Thank you for Amy Fried’s Jan. 26 op-ed on immigration enforcement (“The ICE surge in Maine is relying on lies“). In many ways, the current ICE surge is the Trump administration in miniature: a gigantic transmogrification machine.

Residents of the United States who can’t document that they were born here, especially if they don’t look “white” — no matter what kind of legal permission they may have — their presence here is illegitimate and they, therefore, deserve to be deported. Members of federal law enforcement — even when masked and not clearly identified — are by definition enforcing the law, no matter how lawless their behavior may seem. Anyone expressing doubt or disapproval of their behavior must therefore be a domestic terrorist. If anyone questions this logic, they are probably a member of “Antifa” and paid to express these deeply subversive thoughts.

But is a law enforcement operation boasting that only four of 200 detainees have a documented criminal history well targeted? Is unleashing thousands of well-armed officers, untrained in urban policing on our city streets, the most effective way to apprehend “the worst of the worst”? Why are we spending billions of dollars to detain people with work permits or pending asylum claims while cutting the number of immigration judges who might decide those cases?

Those asking these questions or acting on their doubts are neither traitors nor terrorists. They are fulfilling their responsibilities as taxpayers, voters or caring community members to “live in truth.” No functioning democracy can go by the philosophy “Obey or die.”

Lisa Feldman
Orono