Comparing ICE to the Gestapo, targeting health aides

ICE is nothing like the Gestapo

Comparing ICE to the Nazi Gestapo is a serious error [“Fed terrorism no stranger to my dad,” Letters, July 17]. The reader notes her father’s experience with the Nazis, but her comparison trivializes the Holocaust by inappropriately comparing the Nazi secret police to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an arm of Secretary Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security. Ill-informed and damaging comparisons like this are all too common in our overheated political discourse.

The function of the Gestapo was coordinating the removal of Jews to ghettos, concentration camps, execution sites, and killing centers. In short, they facilitated the murder of innocent men, women, and children. The ICE mission is to protect America through criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws to preserve national security and public safety. ICE members are masked because of threats posed to them and their families if they are personally identified by violent extremists.

It’s important to engage in subtle and knowledgeable discussions about the dangers of political extremism and the importance of defending democratic values rather than resorting to simplistic and potentially misleading comparisons.

— Bernard A. Bilawsky, North Massapequa

ICE is not rounding up people to fill arbitrary quotas. They are not making them “disappear.” People are in the process of being deported. Saying “placing them in detention camps” is ridiculous. Maybe we should place them in hotels like they did in New York City?

Comparing today’s deportation situation to Nazi Germany is fearmongering at its worst. The Nazis did try to purge their society. President Donald Trump is deporting millions of people who entered our country without legal permission and broke our laws, were criminals in their country, or may have committed crimes here. Were any of them vetted?

— Roger Rothman, Commack

The reader’s claim that immigrants who entered our country illegally were subject to violence and oppression in their countries without any proof or evidence and comparing them to Jews under Nazi persecution is sinful. As a democratic republic, we have immigration laws to maintain order and safety, and if we disagree, we protest and vote for change.

Comparing ICE to the Gestapo is disgusting, a warped sense of morality and cheapens all victims who lost their lives in the Holocaust.

— Robert Stein, Merrick

Targeting health aides makes little sense

It is terribly upsetting to learn that health workers on temporary protected status in skilled nursing and assisted living facilities are now the target of ICE deportations “Crackdown impact on elder care,” News, July 17].

These people are doing “God’s work,” taking care of the elderly and disabled who cannot care for themselves. They are contributing to society, earning an honest living just to survive. They are not violent criminals or rapists or, as Donald Trump has said, “from insane asylums.”

I have two relatives living in such facilities, and they are already woefully understaffed. The president promised that they would get rid of the likes of MS-13 criminals, not hardworking people and especially walking angels, doing work that few other Americans are willing to do.

Do the people making these decisions not have elderly or disabled friends or relatives cared for by immigrants in these places or in the home?

— Clare Brown, Huntington

Held at arm’s length, this scenario of deporting immigrants seems unimaginable in this country [“When are you coming home?” News, July 21].

For their “original sin” of entering the country illegally, men and women who’ve been productive members of our society for years, while reporting for their regular immigration court check-ins or as they conduct their daily lives, are suddenly whisked away by masked, armed officers to a “processing center” hundreds or thousands of miles from home without any due process. In one case, Sara Lopez Garcia answered her door to find misdirected ICE agents.

They languish for weeks in centers with disgusting conditions, yet much of the country thinks this isn’t cruel enough and happily applauds the notion of an “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Years from now, our children will see this as a dark and shameful chapter in our history and will remember well the names of those who promoted these grotesque actions or simply stood by in silence.

— Lynn Krug, Garden City

I am aghast when I read about the level of cruelty my government is directing at immigrants. I cannot agree when I read about the arrest and detention of people solely for the misdemeanor of having entered our country illegally. It hurts when I imagine otherwise law-abiding, hardworking people being held in awful conditions for just this reason.

Now, ICE is gaining access to Medicaid data [“ICE to get access to 79M Medicaid enrollees’ data: agreement,” News, July 18]. Immigrants living here illegally cannot receive Medicaid benefits except for lifesaving services in emergency rooms. This is a way to find immigrants who don’t have Medicaid and also to find scared loved ones in their most desperate moments.

When I think of parents being afraid to take their children to the hospital in an emergency when they are sick or hurt, it breaks my heart. I think this is a place for our government to show compassion.

— David Parsick, Port Jefferson