Readers Write: Immigration and families, mining and environmental protection, suicide risks and farmers

Good, the president has decreed that families trying to enter the U.S. can stay together. ("In reversal, Trump signs order stopping family separation," StarTribune.com, June 20). Now what happens to the thousands of parents, children and siblings who have been separated into various camps and foster homes? Have the children been cared for by people who have been background-checked, as professional caregivers should be? Do the parents have information on where their children are? Do the children who are old enough know where their parents and/or siblings are? Is the government making reunions possible as soon as possible, at no cost to the families?

Besides being cruel and inhumane, this policy was disgustingly sloppy, ill-thought-out and mismanaged. How are these people in charge of anything? How can they be trusted?

• • •

By taking credit as a personal triumph for temporarily rescinding his administration's policy separating immigrant families and detaining children at the border, President Donald Trump is like an arsonist seeking accolades for tossing water to try to douse a fire he started.

Where there's smoke, whoever devised the misguided arrangement should be fired.

• • •

The can just got kicked down the road, again.

Democrats, Republicans, special-interest groups, the media and the parents of these children win.

If we are a nation of laws, should we not be enforcing them? And if we choose not to enforce the law, should Congress just get rid of it?

I may be wrong, but the Republicans are just going to spin their wheels on Thursday's House vote on immigration. No matter what bill is presented, every Democrat will vote no.

Here comes the can again. And there goes the wall idea.

Editor's note: Trump's executive order said that officials will continue to criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the border illegally but will seek to find or build facilities that can hold families together instead of separating them while their legal cases are considered by the courts.

This is a response to the editor's note (Readers Write, June 20) stating that "there is no law requiring the separation of families attempting to cross the border." Your liberal, fake-news rag daily shows your hate for our president. The manner in which your note was written spells it out that you don't like this particular law this administration is enforcing that past ones rarely did. Boo-hoo! It's about time. The Trump administration "decided to prosecute illegal crossings." ILLEGAL. You or none of the liberal criers don't direct your poor-baby beef at the criminal parents or the s---hole countries that do nothing to stop them. I want to drive 100, 120 miles per hour whenever I want to. That should be OK. It's ONLY illegal!

• • •

Amid discussion of what to do about immigration — laws or no laws, whether actions are cruel or necessary, and who's to blame — I believe we all should sit back and reflect on a few questions: 1) What would it take for you to uproot your family, leave your home behind and travel hundreds of miles with no assurances of safety — how bad would it have to be? 2) What would you be willing to do to give your family peace and a safe place to live? 3) What would it feel like to have the authorities take your children from you in a strange place?

Finally, a rational presentation for the use of ketamine in emergency situations ("Discussion of ketamine use on suspects is incomplete," counterpoint, June 20). This presentation was formulated by EMTs and heads of ambulance services who have direct interaction with individuals for whom ketamine was needed. These people put forward nonemotional arguments. Until now, all we were given were articles on the "news" pages with emotionally charged words and phrases.

The news articles have described the restrained individuals as already being in a controlled situation, as if they were lying in the ambulances peacefully singing choir songs. They were not. These were violent individuals who are frequently high on drugs, some of which make the individual insensitive to pain. Even in restraints, individuals can be in violent crises and even break their own bones fighting the restraints. They are unable to feel pain. They require sedation for their own safety.

• • •

I speak from over 49 years of experience as an anesthesiologist. Ketamine is an intravenous anesthetic drug with unique properties of action.

However, using it randomly, beyond the confines of approved anesthetic operating facilities is not a practice condoned or accepted by any guidelines I am familiar with. The drug itself increases oral secretions while sensitizing the upper airway to potential spasm, which would require a very skilled operator to overcome. In addition, a full stomach with vomiting, aspiration and death could occur, not to mention additive effects of prescribed or illegal medication. This entire utilization of ketamine is a recipe for significant consequences, possibly disastrous.

The spokeswoman for Twin Metals, a subsidiary of Chilean mining behemoth Antofagasta, disputes the common-sense notion that putting a sulfide mine in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness watershed is a bad idea because of the environmental review and permitting process will certainly work. What this mining company should tell us is how many sulfide mines have been operating for at least 10 years and have no pollution, and how the results of such mines match the projections.

Jim Kuipers and Ann Maest did just that in 2006 in their detailed scientific study (228 pages) in which 21 of the 25 hard-rock U.S. mines, selected for their detailed environmental-impact statements, exceeded their impact on water-quality projections, some catastrophically.

Finally, they should explain why the U.S. Forest Service was prevented by the new administration from performing its two-year study of the whole idea of sulfide mining in the BWCA watershed, and if it has any relationship to the fact the CEO of Antofagasta bought a $5 million townhouse in Washington, D.C., the week after the presidential election and promptly rented it to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

Recently I attended a rural listening session hosted by the Minnesota Farmers Union. It was wrenching to hear the farmers tell about their financial struggles. At the end of the session, a suicide hotline number was given out by a representative of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. We don't create suicide hotlines for the captains of other industries, do we?