Donald Trump and Republicans are using the cruel method of fear to illegally deport innocent people

U.S. as a police state, with fear as tool-of-choice

Protesters with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles and community members march to denounce the Donald Trump administration's recent attacks on free speech and immigrant rights including the street abduction and arrest of Rümeysa Öztürk at Placita Olverain downtown Los Angeles on April 1, 2025.

Echo opinion letter published in the Penn-Bay Pilot newspaper circulated in Midcoast Maine- Rockland, Thomaston and Camden.

Dear Editor:  Very diturbing abduction video footage from two separate incidents was aired in national media, which should alarm everyone. Ostensibly each was to deliver messages about the Trump administration’s apprehension and deportation of people in our country, but through a different lens, they provide images of how this administration regards women.

The first showed the ambush of a 30 year old Tuft’s University Ph.D student by six ICE officers, all dressed in black, who jumped her, surrounding and then handcuffing the petite woman as she was quietly walking down a sidewalk in late afternoon.

This seemed almost choreographed to resemble many girls’ and women’s worst nightmares. 😰😨😱Under authoritarian dictatorships such behavior is common, but aside from violent suspects, in the U.S., this is not how we typically arrest people.

Later this same week, a hideous video showed Kristi Noam, Secretary of Homeland Security, visiting one of the world’s deadliest El Salvador prisons, using it as a backdrop to underscore her message and intention to deport people.

Surrounded by guards and wearing a form fitting cotton jersey, she did her power walk before hundreds of the men she had sent there who looked on, locked in cages. The word “dominatrix” came to mind; she lacked only the whip. Someone reminded me: Noam is also the woman who had bragged about shooting her dog. Trump was fully aware of what Noam was capable of when he chose her to be our Secretary of Homeland Security.

These two chilling, visual examples, in the same week, demonstrate that women have more to worry about than their reproductive health. In forming the U.S. into a police state, Trump and ICE are willing to victimize women as well as use them to further his own agenda. In both cases, his tool-of-choice is fear.

From: Mary Orear lives in Rockport, Maine

Letter to Senator Susan Collins from constituent- Follow the example of Margaret Chase Smith of Maine

Stand up❗ Senator Collins

Opinion letter published in the PenBay Pilot (Penobscot Bay Pilot), in Rockland, Maine.  Dear Senator Collins:

As we well know, Senator Margaret Chase Smith stood up to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and brought to a close his unjustified, unconstitutional witch hunt for Communists which he suspected lurked everywhere. 

McCarthy's bullying ruined the lives of many Americans and scared even more. Senator Smith's leadership is lauded today, over 70 years later, and Maine is proud to claim her as one of ours.

Now it's your turn.

Our country is in turmoil. Trump has threatened and is carrying out retribution. Federal employees are being fired for doing their jobs while their important government agencies are being taken over by individuals with no ability, experience, or expertise whose goal seems to be to gut or close the agencies entirely. January 6th Criminals convicted of storming the Capital have been released from prison without serving their sentences; many people wonder whether the rule of law even stands any more. 

Others wonder if this country is going to continue fulfilling the promises of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The people calling for these actions don't seem concerned about the repercussions - national or international, intentional or otherwise.

It's now your turn to show the entire country, and Maine in particular, that you put our country before your party.

You need to show everyone that you can't be intimidated into voting for unethical, immoral, inexperienced and downright absurd people to head various departments.

More than that, you need to stand for what's right and just and against the outrageous and often unconstitutional actions of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Your challenge is to be your most courageous self and lead others to be the same.

In the past you have often attempted to find middle ground. I don't think that's appropriate here. You need to be "all in" in order to turn around this attempt to gut our country.

I believe you have it in you to do all this, and I believe that should your most courageous self prevail, you will be remembered in Maine and throughout the country, as is Senator Margaret Chase Smith.

From Mary Orear,  in Rockport Maine