To the editor: I will confess, I didn’t finish reading Doyle McManus’ Nov. 11 column, “What can a new President Trump really do on Day One? A guide for the worried.”
I stopped after he quoted former Immigration and Customs Enforcement leader Tom Homan saying there won’t be mass deportation sweeps or concentration camps under Trump, with no justification for that claim.
I can’t read the future, but why would anyone assume there’s a bottom to the incoming administration’s cruelty? Where have President-elect Donald Trump or his allies promised they won’t build camps? And if they haven’t made that promise, what legal mechanism in the Republican-controlled government would prevent them from doing so?
McManus is correct that deporting 11 million people would be a logistical nightmare, but that’s been true of every such atrocity in human history. It was true 80 years ago when the federal government imprisoned more than 100,000 Japanese Americans — in concentration camps! — for no reason other than their ethnicity.
I have yet to see a compelling reason why nothing like that could happen today.
Katelyn Best, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Considering Trump’s vicious plan to deport millions of people from this country, I couldn’t help but think of my grandparents.
In 1911, my mother’s mother, age 16, left her family and boarded a ship from Russia without knowing a single person on board and made her way to Baltimore. She couldn’t speak the language but with complete determination she worked hard, married, raised a family and owned several businesses. She was a proud American citizen.
There have been millions like her since.
The vitriol spewed by Trump adviser Stephen Miller when he said before the election, “America is for Americans and Americans only,” harked back to a dark time in history when, before World War II, we isolated ourselves and left oppressed people elsewhere in peril.
To have strict immigration laws is imperative, but to play God with human beings who are here and striving for a better life is wrong. It is easy and tempting to close our eyes and look away from all that is being planned, but it is more important than ever to pay close attention.
Frances Terrell Lippman, Sherman Oaks
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To the editor: Thanks to McManus for penning a realistic and sane examination of Trump’s victory. I found his viewpoint strangely uplifting.
Like most Democrats, I am heartbroken by Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss. But McManus’ reminder of the impact of public opinion somehow lessens the blow.
A majority of Americans voted for him, and most of them are a lot like me — just more conservative. I pray that those who voted for him would join the rest of us to rein him in if he tries to go too far.
Jerrold Coleman, Santa Clarita