Editor: In the last paragraph of Joseph Walker's letter to the editor entitled, "Democrats' support for criminals" and published in the Tracy Press on February 6th, Mr. Walker states that the more than 400,000 deportations executed by the Trump administration during the past year were of those who had been charged with or convicted of crimes.
Allow me to stipulate that I fully support maintaining secure borders - presuming that effort includes following federal and international asylum laws. Furthermore, I support consideration of removal of any immigrant who has been convicted of a crime - and most certainly, violent crime.
Whatever happened, though, to the supposition of innocence until proven guilty? Merely being charged with a crime is not a crime. Either is entering the country without proper documentation and not conforming to asylum laws - it is a civil violation, akin to jaywalking, or not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign. If you haven't been convicted of a crime then you are not proven a criminal, and in a decent and civil society, you should therefore not be referred to as one. If you haven't committed a crime, it should be presumed that you ought not be convicted of one.
Of the over 400,000 deportations Mr. Walker references, less than 14% (1 in 7) were convicted of violent crime, and 40% (over 160,000) have no criminal record whatsoever. Do we really want to live in a place where you can be snatched up and tossed from the country for crossing the street the wrong way, or running a stop sign - or worse, merely because someone has accused you of wrongdoing?
Daniel Wells,
Tracy, CA