To the Editor:
Re “Most Migrants Arrive Believing They Can Stay,” by Miriam Jordan (news analysis, front page, Feb. 1):
While Ms. Jordan acknowledges that we live “in an era of mass migration — fueled by conflict, climate change, poverty and political repression,” her analysis understates the human needs that push desperate people to seek protection at our borders.
An investigation by The El Paso Times found that migrant deaths surged at the El Paso border in fiscal year 2023 to the highest level on record. Cruel policies like Title 42 and “Remain in Mexico” stranded many in dangerous situations in cities like Ciudad Juárez or drove them to risk death. Despite this — because of the urgency of their needs — migrants still come.
The piece does not grasp the failure of U.S. enforcement. In fiscal year 2023, the Biden administration deported more than 142,000 immigrants. It deported 20 percent more parents and children than President Trump removed in fiscal year 2020. Still, people come.
Ultimately, we need long-term and sustainable solutions, including more legal pathways to enter the U.S. in the face of a changing world. We know from our daily work that when people have orderly, legal options for entering the country, they take them. Our chaos and fears are the result of our choice not to provide these solutions.
Marisa Limón Garza
El Paso
The writer is executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
To the Editor:
It’s true that our asylum system is under-resourced. We need more trained officials to adjudicate claims, and more funding for legal representation and community-based case management to help people navigate the process.
Instead, Congress is considering legislation that would revive failed policies that are inefficient, costly and unjust, including mass detention and fast-tracked deportations devoid of due process. Such measures will only exacerbate chaos and dysfunction.
Lawmakers justify these proposals with the unfounded assertion that people are not fleeing “real” danger and merely “gaming” the system, pointing to low asylum grant rates in some jurisdictions as evidence. As an attorney who has worked on hundreds of asylum cases, I question this reasoning.
Asylum adjudications are notoriously arbitrary and riddled with bias, and many (even children) are forced to represent themselves. I routinely see people with meritorious claims wrongly denied, only to have those decisions overturned on appeal.
One of the most common sentiments we hear is that, given the choice, our clients never would have left home. They have suffered indignities unimaginable to most U.S. citizens — on their treacherous journey to our border, in ICE detention, and during a retraumatizing legal process — because staying home would amount to a death sentence.
Blaine Bookey
San Francisco
The writer is legal director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies and adjunct professor of Law at UC Law San Francisco.
To the Editor:
I appreciate Miriam Jordan’s reporting on our broken immigration system, yet she glossed over the depth of migrants’ suffering at the hands of our system and unfairly generalized the motivations of asylum seekers.
I run a nonprofit agency that provides food, water, blankets and tents at the camps she mentions near Jacumba Hot Springs, Calif. They are essentially open-air detention sites, where on any given day hundreds of migrants who crossed the border are told by U.S. Border Patrol to wait — often several nights in a row in the freezing desert — until they are taken into custody.
This isn’t a free way into the country. These desperate people wouldn’t have had to take this route if the Biden administration had not largely blocked asylum seekers from presenting themselves at ports of entry.
I also want to set the record straight about her point that many migrants file weak asylum claims as an excuse to get work permits. In my work, I’ve spoken with thousands of migrants and learned about the extent of the persecution they’re fleeing. It is dehumanizing and unfair to imply that an incredibly diverse group of migrants who are legitimately seeking protection are gaming the system.
Erika Pinheiro
San Diego
The writer is executive director of Al Otro Lado.
Palestinian Suffering and Israeli Dilemmas
To the Editor:
Re “We Can’t Justify Such Suffering,” by Nicholas Kristof (column, Feb. 4):
Palestinian suffering is real, but Mr. Kristof fails to consider the many complexities of the conflict.
While trying to give the appearance of understanding Israel’s many dilemmas, he actually pays only lip service to those realities. He refers to how terrible the massacre was on Oct. 7 and how Israel needed to go after Hamas after that tragic day, and he mentions the fact that Hamas hides its operations and military headquarters in civilian areas.
He then goes on to launch an assault on Israel’s war effort — as if none of those things mattered.
It would be satisfactory had Mr. Kristof talked about Palestinian suffering without simply putting the onus on Israel. Instead, by presenting it as all on Israel, and by not offering an alternative approach for Israel to deal with its perilous situation, he leaves the reader with the conclusion, though not explicitly, that Israel should stop its war effort and leave Hamas in power. This is a nonstarter for the Jewish state.
Let’s remember that Hamas has publicly stated that it will try to repeat Oct. 7 many times in the future. And as Americans who remember 9/11, let us not forget that Hamas is right next door to Israel’s civilian population, not thousands of miles away.
Jonathan A. Greenblatt
New York
The writer is the C.E.O. and national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
To the Editor:
Nicholas Kristof describes children enduring pain and suffering amid devastation in Gaza. One can only wonder why Hamas has yet to accept the cease-fire offered to ease the suffering of Gaza’s children — even if imperfect and temporary.
Jessica Kaplan
New York
Preserving the Moon’s Mystique
To the Editor:
Re “What We Do to the Moon Will Transform It Forever,” by Rebecca Boyle (Opinion guest essay, Jan. 28):
The moon’s celestial beauty has probably inspired more poetry than any other object on Earth or in the universe. In Greek, Roman and Near Eastern mythology, the silvery orb was venerated as a deity. In modern times, the Apollo 11 moon landing stands as humanity’s greatest technological achievement.
Yet barring an international treaty limiting humankind’s footprint, as lunar landers proliferate and people eventually settle there, the moon may someday look much different when viewed from Earth — its majesty and mystique lost forever.
To be sure, we should continue to reach for the moon and worlds beyond. Exploration is coded in our DNA. But we must do so responsibly, in a way that treats the moon with more reverence than we have thus far shown Earth, and that leaves intact for generations to come the moon’s irreplaceable haunting beauty.
Stephen A. Silver
San Francisco