Immigration sweeps can targets innocents

Legal immigrants who are citizens and taxpayers are being targeted in the Rogue Valley and around the country. My Latino helper shared that she, her family, friends and co-workers are being targeted just because they are Latinos. They are told to “Go back to Mexico.”

These American citizens who pay taxes are afraid immigration officers are coming to take them away. A child is afraid to go to school, Latinos are afraid to grocery shop and even attend their church because they have witnessed others randomly being taken from their homes, schools and churches just because of their Latino heritage. Immigration officers go to addresses where illegal Latinos have lived to find now house legal citizens! These residents are arrested anyway. Shocked does not express my outrage.

I support deporting all illegal people coming into our country who are criminals, with cartels pushing illegal drugs and exploitation of children for sex. The immigration officers who arrest legal Latinos need to be screened and fired from their position. Supervision of immigration officers need to restore confidence to the Latino communities they are safe as legal citizens.

Who will take responsibility to stop the random arrests just because they are Latino? Talk to your representatives and senators today. Why should these Americans have to live in fear, afraid to leave their homes? Is this the America where innocent Latinos or other races are arrested and deported in our country because of race?

Barbara Field / Medford

What threatens Southern Oregon

The campaign to terminate federal employees and withhold funds already committed to undertaking critical projects designed to protect Americans is affecting Southern Oregonians. These efforts do not simply affect some nameless, faceless folks living across the nation; they affect us.

It’s probable that withholding funds from the Federal Aviation Administration will ultimately compromise air traffic control in Medford to the detriment of safe air travel in and out of the city. Meanwhile, withholding funds from the Centers for Disease Control research projects will ultimately compromise our health care system.

Terminating employees at, and withholding funds from, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will compromise our local weather office and thus our ability to know about weather patterns such as severe wildfire conditions and thunderstorms that threaten our safety.

Meanwhile, withholding funds from forest management efforts undertaken by, for example, the local outfit Lomakatsi, that reduce wildfire risk will increase the chances that wildfire again decimates the area and threatens the lives and homes of Southern Oregonians.

Finally, allowing unqualified, unelected and unaccountable individuals into the Federal Treasury and Social Security offices and data systems threatens the security of individual and personal data of Southern Oregonians.

There is no doubt that waste exists in Government spending, but undermining entire programs that serve us simply in order to fund tax cuts for the wealthy is mindless, destructive and anti-social nonsense. When will our elected federal legislators put a stop to this?

Alan Journet / Jacksonville