools
The first thing I thought of when reading (“Troubled cops land jobs with schools,” News, May 21), was how well the critics of police officers would fare as police officers in our schools. The critics would have the officers play pattycake with unruly 13-year-olds who are as strong as the officers. In most cases, the “troubled” officers were trying to do their sworn duty in protecting law-abiding citizens while their critics were looking for headlines that pictured our police officers as the villains and they have succeeded. The hallways of our schools are overrun with troublemaking students who come to school not to learn, but to terrorize the students who are trying to learn. We are going to need more police and more jails to deal with a generation of youngsters who were never taught right from wrong and were given no boundaries for behavior.
JACK FRANKLIN, CONYERS
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