Years ago I attended a friend’s naturalization ceremony. She was in America after her family left their homeland to escape oppression. The ceremony was deeply moving and filled me with pride and love for our country — feelings my grandfather must have experienced many years earlier when he became a citizen. That friend is now a nurse practitioner promoting the health of her fellow Americans.

Today masked federal agents wait outside public buildings to prevent people like my grandfather from becoming productive American citizens. Instead, they will be forcibly returned to situations they felt they needed to leave. Surely there must be something wrong with that.

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these… ye have done it unto me.”

Surely we can do better.

Ann Briskey

Altoona