To the Editor:
Re “D.H.S. Expanding Push to Identify Opponents of ICE” (front page, Feb. 14):
No need for the Department of Homeland Security to skulk around social media sites, issuing subpoenas to large tech companies for personal information about anonymous people opposed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Go no further than right here, D.H.S.! I’m implacably opposed to ICE and the chilling totalitarian police state that it’s trying so hard to create. Nor am I anonymous.
I’m prepared to stand up to you in broad daylight, on perhaps the most important media platform that we have in this country right now. So too, apparently, are all the other self-identified people in today’s Letters column standing proudly and defiantly beside me.
Nancy Stark New York
To the Editor:
It is not in the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security to surveil people who are critical of the agency or its abhorrent and illegal actions. It is the department’s mandate to protect the homeland.
To the extent that ICE performs its lawful functions and someone interferes with it, it is legally authorized to pursue that person. But pre-emptive surveillance of our citizens by any arm of our government is unconstitutional. Plain and simple.
To emphasize: Criticizing and opposing any part of our government are fully lawful! What D.H.S. and ICE are doing is not.
If only those at the head of these agencies had to read and understand the Constitution before swearing their oaths of office, what a safer, more secure homeland we would be in.
Bonnie Selterman Chappaqua, N.Y.
To the Editor:
The front page of The New York Times on Saturday gave me pause. On the left: “Digital Dragnet Helps Iran Round Up Dissenters.” On the right: “D.H.S. Expanding Push to Identify Opponents of ICE.”
It seems that Iran and the United States have much in common, by identifying and curtailing any protest to their leadership. Pause, indeed.
Richard Donelly Providence, R.I.
Honor Antislavery Americans as We Mark 1776
To the Editor:
Re “Battle Erupts in the Cradle of Liberty” (Arts, Feb. 9) and “Washington Had Slaves. A Display Must Be Restored” (news article, Feb. 18):
The polarized argument over how to represent slavery at the nation’s founding misses the crucial point that the newly formed United States — and especially Philadelphia — pioneered antislavery thought and activism.
Celebrators and critics alike have neglected this history. Five days before the battles at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Philadelphia witnessed the formation of what would become the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the first antislavery organization of its kind anywhere. It was initiated by Anthony Benezet, a Philadelphian and French-born immigrant, who was already one of the leading proponents of abolition in the Atlantic world.
Numerous other Philadelphians followed these examples, including Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, two African Americans born into slavery who became founders of, respectively, the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Episcopal Church; and founders like Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, who, though slaveholders for a time, became leading abolitionists.
While wrestling with a difficult past, why not honor these and other less well-known exceptional antislavery Americans as part of the commemoration of 1776?
Sean Wilentz Princeton, N.J. The writer is a professor of American history at Princeton University.
A Sad Historical Echo: Native American Pain
To the Editor:
Re “Native Americans Hear Echoes of Bitter History” (news article, Jan. 31):
This article makes a connection between the recent ICE detention of Native Americans in the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis and the 19th-century history of the imprisonment of Dakota civilians at Fort Snelling after the U.S.-Dakota war of 1862. But there is a further parallel worth noting.
Today’s deportations of refugees and immigrants from Minnesota also echo the expulsion of Dakota people from the state. In 1863, the U.S. Army forced the Dakota imprisoned at Fort Snelling to leave Minnesota by steamship. They were sent to reservations in the Dakota territories.
The expulsion of Native Americans was long depicted on the Minnesota state flag, which pictured settlers pushing Native people to the West. It is one of the reasons Minnesota recently commissioned a new flag that instead prominently features the North Star.
Kathleen Keller St. Peter, Minn.
Enforcing Hazing Laws
To the Editor:
Re “Hazing Death in Arizona Leads to Charges for 3 Fraternity Leaders” (nytimes.com, Feb. 1):
The death of an 18-year-old student after an alleged hazing incident at Northern Arizona University is not an anomaly. It is part of a pattern that has persisted nationally for decades precisely because hazing has been allowed to remain hidden.
That is why in 2024 Congress amended the Clery Act via the Stop Campus Hazing Act. The law recognizes hazing for what it is: a serious campus safety threat that demands transparency, public reporting and institutional accountability. For too long, hazing incidents were handled quietly, excluded from crime data or dismissed as misconduct rather than treated as the dangerous behavior they are.
Transparency is not a bureaucratic exercise — it is a prevention strategy. When campuses are required to publicly disclose hazing incidents and document their prevention efforts, patterns become visible, warning signs emerge and lives can be saved. Without transparency, families and students are left in the dark until tragedy strikes.
As institutions nationwide confront yet another student death, the question is no longer whether anti-hazing laws are necessary, but whether they are being fully and faithfully implemented.
Bob Alig Philadelphia The writer is the executive director of the Clery Center.
Sympathy From Canada
To the Editor:
Re “The Globalization of Canadian Rage,” by Stephen Marche (Opinion guest essay, Feb. 9):
In reading this essay, I recalled an encounter my wife and I had while visiting Toronto in May 2017, in the early months of President Trump’s first term.
We were having our usual morning coffee in a Starbucks when we read the paper and were horrified by something Mr. Trump had reportedly said.
A mother and a daughter sitting nearby overheard our conversation and chimed in with their sentiments of solidarity. They were also aghast at the callous and racist rhetoric of our president. In offering their sympathies, they shared something illuminating and refreshing — that the worst thing a Canadian could do was to say something racist to another person.
My wife and I looked at each other and at that moment wished we were Canadian.
Toby Bernstein Tucson, Ariz.
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