Respect our Border Patrol agents, we don't know the dangers they face daily: Readers sound off

Letter to the editor:

Critics of Customs and Border Protection and the Border Patrol, who are taking these agencies to task for the children who died under their watch, don’t know the whole story — and neither do I.

Please, don't criticize the government for these horrible tragedies. Critics of the government in these situations are using children’s deaths as a political issue. None of the people who writes these scathing opinions about our government agents at the borders were there. They don’t know what happened.

Why did their parents bring these children on this awful journey? I know some say they did it to leave political persecution in their native countries. However, they knew it was a horrible and potential deadly journey through multiple countries before arriving at the U.S. border. The parents of these children have a responsibility to protect them.

Talker: How many immigrant children need to die before border policies change?

Stop playing politics with this issue here in the U.S. If people want to enact change, go to El Salvador or Guatemala and change the governments of those nations. That’s where the problem lies. Make your statements to the governments of those horrible, violence-strewn countries. But please, stop criticizing our Border Patrol and immigration officers. They do a very tough job, and I’m sure they have the interest of all people at heart.

Marvin Woodie; Bluefield, W.V.

For children’s sake, fix chaos at border

Letter to the editor:

The chaos at the border must stop. The likelihood of successful entry encourages people to drag children on perilous thousand-mile treks through inhospitable terrain. Some perish on the journey and others in the arms of authorities.

Talker: The shutdown is hurting people, leaving Americans in uncertainty

We've spent gargantuan sums of money on "border security" and fencing, yet the status quo persists. A wall would reduce the torrent to a trickle. If most of the children of illegal immigrants voted Republican, we'd have a gator-filled moat.

Dwayne Keith; Lakeland, Fla.

Without Mattis, foreign policy vision lost

Letter to the editor:

The abrupt departure of Secretary of Defense James Mattis creates a serious void in the administration’s military and foreign policy expertise.

This rupture highlights the most critical problem the administration faces — the lack of an overall geopolitical strategic vision.

Talker: Michael Flynn should thank Judge Sullivan for postponing his sentencing

Russia and Iran have a clear goal in Syria — eliminate and/or reduce U.S. influence and replace it with their control. The United States had three objectives in Syria: Support the rebels who were opposing the Syrian president, protect and support Kurds and eliminate terrorists. We abandoned those objectives. America First is not a strategy. A strategy for the United States should be the strengthening of democratic institutions to offset the erosion of democracies.

Ed Houlihan; Ridgewood, N.J.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Respect our Border Patrol agents, we don't know the dangers they face daily: Readers sound off