Readers sound off on Homeland Security, Donald Trump, guns
Aggressive tactics
Recently, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson confirmed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stepped up harsh enforcement actions against families and children from Central America. ICE has targeted asylum seekers in Missouri and Kansas.
I believe the Obama administration has set up these refugees and asylum seekers for failure.
First, they are treated as illegal border crossers, rather than people fleeing violence who are turning themselves in to seek asylum. Then the government betrays them again by rushing them through an extremely complicated legal process without providing attorneys.
We need to treat these vulnerable families and children with integrity and ensure that our judicial system works fairly. That is what our country is about.
As an immigration lawyer and a volunteer with the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project, I have seen time and time again that the people picked up in raids haven’t had a real chance to claim asylum and protection.
These overly aggressive enforcement tactics are unnecessary and need to stop.
Angela Ferguson
Kansas City
Unfit for president
Since 1976, every major-party presidential nominee has made his tax returns public.
But Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has refused to release his tax returns. In fact, he said they are none of our business.
Trump claims he can’t release them because he is under an Internal Revenue Service audit, but that is simply not true. President Richard Nixon released his tax returns while being audited by the IRS.
So, what is Trump hiding?
He consistently brags about his enormous wealth, but maybe he is not as rich as he boasts. Or, he might be hiding his income in tax shelters overseas.
Possibly, his charitable contributions are not as generous as he claims or he doesn’t want to reveal his actual tax rate.
Trump’s unwillingness to release his tax returns shows a pattern of dishonesty and a lack of transparency that render him unfit to be president.
Jane Toliver
Leawood
Single-shot guns
On suggestions for reducing gun violence, my knowledge of guns is limited, but I think it is possible to have a single-shot handgun for defense in one’s own home and a single-shot gun for hunting.
If there is no need for multiple-shot guns and assault weapons, why is their manufacture and importation permitted? There would be no way to retrieve heavy weaponry, but at least forbidding their manufacture or importation would give those bent on violence less lethal weaponry.
Helen Roser
Manhattan, Kan.
Diuguid column
I enjoyed Lewis Diuguid’s June 8 reflections, “Ali seen as hero by many black people,” on the immense pride American blacks felt for Muhammad Ali when he emerged in the early 1960s. Diuguid mentions his father’s generation having a similar prideful love of Joe Louis in the 1930s and ‘40s.
President Jimmy Carter tells a moving anecdote of a Georgia boyhood memory of Joe Louis winning the heavyweight championship over Max Schmeling. A couple of the black workers came to the house and asked Jimmy’s father whether they could listen to the fight on the Carters’ radio. “Daddy told them they could,” the former president said.
The Carters expected a handful. That night some 40 men and boys showed up. The guests remained quiet and respectful throughout the fight, but when it was over and they’d returned to the workers’ quarters, “All hell broke loose!”
The former president recalled that the celebration lasted until daybreak.
Sports have unmistakably played an ennobling role in elevating minorities across the globe.
Larry Heffel
Lenexa
Kansas meddling
It is sad but totally expected that the state Supreme Court held that the latest attempt by the Kansas Legislature to deal with public school funding was unconstitutional (6-4, A1, “ ’05 law could affect school feud”).
Predictably, the governor, Senate President Susan Wagle, House Speaker Ray Merrick and other legislators have described the court’s decision to be overreaching and intrusive.
I find this argument to be ludicrous and totally self-serving. If these government officials think the court is intruding on their turf, then the solution is simple. Follow the state Constitution.
Edward Acosta
Olathe
This story was originally published June 9, 2016 at 3:00 PM with the headline "Readers sound off on Homeland Security, Donald Trump, guns."