Readers Write: ICE and Border Patrol, nationalizing elections, Democrats, U.S. Attorney’s Office

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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Border czar Tom Homan says he’s going to reduce the number of federal agents in Minnesota from about 3,000 to 2,300. Whoopee.

Mathematically this is akin to a junior high school that has 100 bullies and the principal declares that, henceforth, there will only be 77 bullies remaining.

I hope I’ll remember to feel safer.

Thomas Kendrick, Minneapolis

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Several Minnesota members of Congress were finally allowed to enter the Whipple Federal Building last week and revealed deplorable conditions for adults and children alike. Certainly, we should all be able to agree that we have hit rock-bottom when our children are mishandled at the hands of armed federal ICE agents, taken from their homes and dropped into these facilities.

I have been a child therapist for over 30 years and have helped many children work through past traumas. Know that, even with the best of timely help, this is the type of trauma a child will carry for a long time. Also, the very young ones, like Liam, are too young to fully process this trauma now, so they will have to revisit it repeatedly as they move through developmental stages with increasing capacity to make sense of it.

It is unfathomable to me that our own government routinely, needlessly and carelessly inflicts such damage on these innocent ones. If the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and all the other horrible things we have witnessed, are not enough reason for us to stand up and force ICE to leave, or at least act legally and ethically, let’s at a minimum do it for the children.

Deb Kratz, Mahtomedi

President Donald Trump can’t be serious about the feds taking control of certain states’ voting systems (“Trump, in an escalation, calls for GOP to ‘nationalize’ elections,” Feb. 4). He’s not stupid. He’s a good con artist. He plays one game: Invent a problem, say it over and over until enough of us agree, and then claim he can fix it. Trump plays the game well, but not always. Since he lost to President Joe Biden, he has had all the time and lawyers necessary to prove voting fraud, and he’s failed. Five years of his repeated claims. Not one piece of evidence has stood up to courtroom-quality examination. Now, once again he’s playing Americans as the fools in his game of saying about voting what he’s been saying over and over, hoping enough of us will agree. Are we the fools? We’ll see.

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Witnessing the U.S. executive branch’s continued assault on democracy over the past few months, I was heartened to see that certain elected officials of Minnesota have been standing up to the abuse, at least in their rhetoric. But I was, yet again, disgusted to hear that Rep. Pete Stauber of Minnesota’s Eighth District has introduced the Minnesota Voter Integrity Act in order to further capitulate to the completely corrupt Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice. What kind of representative proposes an ultimatum to his own constituents that forces them to choose between maintaining the privacy of voter information and receiving federal funds for elections? Secretary of State Steve Simon has already labeled this act “an irresponsible stunt.” As bad as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security and the DOJ are, what’s worse is that this representative has assumed that Minnesota is too numb, too dumb or too distracted to see the aim of his legislation: compromising the integrity of our local federal elections and consolidating GOP power, now and into the future. Sad face.

Timothy Johnson, Minneapolis

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Section 4, Article 1, the Constitution of the United States. “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof ... .” I know that generally, the Republican Party of Trump considers the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights to be quaint old documents that can be ignored when it is politically expedient to do so. They have repeatedly transgressed the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech, press and assembly. They have disregarded the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. They smash in doors and shred the Fourth Amendment freedom of protection against warrantless searches and seizures.

Timothy McLean, Blaine

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The irony is thick in that the same entity that refuses to let us see the faces and know the names of the Border Patrol and ICE agents on the ground in Minnesota is pushing so hard for personally identifiable information about the state’s Medicaid and SNAP recipients as well as our Minnesota state voter rolls (“Experts say Trump’s demand for state’s data may be illegal,” Feb. 4).

Michelle Pichaske, Granite Falls, Minn.

It’s overdue for me to congratulate both Gov. Tim Walz and the Democratic Party for their wisdom in choosing to run Sen. Amy Klobuchar as their candidate for governor. I have become very frustrated and at times angry at the Democratic Party in running candidates who have little or no chance of becoming elected. (That would have been the obvious situation if Walz had continued to run for a third term.)

The Democratic Party, if it wants to return us to a position in which sanity reigns in our country, needs to run only candidates who have the best chance to win. That may be the only thing we can learn from the current Republican Party.

Stanley Hacker, Minneapolis

Bravo to the now 14 federal prosecutors who have resigned from the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office in the past month (“8 more federal prosecutors resign,” Feb. 4). Hopefully they will be employed again soon doing legal work that doesn’t require them to turn off their consciences while at the office. Boo to U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen for not showing the same backbone with Attorney General Pam Bondi. I felt deep angst when I read that at a recent staff meeting Rosen was reported as telling staffers to “keep an open mind” and “not be afraid to do unpopular things,” not to mention saying that the U.S. Department of Justice was not asking them “to do anything illegal.” Isn’t the goal that what’s legal also be what’s moral? Thank you again to the federal prosecutors who want to do both.