Readers express outrage over family separations at border

Judging by our letters to the editor, Palm Beach Post readers are outraged over the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” enforcement at the U.S. southern border resulting in migrant children being separated from their parents. We are receiving many letters denouncing the policy, and none defending it.

Here is a sampling. More can be found online at mypalmbeachpost.com/opinion.

■ Migrant parents right to look out for their children

I couldn’t be in my wife’s skin when she carried our child for nine months. I couldn’t feel the embryo transform into a fetus that stretched her belly and burdened her body, but that day by day revealed more and more the marvel that would grant me fatherhood.

When she gave birth, my bystander status ended, I had to learn much — but the one thing I knew instinctively was that for as long as I lived, I’d do whatever it took to keep my child safe.

I’m sure this sense of responsibility comes to all parents, in the same way.

So it’s no surprise we see this commitment acting itself out in the actions of the asylum-seekers now pressed against our southern border, the ones being arrested — the ones being ripped apart from their children. Reason tells us that people throughout the world are like us and that they’d bravely suffer for their children, and that they’d grieve profoundly if they lost them.

Ask ourselves, what kind of people are we if we accept the brutality that our government now wages against these parents and their children? What kind of people are we if we stand by leaders that punish a child and parents for reacting to poverty, violence and wanting to find a secure place to live?

What kind of human being would carry out a police action that destroys or cripples forever children and mostly young mothers, who are people, just like us? JOSEPH CARVALKO, JR, NORTH PALM BEACH ■ President can put a stop to problem at border

The president regularly embraces the mean regimes of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, praising their leadership. He ignores their human rights violations. Is it any wonder he’s ignoring the inhumanity committed by the United States when it takes small, innocent children away from parents, sending them to an unknown fate they don’t understand?

Most of our ancestors, except Native Americans, came from foreign countries escaping religious persecution, political violence and poverty for safety and opportunity in the U.S. The Statue of Liberty stands in New York Harbor welcoming immigrants, and Christianity says do unto others...

Regardless of the past, the president has the authority to stop what’s happening at the border. Instead of being caring as he’d have you believe, he’d rather blame others and ignore a compassionate solution.

MARGARET KETTER, JUPITER ■ U.S. should take an interest in countries to our south

In the pursuit of the safety and welfare of U.S. citizens, we send troops and spend an enormous amount of money all over the world. We fight seemingly endless wars as presently exemplified in the Middle East today.

But yet we ignore the war going on below our southern border in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, to name a few of the countries described as being riddled by crime and imminent death to its citizens. This is the basis for the large migration of people trying to escape the atrocities by coming to the U.S.

The parallel between this migration and that seen of the Syrian populace escaping their wartorn country is blatantly similar. There is no problem demanding troops and armament being sent to the Middle East: why are we not treating the wars going on below our southern border with the same regard?

To offer, or insist, on using our military assistance in these countries to contain the violence and atrocities would go a long way toward curtailing the migration of thousands to our southern border.

Maybe a totally different approach to the “immigrant problem” would help this country from damaging its founding principles as we seem to be doing now when we are confronted with these people at our borders. DONALD PODOLSKY, JUPITER

GREGORY BULL / ASSOCIATED PRESS Nicole Hernandez, of the Mexican state of Guerrero, holds on to her mother as they wait with other families to request political asylum in the United States, across the border in Tijuana.