To the editor,

After due process, violent criminals should be deported if they are here illegally; however, indiscriminately rounding up thousands of immigrants including people who are working their tail off and paying taxes is terribly wrong. Breaking up their families and terrifying children is more terrible. 

We are outraged that after having worked hard for decades in jobs that help people, after paying our taxes and being good citizens, we have to listen to the president label us and others as left-wing radicals who hate America just because we disagree with his policy. We are Americans. What makes America special is the right to disagree. He’s lumping everybody who does not agree with him in with a minority of people who riot. That’s not America, or at least it wasn’t until now. Whether you talk about Bush or Obama there has never been a president who uses crude, angry, undignified language to suppress and insult constitutionally protected disagreement.

We’re appalled at the efforts of this administration to punish and scare helpless people. I heard the singer Bono on Joe Rogan the other day. Bono said something to the effect that you will know evil when people relish suffering. Watch Stephen Miller, the current White House Chief of Staff, and tell us you’re not seeing something darker than anything that has ever come out of any White House.

We support going after real criminals per US law, but cannot support stalking the helpless. We cannot support deploying more law and military force than was ever used during the January 6 Capitol invasion. Indiscriminate raids and yanking people off the street and disappearing them is a deliberate attempt to intimidate and make things chaotic. 

Ironically and sadly, this chaos comes from an administration that does an awful lot of Bible thumping while making a mockery of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats which is found in Mathew Chapter 25.

“…I was a stranger and you did not invite me in. I needed clothes and you did not clothe me. I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me…Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me. Then they will go away to eternal punishment…”

Even the Trump Bible contains this parable. Does it not mean anything to those who buy it?

Dan & Beth Woll

River Falls