The recent photograph of President Trump and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem gleefully grinning at the new “Alligator Alcatraz” prison in the Florida Everglades absolutely turned my stomach. The very idea of creating a prison for immigration detainees that consists of hastily constructed tents, housing rows of cots within cages, harkens back to the camps of Japanese Americans during WWII, and even to the Nazi concentration camps themselves.

And yet, here they are, our elected and appointed government officials joyfully imagining these detainees surrounded by alligators and pythons.

There is a culture of cruelty blossoming in the current Republican leadership. We have seen no humanitarian regard for:
• The thousands losing their lives in Africa with the dismantling of USAID.
• The thousands of Americans who will be cut off from medical care as their rural hospitals close with the new Medicaid cuts.
• The hundreds of people, many not even with criminal records, who are being deported to dangerous countries with which they have no connection.
• The callous apprehension of immigrants at their immigration hearings, where they were reporting as required by law.
• The “disappearing” of individuals without the notification of family members.

I could go on and on. The slash-and-burn tactics used by the Trump administration are themselves cruel by nature. But the fact that these actions bring obvious pleasure to those enacting them fills me with shame. What have we become that we allow — and even encourage — such behavior?

Susan Trask
Auburn