A few wrong claims
A response to the July 4 letter from one misinformed Anne Hamilton who apparently gets her information from FOX News. Parents who commit crimes go to prison, so their children are left without parents and in foster care, often for many years. That is the fault of the parent. The mayhem that our lawless leader created by separating children from their mothers and fathers is an act against international law.
Refugee seekers are not criminals and should not be treated as such. They have spent many dangerous weeks traveling over 2,000 miles to escape terror and murder from Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Not “like a walk in the park” as your emperor stated on TV.
Many of the over 2,000 children who were separated will suffer lifelong mental consequences from this unspeakable action. Toddlers do not understand what happened to them, neither do little ones still breastfeeding. It seems that now because of national and international uproar children will no longer be separated from parents, however, because of the unorganized actions of ICE and Border Patrol, they are having a hard time finding the children that have been spread out all over the U.S.
Some of the parents have been deported, their children still in the U.S. Some mothers, where their child has been found, are now supposed to pay for the child’s return trip from whatever state they were relocated to, including paying for a guardian to accompany the child! It is not only indecent, but also unlawful to not even give refugees access to the legal entry points so they can be vetted.
It is very doubtful that you are the loving and compassionate person you claim to be when you consider the unlawful and immoral act your beloved leader committed to be wonderful and appropriate.
Christa Wagner
Kailua-Kona
Candidate taking too much credit for Senate seat
I believe that the record needs to be set straight as to how the Big Island was awarded a fourth State Senate Seat in 2012. Brenda Ford has time and again stated that a lawsuit she filed in 2001 was the reason that we were awarded the fourth Senate seat. That is absolutely not true.
In 2001, I was a member of the Hawaii County Reapportionment Commission that was charged by the Hawaii County Charter to create nine new council districts based on the population of the island from data we received in the 2000 census. Ms. Ford brought a lawsuit against the commission and the county because she did not agree on our new district boundaries and the data we used to create those boundaries. Her lawsuit had nothing to do with the Senate seat and her lawsuit resulted in no change to any of the district boundaries.
In 2011, I was honored to be a fellow plaintiff along with Malama Solomon, Patricia Cook and Louis Ha’o in a lawsuit that resulted in a Hawaii Supreme Court decision to award the Big Island the fourth senate seat. Brenda Ford was not involved in that lawsuit in any way, shape or form.
Steven Pavao
Hilo