To the editor:

Lucian Truscott, writing in his Jan. 10 newsletter, notes that Trump appropriated $170 billion for immigration and border enforcement in his “Big Beautiful Bill.” To put that number in perspective, the defense budget for Great Britain is $83 billion, while France spends $74 billion.

In other words, our two major allies’ combined defense budgets total $13 billion less than the president is spending to put masked, heavily-armed agents into American cities (Truscott). In effect, he’s created the largest private army a U.S. president has ever had. So what has this private army been up to?

Last month, ICE raided an apartment building in South Chicago, rappelling from helicopters, breaking down doors, ransacking rooms, dragging men, women and children out into the streets in the middle of the night — some naked — claiming some were Venezuelan gang members. Without warrants, 37 people were jailed, including U.S. citizens and one veteran. All were later released without charges (Truscott).

Also, according to Truscott, Homeland Security is looking to hire 10,000 new ICE agents and 3,000 new border patrol agents. Scenes from across the nation have shown school students being tear-gassed, nonviolent demonstrators pepper-sprayed, and for me personally, most shocking — seeing an ICE agent up on a building parapet shooting a minister in the head with a pepper ball while he was praying.

The latest tragedy is the death of Renee Good, a young mother, a Christian and former missionary, who was shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. The description of stuffed animals in the glove compartment of her car–she had just dropped her daughter at school–is poignant (Heather Richardson, Jan 8 newsletter). Hard to square that image with the Trump administration’s officials calling her a radical leftist and terrorist.

Watching ICE agents on the streets of Minneapolis tear-gassing crowds and taking down bystanders because they are filming or just observing echoes the behavior of the repressive regimes in Latin America and the Middle East. This is not who we are as Americans. We are better than this.

Kirk Peterson

Lake Clear