ICE in airports, DHS funding, Gateway, renaming Penn Station

This deployment of armed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports is a dangerous political solution to a real problem [“ICE at JFK and LaGuardia,” News, March 24].

New agents have had little training in their own field of immigration enforcement — 56 days — and no agents had any training in airport security. The idea that they will assist the shortage of Transportation Security Administration agents is disingenuous at best and dangerous at worst.

According to White House border czar Tom Homan, the ICE agents will not be used to replace TSA officers at their various posts but rather be assigned to crowd control and security. Again, these agents have no training for this. This is the duty of our well-trained Port Authority police officers.

I am surprised that the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association is not speaking out against this dangerous political move as Everett Kelley, president of the TSA union, has done.

It is unfair that the ICE agents have been thrown into a situation they are not trained to handle and to be subjected to additional criticism from the public.

— Jim Kiernan, Holbrook

The writer is a retired Hempstead Police Department lieutenant.

DHS as hostage is a shameful act

It is disgraceful that funding for the Department of Homeland Security is being held hostage by our two-party “representative” government. DHS is our first line of defense against domestic terrorism [“More urgency to reach deal,” News, March 25].

This funding crisis should have the same sense of urgency that we saw after financial shenanigans and greed caused the 2008 Wall Street meltdown. It seems our government responds in one way when the big-moneyed interests are affected, in contrast to when the middle and working classes are affected.

A long time ago, the Democrats were the party of the middle and working class but no longer. Democrats in Congress draw a paycheck during a partial shutdown, denying paychecks for people who have earned their pay. Explain this. Is it because they dislike President Donald Trump and want him to fail? People are elected to represent their constituents, not their respective parties. Why is Sen. John Fetterman the only Democrat who has the guts to go against his party?

People should demand an end to this shutdown and that there should be no more in the future. If they can’t agree, go back to the previous funding and work it out. If they can’t work it out, throw them out.

— Tony Giametta, Oceanside

The impetus for the partial government shutdown resulted from the tactics and fatal shootings by ICE and other federal agents. TSA workers are — unfairly — not being paid. It’s ironic that these paid ICE protagonists are now going to help the unpaid TSA workers do their jobs. How are the unpaid workers interacting with their ICE “helpers”?

I for one would not want to give them the time of day. When Donald Trump threatened to send ICE to help at airports, the only threat I saw was to the unpaid workers.

— Brian Bies, East Meadow

No crash if a youthful rule was followed

Even if the LaGuardia Airport air traffic controller “messed up” — although the system may have stuck him with more simultaneous tasks than any human could safely do — this collision still could and should have been prevented [“NTSB: Ground radar didn’t alert before jet hit truck,” News, March 25].

If the Port Authority fire truck driver had only obeyed the rule that my parents taught me when I was 6 years old: “Before you start to cross any street (or runway), look both ways.”

It’s not the fire truck driver’s fault that the “system” failed to equip his emergency vehicle with a crucial transponder, but were the windows open so the sound of the landing plane could be heard?

— Richard Siegelman, Plainview

Let’s do Gateway, not rename Penn Station

The idea that Penn Station could be renamed after President Donald Trump as a negotiating tool for the release of funds for the Gateway project is appalling [“Could Penn become ‘Trump Station’?,” News, March 22]. Penn Station is one of the busiest transportation hubs in the country, serving people of many different backgrounds and political leanings. Its name is sacrosanct to many New Yorkers. The administration’s focus should be on getting this critical infrastructure project done, not stroking the ego of a president, especially one as polarizing as this one.

— Beatrice Brennan Wall, Lloyd Harbor

And now it’s Penn Station that must pay the price of Donald Trump’s weakness. Enough, I said to myself as I read about the movement to rename that landmark after him. Where does it end? Will the United States be renamed, too?

This calls for a letter to the editor, I thought. But on second thought, if I spoke out, I wondered if I might be deported. Where to? Brooklyn?

In the past, if I wanted to write a letter to Newsday about something I read, I simply wrote it and hit “Send.” Not today. I hesitated for just a second before continuing to do what I could always take for granted: exercise my right to speak freely.

— Naomi Berman, Port Jefferson Station