April 14, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: We all agree that immigration needs reform. But Trump is trying to turn us against immigrants as Hitler turned the Germans against the Jews. And not just “immigrants” but turning us against anyone of color.
Hitler’s aim was an Aryan race. Trump’s central agenda is to impose a form of (white) Christian nationalism on the United States using his Project 2025 blueprint. His Gestapo (ICE) has even questioned and detained Native Americans.
His Gestapo accosted and terrified a young woman of color on a sidewalk, a doctorate student in Massachusetts. They had masks and were hooded and showed no ID, but said they were the police. She was sent to a detention center in Louisiana. Abrego Garcia was whisked to an El Salvador prison, which Trump first said was an administrative error, then later, without evidence, accused him of being a gang member. Both only guilty of expressing their first amendment right to freedom of speech – peacefully protesting what they feel is Israel’s genocide of Palestinians (50,000-plus, mostly women and children). Free speech is a right of all individuals within the country’s borders, citizen or not.
Then ICE detained a family at a dairy farm in Sackets Harbor, N.Y. Sent to Texas were two teenagers, a third-grader and their mother. They are to be returned after people protested this family’s terrifying experience. These students were following the legal process for visas. (California recently refused entrance of ICE at two elementary schools.)
Folks are being removed not by a court of law but by whomever Trump declares unfit to be here. Trump defies established courts and replaces it with “Trump’s law” – like Hitler (before) and Putin, whom he admires for their total control over everyone in their countries. And just about all of the congressional GOP blesses Trump’s every move. LINDA BLACK Glasgow
