To the Editor:

“Colombia Agrees to Accept Deportation Flights After Trump Threatens Tariffs” (nytimes.com, Jan. 27) highlights an important issue: the dignity of migrants and immigrants.

Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, has delivered a profound lesson: Dignity is not a privilege but a fundamental right. By initially refusing to accept deportation flights on U.S. military planes — with his people handcuffed like criminals — he issued a quiet but powerful rebuke. His stance challenges us to reflect on our treatment of immigrants within our borders.

Here in the United States, immigrants are too often seen as statistics rather than neighbors, co-workers or fellow congregants. Deporting individuals in military planes, handcuffed and dehumanized, reflects poorly on a nation that claims to uphold human rights and justice.

Immigrants pray, dream and love, just as we do. Yet families are separated at the border, and policies continue to strip people of their humanity by reducing them to their legal status.

Congress has an opportunity to address this injustice by reintroducing the bipartisan Dignity Act. This bill offers a comprehensive framework for immigration reform, balancing border security with pathways to legal status for those who contribute to our communities.

History will remember not how we wielded power, but how compassionately we treated those in our care.

L. Williams
Philadelphia

To the Editor:

Re “Trump Officials Target Migrants Biden Allowed In” (front page, Jan. 25):

My experience sponsoring a Nicaraguan family through the U.S. government’s humanitarian parole program may have saved a child’s life. But now that the Department of Homeland Security has signaled its intent to deport humanitarian parolees who entered this country legally, this same family could be forced to return to the difficult conditions from which they fled.

When I first connected with them, I was struck by the father, Ervin, a math olympian. I am a former math teacher myself, so our shared passion made it an easy decision to sponsor this family.

When they arrived at our home in Wisconsin last Memorial Day, their 1-year-old son required urgent medical care for a life-threatening illness. Thankfully, he was able to receive treatment at American Family Children’s Hospital in Madison, and today he’s a completely healed and normal little boy. The family is thriving — living independently, working and finding community with their new neighbors.

Welcoming vulnerable, fully vetted families through legal pathways should not be a divisive issue. It provides refuge to people who are eager to rebuild their lives and contribute to our society.

Deporting people who are currently here with legal status under humanitarian parole not only puts the family I sponsored in jeopardy, but all those threatened by authoritarianism, conflict and extreme poverty, from the Western Hemisphere to Ukraine and Afghanistan.

These attacks on humanitarian parole are attacks on the values we hold deepest as Americans: freedom, compassion and opportunity.

Bill Bewick
Richland Center, Wis.

To the Editor:

President Trump’s many initiatives to expel migrants could be characterized (with apologies to the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln) as the “Malice to all foreigners, with charity to none” strategy.

Mark Evers
Lake Oswego, Ore.

To the Editor:

I was alarmed to read of President Trump’s plans for elimination of asylum for qualified immigrants. This action will cost lives.

I worked with a group of doctors and nurses across the border in Mexico providing medical care for migrants waiting for authorization to cross the border. Some of the migrants had acute medical problems that could not be cared for in Mexico: severe wounds, bullets lodged in limbs, acute abdominal infections, mutilations from torture by cartels. We were able to obtain parole for some of them so they could obtain emergency medical care in the U.S.

If immigrants with emergency conditions cannot receive temporary parole into the U.S. they will simply die for lack of care. Mexico does not have the resources to provide this care.

I can only hope that the move to abolish asylum will be canceled once its full implication is understood.

Frank Baudino
Aptos, Calif.
The writer is a family physician.

To the Editor:

Our Constitution guarantees that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Every member of Congress, regardless of party, took an oath to uphold and defend our Constitution.

I believe that every member of Congress who voted for the Laken Riley Act, which will allow for the detention and deportation of immigrants without trial, violated their oath.

“Congress Clears Measure to Deport Immigrants Accused of Crimes” (nytimes.com, Jan. 22) is chilling. The New York Times must follow up relentlessly on every indefinite detention and every deportation without trial that follows this ghastly bill. Just as important we must hear the human stories of those unjustly accused and punished without the opportunity to clear their names.

Carolyn Kelly
New York

To the Editor:

Re “Immigration Raid in N.J. Heightens Alarm in Region” (news article, Jan. 25):

U.S. immigration agents recently rounded up undocumented migrants as well as American citizens in a raid in Newark, N.J.

I live in Chicago, a sanctuary city. From now on I am carrying a copy of my birth certificate along with papers showing that my great-grandfather served in the Civil War. Can’t be too careful now that ICE agents are conducting raids in America, “the land of the free.”

William Dodd Brown
Chicago