The Department of Homeland Security’s ICE detention facility is shown March 21 in Jena, La. The world’s largest immigration detention system is on the cusp of significant growth as President Donald Trump pursues mass deportations.
Humanitarian parole
Our corrupt president Trump is busily pardoning groveling criminals who have been convicted of grave wrongdoing. In one case, Trump openly accepted a bribe from the mother of an admitted tax fraud. She bought her son’s pardon by accepting an invitation to Trump’s $1-million-a-plate dinner at Mar-a-lago. In contrast, this administration has moved to revoke thousands of migrants of their humanitarian parole or temporary status. The Supreme Court ruled in their favor for the time being.
I do not want to live in a society where our leaders rule corruptly, inhumanly, and stupidly. To remove people who are quietly living their lives, who are doing the hard work and who enhance our country is unacceptable. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Friday, May 30th, that the order will “have the lives of half a million migrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims.”
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Karen Allison
Three Points
Multiple letters from same authors
In the last week the Star has published two letters each from Loyal M Johnson and Jeffrey McConnell. They each are published multiple times per month, nearly always engendering a response from others refuting their opinions.
I thought the Star had a policy of one letter per month per author, but apparently the rule does not apply to these two. I believe the Star is trying to find a balance in the number of letters from both sides of the political spectrum, but by over selecting just these two authors you are instead reinforcing the obvious paucity of conservative readers. At least I can get a good laugh from these two without having to turn to the comics!
Michael Hamant
East side
We can save us
Wise to heed the words of Octavia Butler’s fictional heroine in her book “Parable Of The Talents” — who grapples with a climate changed Earth and mistakes of the past:
“Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward
is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool
is to be led
by the opportunists
who control the fool.
To be led by a thief
is to offer up
your most precious treasures
to be stolen.
To be led by a liar
is to ask
to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant
is to sell yourself
and those you love
into slavery.”
Please do something right now. You can support Citizens Climate Lobby; Greater Tucson Climate Coalition; Arizonans For Community Choice; Center For Biological Diversity; and the one with the most lawyers, Earth Justice.
The courts and our leaders will either save us or kill us but we must let them know we are here.
Rick Rappaport
Oro Valley
Big Beautiful Bill
The Big Beautiful Bill now before the Senate cuts social services like Medicaid and SNAP. Theoretically, we must cut social services to reduce the deficit. I disagree. Consider these new expenditures in the bill. $144B more for defense, $64.3B more for Homeland Security, including new border wall construction, $70.2B more for the judiciary, including expanded detention centers for immigrants but not more immigration judges. Perhaps in the interest of decreasing the deficit, these increases could be more modest. Think about it: what’s the use for new detention centers for immigrants after they are all deported? With minimal border crossings, what’s the point of building more walls?
We know, however, that people need to eat and need healthcare. I don’t want to see people suffering because they cannot afford healthcare. I’m sure children won’t do well in school without decent nutrition. Why deport hardworking, non-criminal immigrants for the “crime” of coming here to work?
A budget is a moral document. Shouldn’t ours be?
Nancy Smith
Midtown
Support local news media
I think it has become clear to those of us who still have functioning brain cells that the administration in Washington is doing its best to destroy the U.S. educational system, legal structures, and legitimate news media. So I would like to highlight the important role of local news in this community. We are lucky to have Arizona Public Media (AZPM) which delivers the local NPR radio and PBS TV stations that bring us reliable national and international news. It also brings us great local coverage with Arizona illustrated and the Press Room. The Arizona Daily Star, despite minimal corporate support, has done a great job covering crucial community issues like immigration and water resources. And we’re lucky to have several online startups like the Tucson Sentinel and Arizona Luminaria. This is a great time for all of us to renew our efforts to financially support those local news outlets that are doing their best to deliver to us original, fact-checked, edited news. Subscribe, donate.
Maggy Zanger
Midtown
“
Holding back aid to Gaza. Going into the West Bank. Ignoring millions who protest his decisions. Dismantling the judicial system. Losing respect of world allies. All to appease his supporters, the religious ultra-orthodox. All for his own self-interest of keeping himself out of prison by staying Prime Minister.
Cutting funds for scientific research, SNAP, Medicaid, vaccines. Attempting to create an autocracy by destroying the constitution. Ignoring millions who protest his decisions. Dismantling the judicial system. Losing respect of world allies. All for his own egotistical self-interest of keeping himself and his cronies wealthy and in power.
It’s not easy being a Jew. It’s not easy being an American. Both leaders are destroying the respect, honor and ideals that their countries were founded on. Both are leading their countries towards destruction.
Maureen Salz
Oro Valley
ICE/Tucson TEP workers
ICE agents misrepresenting themselves as TEP workers, as reported this morning, is a direct affront to the law and lawful conduct of public business. All it would have taken is a warrant. Would that have taken more time than the time taken to plan and practice their deception, disguise themselves and then accost and question neighbors? They didn’t even bother to obtain a proper address in planning their deception. Competence? As bad is the ICE spokesperson threatening, in writing, the reporter to be “careful with the TEP storyline.” Confidence in the integrity of law enforcement in a free community is too important to have it sullied by the questionable behavior of these ICE representatives and their superiors who ordered or permitted it. Thank you Arizona Daily Star for your reporting.
Donald Leuenberger
Northeast side
Learn from the past
I have been listening to the change in topic from Schumer, AOC, Bernie and Chief Warren and now the directive is very simple: Forward, don’t think of anything else. So, breaking the rules, in looking back to the last election, the problem was all of the distortions and misrepresentations during the Biden administration. There were a number of issues that need to be fixed. But there is a problem, you can’t make changes for the future if you are incapable of learning from the past. There’s an old saying, insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. When learning math, school taught that part of the process of learning is to analyze the past mistakes and make adjustments to get it right the next time. It is difficult to learn but feeling something is right very seldom gives the right answer, getting it right means understanding what’s right. In the last election, Democrats felt they had the right answer, but it was the wrong feeling.
Loran Hancock
Northwest side
Actions have consequences
Ms. Shinkoskey (May 29) suggested providing a history of tyrants throughout time. Hitler suicide, Mussolini hung upside down, Saddam dragged out of a hole and hung, Ceausescu firing squad on Christmas day, Gaddafi’s bloodied body dragged through streets, Sadat shot at military parade, Tojo hung, Bashara fled to Russia, and various and sundry ancient and royal characters.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Margaret G Magruder
Downtown
Brainwashing of our youth
There has been a deliberate effort to teach our youth that our country has always been bad and therefore not worthy of supporting. We see this on a daily basis on our college campuses. Young people draped with Hamas head scarfs. You can see by their faces that they are fully committed to their cause: the destruction of the State of Israel and the Jewish people and the United States becoming Socialist. The protests started the day after Oct.7 while Israel was still in shock.
I do not believe that our schools and colleges teach history in a way to instill respect and honor in what our country has accomplished since inception. This has been increasing year by year for decades.
A few more decades like this and these young people will be in authoritative positions, will surely vote what they have been taught. The country I have been a proud member of will no longer exist.
Jack Walters
Northeast side
Please be specific
To that cadre of vociferous Trump-supporting letter writers whose dodges and hollow recriminations typically fall short of the actual matter at hand, here’s an opportunity to legitimize your position. Please respond to the following questionnaire:
Do you feel that due process guaranteed by the Constitution has been properly addressed in the recent deportation and imprisonment of legal foreign residents? Why?
Do you think Trump’s well-publicized monetizing of the Office of the Presidency honors the emoluments clauses of the Constitution? Why?
Are you concerned that deserving recipients of Governmental services soon to be curtailed will suffer unjustly due to indiscriminate administration of these reforms? If not, why?
Do you feel the proposed new tax windfall for the rich that adds trillions to the National Debt while slashing programs that keep countless citizens from the brink of Dickensian poverty is somehow less shameful then it appears? Why?
Please justify how negating the agencies that protect our food, water, environment, and health serves the greater good. Show your work.
Robert Gavlak
Midtown
A not-so-beautiful bill
Over the next few years, Trump’s promised cuts in the “Big Beautiful Bill” include:
SNAP (food assistance) $300 billion
Medicaid $880 billion
Automatic cuts to Medicare $500 billion
And there are many more callous cuts.
At a recent town hall with Republican senator Joni Ernst, an attendee said these cuts could result in people dying, to which Ernst replied, “Well, we are all going to die.”
And there are many more fellow Americans who demonstrate the same lack of compassion.
Their indifference brings to mind a song by John Prine:
“Some humans ain’t human
Some humans ain’t kind
You open up their hearts
And here’s what you’ll find
A few frozen pizzas
Some ice cubes with hair
A broken popsicle
You don’t wanna go there
You open their hearts
And here’s what you’ll find
Some humans ain’t human
Some humans ain’t kind.”
Mary Christ
East side
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