Letters to the Editor: Detention camps and Putin's hold on Trump
See what local letter writers have to say this week.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The views and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not of Ottawa News Network.
Warehouse profits: Boxing thousands of immigrants
Coming to your town soon: The transformation of an empty warehouse distribution center into a huge ICE concentration camp for thousands. Watch out if your town has an empty warehouse for sale. ICE may purchase and use it, like they are using immigrants for heinous profits. Case in point is Social Circle, Georgia, where ICE has purchased a huge box warehouse for $129 million without consulting the town management. By April, ICE may hold up to 10,000 detainees in this shell of a building.
CBS News and National Public Radio reported on Feb. 12 that, much to the shock and dismay of Social Circle, Georgia, ICE is on track to transform a warehouse distributing products into one distributing people. (Are detained immigrants not human beings in the eyes of ICE?)
Residents of Social Circle question the morality, human decency and practicality of ICE caging twice as many individuals as the entire population of their town (5,000), within one fragile building. Not only will an ICE concentration camp ruin the town’s reputation and housing market, but it may traumatize and abuse detained immigrants, the majority of whom have no criminal records. The town’s infrastructure is already stretched to provide drinking water and public facilities for its own 5,000 residents.
The moral cost of this camp will touch the town’s children, too. How can “decent” adults justify a cruel prison holding 10,000 live human beings less than a mile from a newly built elementary school?
Wake up, small-town America. ICE may be coming to your town soon!
Jo Bird
Holland
Trump and Putin
Recently, President Trump hung a photograph of himself standing next to Vladimir Putin in the White House. Why? Putin is a mass murderer. He has not murdered as many people as Stalin, but he shares his murderous and imperialistic tendencies.
Putin's picture in the White House is a stain on the people's house — one that should be removed.
There is a mysterious connection between Trump and Putin. Trump seems to be supportive of Putin. Does Putin have something over Trump that he is using to blackmail our president? Nobody knows. Is there information about this in the Epstein files? Only half of these files have been released, and highly redacted at that. Clearly, there are things in these files that Trump does not want us to see.
Someday, we will know the truth about the connection between Trump and Putin. There is no evidence that Trump is a Russian agent, but for Putin and his war aims, Trump is certainly an asset. Trump is lukewarm toward Ukraine and wants the country that was invaded to give up territory to the invader.
As Jesus taught us, the truth sets us free. America needs to see the whole truth about the connections between Trump and Putin, and we need to see all the unredacted Epstein files.
Henry Idema
Grand Haven
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