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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 20, 2018)
6A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2018 editor@dailyastorian.com KARI BORGEN Publisher JIM VAN NOSTRAND Editor Founded in 1873 JEREMY FELDMAN Circulation Manager DEBRA BLOOM Business Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN Production Manager CARL EARL Systems Manager OUR VIEW Congress — not local cops — responsible for ICE T his is a complicated time to be a rural sheriff or small town police chief. There is a nationwide opi- oid crisis and a worrisome resurgence of methamphetamine use in the Pacific Northwest — with associated thefts and break-ins. Meanwhile, federal immi- gration enforcement under the Trump administration has heightened conflicts and tensions between neighbors. Immigration isn’t the business of local law-enforcement agencies, which have plenty on their understaffed sched- ules without getting involved in issues for which they are neither paid nor trained. As a matter of public policy, national and local leaders decided long ago that protecting all residents against crime is a goal best served by maintain- ing a separation between criminal and immigration law. If immigrants have to fear arrest by local cops because of flaws in their legal status, they are less likely to call for help or assist in com- bating crimes that hurt everybody. It has never been controversial to seek, arrest, prosecute, imprison and deport undocumented immigrants who commit felonies or serious misdemean- ors. Often preying on their immigrant neighbors, criminal gangs on the West Coast were targeted as much or more by the Obama administration as they are by Trump. Against such individ- uals, we all have common cause with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Associated Press Trump administration deportation policies put local enforcement in awkward situations. Controversies and conflicts arise in the case of detaining and deporting oth- erwise law-abiding immigrants who overstay visas or come across the bor- der illegally in seek of work. In this area, they usually end up in aquacul- tural, agricultural and service-indus- try jobs that are regarded as unappeal- ing by citizens — tough and dirty work at all hours of the night and day. Many citizens in the Pacific Northwest and throughout the nation find it contempt- ible and economically self-defeating to target them. “It ought not to be — and it has never before been — that those who have lived without incident in this country for years are subjected to treat- ment we associate with regimes we revile as unjust,” a U.S. District Court judge said recently in ordering the release of an immigration activist. “We are not that country.” However, a substantial number of other citizens are deeply offended that immigration laws have long been scoffed at. Officers are detaining suspects in courthouses more often, and ICE teams no longer shy from taking additional people into custody when they knock on doors to arrest a targeted person, the Washington Post reported on Feb. 11. “What are we supposed to do?” an ICE spokesman asked. If ICE fails to uphold its duties to enforce immigration laws, he added, “then the system has no integrity.” Anytime there is such a sharp split in opinion, local office holders and appointees must trend gingerly. No matter their personal views, sheriffs and police have no business diverting resources to help ICE, while neither may they impede immigration enforce- ment. Officials in Pacific County — which has been featured in national and international news stories about ICE — have to straddle this societal fault line. There’s no indication they have trans- gressed boundaries in either direction, for or against ICE or immigrants. But this hasn’t kept them out of hot water with all constituents. Law officers face a similar dilemma throughout the region and nation. Lessons from Pacific County include the need for agency leaders to know precisely what information they are receiving or providing ICE. They must act with good conscience in upholding state and local laws, steering clear of national disagreements. Immigration laws — whatever we individually think of them — originate in Congress. By choosing who to elect or send packing for home, citizens will have their chance this November to tell ICE whether a majority of us like what it is doing. LETTERS WELCOME Letters should be exclusive to The Daily Astorian. Letters should be fewer than 250 words and must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. You will be contacted to confirm authorship. All letters are subject to editing for space, grammar, and, on occa- sion, factual accuracy. Only two letters per writer are allowed each month. Letters written in response to other letter writers should address the issue at hand and, rather than mentioning the writer by name, should refer to the headline and date the letter was published. Dis- course should be civil and people should be referred to in a respectful manner. Letters in poor taste will not be printed. Send via email to editor@dai- lyastorian.com, online at dailyasto- rian.com/submit_letters, in person at 949 Exchange St. in Astoria or 1555 North Roosevelt in Seaside, or mail to Letters to the Editor, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR 97103. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Need less of a police state mentality was surprised and dismayed by the Asto- ria City Council’s recent stance on home- less individuals (“Astoria police outline approach to the homeless,” The Daily Asto- rian, Feb. 9). Bad behavior is not acceptable in homeless, or more fortunate folks, but that’s not a homeless issue. Illegal activity should not be allowed, but that’s not a homeless problem. So that leaves the issue of public urination and defe- cation, and unauthorized camping. Perhaps a simple, and humane solution would be more public restrooms. And to be clear, it’s not camping; it’s homelessness. I believe the City Council could approach the issue with less of a police state mentality. JD WELLS Astoria The smart, articulate, surviving students of the Parkland (Florida) High School have been dismayed that in his response to the killings, Trump did not use the word “gun.” They felt his words were needlessly divi- sive. These are wonderful, savvy kids who know what they know, despite their pain and loss. They are taking up the cudgel for the nation, and invite us all to join them in their fight for gun control. They have a list of all the folks in Congress who take dona- tions from the National Rifle Association, and are calling them out, including Trump, whose contributions from the NRA are in the millions. The students are calling for anti-gun vio- lence demonstrations in Washington, and other cities, on March 24. Change is coming. MARY TANGUAY WEBB Astoria Students calling out Trump, Congress on gun violence We’ve pushed God out of our culture M A I ost women don’t like President Don- ald Trump, and every day the tally grows. I predict that during the midterm elections this fall, women will vote in droves, and there will be a huge adjustment in the Congress that will make it very diffi- cult for him to continue doing the kinds of dreadful things he does. He may just return to the Trump Towers and call it a day. few weeks ago I answered another writer who could not understand why America has been experiencing so many mass killings of late. My premise was that students all across the nation, and the public, have been indoctrinated with humanism. Pushing the idea of a close and personal God out of our culture has led some to the conclusion that they were not accountable to anybody. But, when inconvenient evidence that is contrary to humanistic dogma shows up from time to time, it is so very interest- ing what the educators and the leaders in our society do with it. For instance, recently the discovery of soft and spongy blood tissue found in dino- saur bones was announced by some scien- tist. If this is true, and the evidence is quite compelling, then it becomes obvious that these creatures were not over 70 million years old. Although remarkable for shaking up some firmly held notions about Darwinism, the end result hasn’t been as earth shattering as it could have been. Why? It is my opin- ion that given the choice between discard- ing the religiously held beliefs of evolution, and admitting that the Darwinism has been wrong for 150 years or more, most would rather ignore the facts placed before them and continue in their blissful ignorance. CARL YATES Seaside Americans need to come to their senses T he same question always emerges: How can we keep school massacres from hap- pening again? The answer, inevitably, is … more guns. But it shouldn’t take a Saturday Night Live skit to illustrate how ludicrous arming everybody is. Maybe we’re asking the wrong question. Maybe we should ask, “Why do we place a higher value on owning firearms than we place on keeping firearms out of the hands of crazy people?” The answer is simple. It’s good busi- ness for gun and ammunition manufactur- ers. The National Rifle Association (NRA) is still joined at the waist with gun manufac- turers, as securely as Siamese twins, Chang and Eng. I have to hand it to the gun industry’s impressive little sales cycle. Every massacre draws attention to their products, yet some- how never to the people ultimately respon- sible for their production. We Americans are too stubborn, arrogant, and insulated to understand that developed nations like Japan and Australia have already solved or amelio- rated the gun problem. That old adage about people killing peo- ple, not guns killing people, is absurd. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise, since it was scripted by the NRA. A more accu- rate rewrite would be: People with access to guns kill people. Other nations want to believe that Amer- icans can be counted on to do what’s right, if only after we’ve exhausted every other option. I’ll continue to hold out hope — hope that someday Americans will come to their senses and “do the right thing.” ROBERT BRAKE Ocean Park
