Of the tragic shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller proclaimed on Thanksgiving Day: “This is the great lie of mass migration. You are not just importing individuals. You are importing societies. No magic transformation occurs when failed states cross borders. At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.”
To those who genuinely believe this, I would inquire: What do we make of the fact that the mass shooters at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018; an El Paso, Texas, Walmart store in 2019; and the Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York, in 2022 — who killed scores of people — were each doctrinaire, anti-immigrant U.S. citizens?
Are we, ourselves, the failed state that fosters violence against the foreign-born?
— Paul W. Mollica, Chicago
Fear at hospitals
As a pediatrician, I’ve spent my career caring for children from immigrant and refugee families. What we are seeing right now is unprecedented: children’s medical care being disrupted because their parents are detained or deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, sometimes while the child is still undergoing treatment.
I’ve watched care plans collapse overnight. Parents arrested during their child’s chemotherapy appointments. Some of these children are U.S. citizens.
In the past few months, ICE agents waited in hospital parking lots. Helicopters circled over Evanston schools. A medical institution near the Broadview ICE facility routinely has seen shackled patients march through its doors, accompanied by armed, unidentified men. Men with rifles. In a hospital.
This fear is visible in missed appointments and children arriving sick to the emergency department without their caregivers, who are afraid to accompany them. This is not just an immigration issue — it’s a public health emergency. When enforcement enters the spaces where children are supposed to feel safe, it undermines trust in health care itself.
Illinois must take concrete action now. Codify that hospitals, clinics and schools are enforcement-free zones. How many children in our communities must we watch suffer before we act? They deserve better. They deserve action.
— Minal Giri, Lincolnshire
Military rules apply
Waging war is not the same thing as pursuing criminal justice. The rules governing how police and prosecutors go after criminals, including the right of due process, does not apply to wartime operations, nor should it. Wars are conducted and won or lost by warriors, not lawyers. And the way to deal with terrorism outside the borders of the United States is through military means, not law enforcement.
Since the drug- and people-smuggling criminal cartels from Central and South America have been officially declared to be terrorists, only military rules of engagement apply to how we eliminate them. All of the hue and cry over the “rights” of drug-running suspects and the lack of formal due process is nonsensical and clearly just political posturing to impede all actions by President Donald Trump.
If “due process” and “the rights of the accused” were what governed our military in World War II, we would be speaking German or Japanese today.
War is nasty and imprecise, but that is reality.
— David Howard, Rockford
Vaccines lifesavers
President Donald Trump has endangered the lives of every American by appointing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as the secretary of health and human services. God only knows what prompted such an unqualified choice, but then this is the president who, during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggested that we might try injecting those afflicted with bleach.
Kennedy has absolutely no medical credentials. What he does have is an inane obsession with the notion that vaccines cause autism in children. Decades of research have concluded that there is no basis for this claim. The indications are that autism is a genetic condition.
Unvaccinated children are at risk for numerous illnesses, including mumps, measles, whooping cough, chickenpox and the dreaded polio. All are highly contagious and unpleasant, sometimes deadly. Until Jonas Salk perfected the polio vaccine, parents and children lived in dread of the disease. Older readers may remember photos of children housed in iron lung chambers just to keep them breathing.
If Kennedy succeeds in convincing more parents to forgo having their children vaccinated, real medical experts predict that measles will spread among more schoolchildren and meningitis in college dorms, and more young people will die of cancers that could have been prevented.
I admit to being one of those accursed Democrats. But it is as a Christian that I extend this plea to MAGA parents and others who resist vaccines for whatever reason. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain of make-believe medical smarts. If you love your children, have them vaccinated — including with the COVID-19 vaccine. If you love your children and want to live to see them grow up, get a COVID-19 shot yourself.
It’s not a political choice. It’s a life-and-death decision.
— Dan McGuire, Bensenville
Hegseth’s addiction
Stopping drinking is a brave, commendable choice for Pete Hegseth. But true sobriety addresses the underlying patterns — and doesn’t simply swap dependencies. Sadly, recent events suggest that power may have become his new addiction.
In March, a few months after becoming secretary of defense, Hegseth leaked confidential information. Then in September, he summoned over 800 senior military officers — at an estimated taxpayer cost of $6 million — to deliver a sermon on fitness, the warrior ethos, grooming and wokeness. He has dismissed core wartime rules of engagement as “politically correct,” “stupid,” and “overbearing,” vowing not to let them tie his hands. He posted a cartoon meme in reaction to scrutiny of a U.S. attack on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean.
This isn’t the behavior of someone devoted to public service — it is the posture of someone craving control. Leadership demands humility, restraint and respect for institutions entrusted to serve us.
— Anne Krick, Warrenville
Affordability ‘hoax’
President Donald Trump’s repeated use of the word “hoax,” originally designed to stifle allegations of impropriety, has morphed into a strategy to discredit criticism of policy failures. ”Look, affordability’s a hoax that was started by Democrats who caused the problem of pricing,” he recently said.
Initially intended to deflect scrutiny away from his offenses, Trump’s use of this rhetorical device dates to the 2016 presidential campaign when he popularized the phrase “fake news,” then labeled Russian interference in the election a hoax. He went on to dismiss a wide range of transgressions, including, among others, his campaign’s contacts with Russian intelligence operatives, two impeachment proceedings, denial of COVID-19’s lethality and, more recently, his involvement with the infamous sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
While the hoax defense may resonate with Trump’s base, most Americans refuse to be misled by the deception when it comes to providing food and health care for their families.
— Jane Larkin, Tampa, Florida
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