Letters to the Editor: Why expanding immigration courts won’t fix the border crisis

To the editor: The L.A. Times editorial decrying President Trump’s plan to detain children with their parents indefinitely simplifies very complex problems.

The Times is right that the immigration court system is overwhelmed — but overwhelmed is an understatement. We have upward of 100,000 new migrants a month coming into the country, the equivalent of the Los Angeles Memorial Colisuem being filled each month.

The numbers are so staggering that to expand the court system to handle this is a massive undertaking no matter which political party is in power.

The Times would let these people go and hope they come back maybe years later to the immigration courts. This opens another vicious partisan political debate, which the editorial ignores completely.

Robert Newman, West Hills

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To the editor: Trump has separated children from their parents and imprisoned migrants in substandard conditions. His approach is cruel, has resulted in deaths and constitutes a human rights violation.

Instead, he should help create solutions that do not involved punishing children who are fleeing unbearable conditions back in their home countries.

Initiating programs that partner with Central American countries with a goal of improving quality of life and working with Republicans and Democrats in Congress to pass immigration legislation that is fair and efficient are two long-term solutions.

But these solutions would involve a lot of work, positive leadership and empathy from President Trump, characteristics that he has not demonstrated. Instead, he chooses cruelty.

Joan Horn, Carlsbad