To the editor:
When I read in the Lincoln Chronicle about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility that might be built in Newport, I remembered how I felt when our area made international news over the so-called “Brown Roundup” letter that was delivered to our community leaders up and down the Oregon coast last December. In that letter, people were being urged to copy down license plate numbers of the cars of “brown families” parked in grocery store lots, etc., to turn over to Homeland Security in case the families were deportable.
I remember the shame and dread I felt. A vigilante group of white supremacist bullies must be behind this, I thought.
The way our then-Lincoln City sheriff and Oregon attorney general responded was heartening. “Despicable” our attorney general called it. This is no way to behave.
Since then, there has been such a sickening vertigo of atrocities perpetrated by our federal government that the Brown Roundup letter almost invokes nostalgia.
Now masked invaders carrying automatic weapons wearing uniforms but no identification, no badges, no names, are marching down streets of some of our cities, firing rubber bullets and pepper spray at people, scaring them, injuring them, and, if the people are brown, and for no other reason, they are disappearing them.
Referring to events in Chicago, Judge Sara Ellis said that the use of force by federal agents in Chicago “shocks the conscience.” Earlier in the week, a different federal judge called conditions in an ice detention facility near Chicago “unnecessarily cruel.”
“Unnecessarily”? Why are we being cruel at all? Why are we allowing this?
And about that helicopter that’s been removed from our local U.S. Coast Guard base during crabbing season?
Gov. Pritzker of Illinois has something to say about depleting police and rescue services from communities which rely on them: “You know what Donald Trump is doing? He’s taking money away from police. He’s literally taking F.B.I., D.E.A., and A.T.F., which we work with all the time — he’s taking them out of their departments and moving them over to ICE. And they’re not enforcing the law or helping us catch bad guys … and he’s taken away those community violence-interruption grants that come from the federal government. So this is not somebody who actually wants to reduce crime, and he is not helping us reduce crime. In fact he’s creating mayhem on the ground. Because you know what he wants? He wants troops on the ground in American cities, and the only way he can get that done is by proving that there’s some sort of insurrection or revolution or rebellion that’s taking place on the streets of Chicago, and he tries to prove that by putting up cameras and then creating that mayhem and then showing that to the public and claiming this is what’s going on.”
If we don’t stop an ICE facility from being built on the central Oregon coast, we will have a monument to the tantrums, racism, violence, cruelty and lies of the Trump’s Revenge Tour Era of our country reminiscent of the Holocaust Museums in various cities around the world.
The other day, I heard someone on a podcast say “The Republicans have a Nazi problem.” With an ICE facility in Newport, we will have “a concentration camp problem”.
Henry Wallace, vice president under Franklin D. Roosevelt said “A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.”
No ICE facility on the Oregon coast. That’s our position.
— Donally Kennedy and Jim Hines/Lincoln City
Thank you for your superb news coverage of this issue. The shameful, illegal ICE thugs must be stopped before more innocent people are harmed. Thank you Lincoln Chronicle.
Something has to give. Concentration Camps are not the answer. But with any crime this problem is causing problems that we are now choosing sides is becoming the problem. We got to do something about crime. That’s right illegal immigrants are running rampant in America. How to solve it should be addressed.
So instead of holding prisoners lets just deport them back to wherever they come from. I hale from Fla. where they come in by boat loads from the islands like Cuba. We have a hard enough time feeding our own residents which is bad enough. Imagine in America people are sending children to bed hungry. Yep and they are dependent on the school systems to take care of it. Now we are doubling down. Its gotta be addressed who do we feed our children who are born here or children who are smuggled across our border. Its a hell of a choice. The government is failing America. A corrupted system is rotting in the White house or what is left of it. I saw how everyone showed up at the city meeting yet no answer was reached by us residents which live here. By any means used to take care of being nice before deporting those who are draining our limit resources. We will send our own children to bed hungry while taking care of these who have no rights to be here and now we have to give them shelter and use whatever we can to care for them while we allow those of us who need help to go without. Why? I think we better ban ICE and lose this ideal of building a camp for these new homeless people to take hold. Its hard but I think enough is just that enough.
Deport Pam Bondi back to Florida. She is not welcome here.