EDITOR'S NOTE: The views and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not of Ottawa News Network.

Alligator Alcatraz – America’s Auschwitz?

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” The words from Jeremiah 17:9 describe the heart of President Donald J. Trump as he fixates on degrading, dehumanizing and terrorizing immigrants. Why is Trump obsessed with punishing poor, weak and unarmed immigrants who were created in the image of God? What is the purpose of the cruelty to illegal immigrant families whose sole crime is wanting a better life for themselves?

Trump dictates the holding of illegal immigrants. Despite the Constitution’s ban on cruel and inhumane punishment, detention has moved from local detentions to efforts at Guantanamo Bay, El Salvador, Sudan and even the Florida Everglades.

Recent reporting by The New York Times revealed an “Alligator Alcatraz,” a shocking plan to transform a remote airstrip in the Everglades into a remote detention center. Outside of the scope of the federal government and using FEMA dollars, the primitive camp would defy civilization. Rustic tents, surrounded by snakes, alligators and swamps would offer no comfort. No planning accounts for temperature control, medical staff or the health and safety of “prisoners.”

Trump allies in Florida say this detention center will please Trump because he has expressed interest in a moat, spikes, razor wire and black paint to terrify the prisoners. Why the cruelty?

Americans should be appalled by the cruelty directed at immigrants. Primitive detention centers, inside and outside of this country, without due process, are concentration camps.

Mark Fleming, associate director of federal litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center, said it right when he called it “Alligator Alcatraz.”

“It simply shocks the conscience.”

Jo Bird
Holland

Michigan’s Republican Legislature calls for police state

During the '60s and '70s, print and television media reporting about Chile, South Africa, Haiti — and Argentina and its “disappeareds” — taught us what a police state looked like. We were sure this only happened in other countries — never in America.

Yet, right here and now, Americans see footage of people:

• accosted and handcuffed on the street by masked, plainclothes “police” without being informed of charges against them or given the opportunity to contact their families or a lawyer.
• whisked away to secret detention centers with wretched conditions and given inadequate access to medical care.
• being manhandled merely for voicing ideas the government finds offensive 

Why don’t we hear the term “police state” now?

And why would the Republican majority in the Michigan House choose not to express alarm at the federal government’s secretive and brutal approach to immigration enforcement but rather force passage on June 24 of HR 128, which encourages local sheriff and police departments to cooperate with ICE through so-called “287(g) agreements?”

Such cooperation with ICE would have devastating effects on local policing and public safety by:

• diverting personnel from routine community policing.
• undermining communities’ respect and support for police.
• raising havoc with local businesses, especially in construction, hospitality and agriculture.
• risking the corruption of local law enforcement culture through association with ICE’s dehumanizing tactics.
• wrongfully apprehending citizens and other legal residents in ICE’s indiscriminate sweeps.

All at local expense.

Giving Washington control of all levels of law enforcement through 287(g) partnerships with ICE would, in effect, make the U.S. a police state.

I don't want to see our own police involved in scenes like those we’ve seen in California, New Jersey and elsewhere in our country. I hope you don’t either.

I urge you to contact your police chief, the Ottawa County sheriff and your local and county board members to voice your opposition to HR 128.

James Dana
Grand Haven

Unmasking ICE: America's secret police

You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off that old ICE agent, or you’ll never walk free again…

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long to get used to something wrong. Images on the news of masked men rounding up people, handcuffing and shoving them into vans should jolt everyone out of their complacency of living in a free country, but after a while it becomes the norm.

And you wonder: Is this still America?

ICE agents wear masks, not because they’re afraid of catching COVID-19 from illegals fresh from crossing the border, but apparently because they’re just afraid. Big, burly law enforcement agents, presumably trained to make arrests and defend themselves, are reportedly afraid of being harassed or doxxed by fellow citizens repulsed by their Gestapo tactics.

It’d be funny, if it weren’t so scary.

Imagine if everyone involved in law enforcement — police, prosecutors and judges — wore masks so that you couldn’t identify them. Would you feel frightened? Would you feel you were still living in a free country? Would you wonder why you were putting up with this?

Police, prosecutors, judges and even legislators sometimes risk their lives and those of their families performing their civic duties, but you don’t see them hiding — cowardly — behind masks. Yet masked ICE agents continue to run amok, strongarming and dragging presumably innocent people off the nation’s streets, taking them to detention centers or deporting them in the middle of the night.

These are the tactics of secret police in a totalitarian society. And you wonder: Is this still America? Imagine the hooded Ku Klux Klan or masked Proud Boys marching in your town’s Fourth of July parade, exercising their rights to express their repugnant points of view.

Would you be startled or shocked? Would you be worried or angered?

Then why are so many of us so accepting of masked ICE agents roaming our streets and raiding our workplaces, anonymously arresting anyone suspected of violating immigration laws? Where is the outrage?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long to get used to something wrong. And before you know it, it’s no longer America.

Bill Dalton
Fennville

Catholicism column resonated

Mary Ellen Murphy's excellent opinion piece on Catholicism, and its influence on her life, mentioned "Vatican II,” aka the Second Vatican Council.

Among other things, Vatican II broadened the range of music that could be used in services.

That took me back to 1965, when satirist Tom Lehrer addressed Vatican II leading into his parody song, “The Vatican Rag.”

The tune began,
"First, you get down on your knees
"Fiddle with your rosaries
"Bow your head with great respect
"And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!”

And went downhill from there, Lehrer’s nimble fingers dancing merrily along his piano, to a ragtime beat.

I’m guessing a lot of Catholics did not take kindly to “The Vatican Rag," considering it's blasphemous.

I just thought it was funny.

As for Lehrer, his attitude seemed to lighten up everything — it's just a song.

Though not always to a ragtime beat, time marches on.

Bill Iddings
Muskegon

The Gestapo and ICE

Hitler's bedrock of his reign was anti-Semitism. 

He used the Gestapo to round up Jews and put them in detention camps.

Trump's bedrock to his reign is anti-immigrant and anti-migrant. He is using ICE — now funded by billions of dollars of our money in the "Big, Beautiful Bill" just passed by Congress — to round up immigrants and migrants and put them into detention camps.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. 

Henry Idema
Grand Haven

How to submit an opinion

Ottawa News Network accepts columns and letters to the editor from everyone. Letters should be about 300 words and columns should not exceed 1,000 words. ONN reserves the right to fact-check submissions as well as edit for length, clarity and grammar. Please send submissions to newsroom@ottawanewsnetwork.org.