“We must rein in ICE abuses before another life is lost,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said last month after two fathers, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, in Maine, were shot and killed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
Most Americans agree with Durbin’s sentiment that ICE is out of control, and so do many of his colleagues in Congress. Not a single Democrat voted to hand more funds to the Department of Homeland Security in June.
So it is alarming that Durbin has thrown his weight behind another bill, the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, or “CORCA,” which would empower DHS and ICE to collect data on American shoppers and expand the reach of immigration enforcement into our communities.
The retail industry has lobbied heavily in support, winning bipartisan support from members of Congress who are afraid of being painted as “soft” on crime. However, after learning about the expansion of ICE’s power in this bill, 10 Democratic House co-sponsors ultimately decided not to vote in favor. Now, the bill is being readied for debate in the U.S. Senate.
Knowing that the bill is indefensible on its merits, the retail lobby is going into overdrive to sneak it into the National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass legislative package. The lobby has published op-eds across the country attempting to pressure New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who has long been opposed to CORCA, as well as Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed.
Durbin has been a lead co-sponsor of CORCA and approved moving it quickly and without debate on the National Defense Authorization Act. We call on him and other Democratic senators to reject this bill and continue to lead in the fight to rein in ICE.
A broad coalition of over 130 civil rights, criminal justice reform and immigration groups — including the NAACP, American Civil Liberties Union and others — are urging senators to instead focus on real solutions to keep Americans safe.
Durbin has been a vocal opponent of expanding immigration enforcement, including voting against the Laken Riley Act, which increased ICE’s detention authority and which many senators have come to regret supporting. As civil rights leaders, we urge him now to call for CORCA to be debated on its own merits and to vote no.
Insha Rahman, president, Vera Action
Kica Matos, president, National Immigration Law Center
Unaccompanied children lose legal counsel
Legal service providers, representing nearly 20,000 unaccompanied children across the country, were just defunded by the federal government. This means that children will be forced to appear before an immigration judge alone.
While observing a Chicago immigration courtroom, I saw 12-year-old “Carlos,” standing before an immigration judge. Carlos’ attorney told the judge that Carlos’ father went through the government’s vetting process to have his son released but was detained and deported — a practice the Trump administration has adopted to meet its mass deportation quotas and to get children to “voluntarily” leave the country. Kids are used as bait, and parents obviously come forward hoping to reunite. Who wouldn’t?
Six months later, Carlos and his attorney came back to court. The detention center Carlos was placed in was shutting down. His move to a new facility was imminent. This would partly restart vetting and further delay Carlos’ release or lead to his deportation.
Carlos’ attorney asked for one more extension. The attorney for the government argued against the extension, but the judge granted just another week.
One week later, Carlos was released to his aunt, a U.S. citizen. The judge was visibly relieved.
One child’s life. One family’s drama. Just another day in court with detained kids.
Imagine if Carlos hadn’t had an attorney to advocate for him?
Trump is dismantling the network of nearly 100 legal service providers representing unaccompanied kids like Carlos. The contract to represent these kids, a bipartisan program funded since 2003, came to an end July 31.
Now tens of thousands of children face the possibility of representing themselves in court. Do you know a 12-year-old? This is just wrong.
Joy Olson, Milwaukee
Read up on 1919 race riot
Thank you to the Sun-Times for printing the article headlined “Remembering victims of 1919 Chicago race riot: 38 names set in stone” on July 25. This is an important historical event, and it is fitting that it was memorialized by these stone markers.
For those who want to learn more, I highly recommend the 2018 book “A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919″ by Claire Hartfield. The book examines the events in great detail and includes many pictures — some of which are hard to view because of their stark reality.
Historical parallels between 1919 and today are worth noting: The author explains that tensions that fueled the riot had been building for decades. Waves of white immigrants from Europe and Black migrants from the South converged to form an underclass divided by racial prejudice. This racial animus was exploited by the tycoons who controlled the labor market by pitting these groups against one another.
This situation sounds all too familiar, does it not? Today we have Latino immigrants pitted against the white working class, a situation that continues to be fully exploited by Donald Trump and his supporters.
And that is why we must never forget these events. We risk repeating the same costly mistakes, to our great detriment as a society.
Bob Chimis, Elmwood Park
City made flooding worse
Catherine Nakalembe is right — Chicago’s flooding is a policy failure, not an act of God. I would go further. In some neighborhoods, the city is actively destroying the sewers it’s supposed to maintain.
I am a retired city of Chicago sewer engineer. This summer I had 15 inches of water gushing out of my floor drain and 18 inches of sewage in my basement. I hired and paid a private contractor to televise my drain line to find out why.
The Department of Water Management had installed a new water main on our block. To meet water and sewer separation standards, the crew replaced the private drains with ductile iron pipe. But instead of reconnecting my drain where it had always been, they reconnected it 8 feet upstream of the original connection, against the flow of the main sewer. My house is now a relief valve for the main sewer. That is what gushed up through my floor drain.
It did not stop at my property. At our alderperson’s request, the main sewer was televised as well. That report shows broken pipe and voids beneath the street: new damage to a 100-year-old, 12-inch main sewer that was undersized before anyone touched it.
Requests to correct it have gone nowhere. My drain was dug up twice before being repaired to code.
The fix is not complicated, just expensive. Put the connections back where they belong and repair what was broken by replacing the failing and inadequate 12-inch sewer main with oversized reinforced pipe, 24 to 36 inches.
In my city career, we required private developers to detain their storm-surge water. The city should hold itself to that same standard and use oversized pipe to hold the storm surge under the street instead of in our basements.
I live two blocks from a Deep Tunnel drop shaft. More capacity in the neighborhood pipes would buy that water the time it needs to get to the drop shaft.
Blaming God is convenient. Blaming the weather is convenient. Neither one is responsible for my basement flooding.
Edward Koehler, Ravenswood
Under the weather
I’m sure thousands of American victims of floods, fires and tornadoes are content knowing that President Donald Trump and most Republicans believe that climate change is just a “woke” hoax.
Robert Kleps, Oak Park
Highlight Medicaid, Medicare’s value
At a time when healthcare through Medicaid and Medicare is under constant siege, I hope you will continue to print letters, like Lequita Michelle Mayhew’s recent writeup in support of those beneficial and often lifesaving programs.
After 40 years of private insurance in the often topsy-turvy corporate world, I was able to retire and enroll in Medicare. The stability and peace of mind knowing I am covered are benefits that I couldn’t appreciate until I was in it and in need of care. In the past, I never knew if my employer would change insurers, if those companies would raise rates or if my employer would decide to save money by reducing their contribution.
Based on my experience and many others, I believe the time has come for a national single-payer healthcare system. Many will scream “but my taxes,” but once they realize the net benefits, they will not want to go back.
John Hankes, Streeterville
Joliet Treatment Center’s plight unacceptable
What determines whether a society has become morally bankrupt? I’m not an expert, so I can’t say for sure. However, the investigation by the Marshall Project, Sun-Times and WBEZ of the conditions at the Joliet Treatment Center is quite a clear-cut case that we are far from where we need to be. When prisoners are so desperate for help that the only way they believe they will receive such assistance is to light their cells and themselves on fire, all of us should be disgusted.
Instead of bemoaning a higher property tax, what if we allowed those increased funds to help the Joliet Treatment Center? Is it more important that we maintain the lifestyles, or should we demand that people who are invisible to society not be discarded so carelessly, no matter the cost?
I find it both odd and dispiriting that we collectively accept that perhaps the most vulnerable population — prisoners with severe mental health problems — are living under such horrific conditions.
If we need a selfish reason to safeguard the lives of these inmates, we should consider that by ensuring that they are always treated as humans, we are guaranteeing that the rest of us will not become invisible. This shameful moral failure is our responsibility, yet I doubt that we as a society will fulfill our obligations to provide the most basic human needs to the inmates of the Joliet Treatment Center. If this isn’t a sign of the moral rot at the center of our society, I truly don’t know what is.
Ethan Feingold, Lake View
Cold comfort
Recalling spells like our recent scorching heat waves, I salute and sympathize with all the laborers who work outside. For the roofers, road gangs, landscapers, construction workers and others, there’s no way around such weather — only through it. That’s a toughness I haven’t had to match since my competitive running days. Luckily for them, off hours offer relief indoors.
Not so during the Great Depression. Mom said that for the roughest times before air conditioning became an assumption and home was an oven, the family would soak bedsheets in cool water to wrap in before retiring to the yard for the night. Others dragged out their mattresses or headed for the Chicago parks. And after the heat broke, it might take another three days for building interiors to cool down.
That was then, but even now our Polish-born housekeeper tells me most European housing lacks the priceless appliance we call AC.
So who do the rest of us thank for this underrated blessing? An early 20th century engineer named Willis Carrier. Probably not 1 in 10 people know this, but without him the human comfort level periodically falls clear off the table. And yet even in his native New York state, he’s nearly forgotten. Certainly not by me, though. Every time I walk in from an outside inferno to my temperature-controlled digs, I send positive thoughts along to Mr. C., wherever he is today.
Tom Gregg, Niles