Letters to the Editor: Aggressive ICE arrests don’t align with American values of fairness and justice
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To the editor: Immigration agents aggressively detained a day-care worker, Diana Santillana Galeano, at her workplace with small children present (“Chicago day-care worker detained by immigration agents released after community support,” Nov. 13). Couldn’t they have waited until she was home? Might they have given her time to prepare for her arrest and separation from her family? She was treated like a dangerous criminal, “the worst of the worst” as President Trump declares.
Americans are largely people who value fairness, and this kind of unnecessarily violent arrest is simply not fair. Even if someone supports a general immigration sweep, it should be handled humanely and fairly, and people should be treated with basic human dignity.
Unfortunately, this particular arrest is not a one-off exception to the general policy. The newsworthy raid on the apartment building in Chicago, which the federal government justified by calling it a raid on Tren de Aragua, may have netted a couple of gang members. But it also disrupted the lives of everyone in the building.
Santillana Galeano was legally working and was eventually released, as multiple inappropriately arrested people have been. This kind of generally intrusive and unfair process is simply not American.
Dan Hennessy, Arcadia
