To the Editor:
I’m a retired Island schoolteacher who worked many summers alongside Newton Waite driving taxis on the Island. Years later, as his children grew, I got to know them a bit, too, when they hit the high school.
Newton is a good person and a model citizen — a soft-spoken, gentle soul with genuine feeling for others and a built-in sense of fair play. I admire him for his devotion to his family and the powerful work ethic that pushed him to create a better life for them. Though he worked 70-hour-a-week cab shifts, he side-hustled hard to launch his restaurant businesses on what must have been shoestring finances. His children came to mirror the values he and his wife instilled in them, and were beloved classmates in their school community.
It fills me with revulsion to read that this good man — who so epitomizes the values that we Americans say we embrace — is today languishing in a distant ICE facility. I want to spit the cruel actions of these agents and their masters out of my mouth. To think that they would seek to erase this gentle man and the life he’s worked so hard to build for the sake of adding points to a political stat sheet is abhorrent.
You can argue all the politics you want — you will anyway. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about a human being, someone I know and greatly respect, who has been hurt. Newton has been a good neighbor and family man and respected Island businessperson.
Isn’t there something we as a community can do to fight his deportation?
Bill McCarthy
Edgartown
Wow this is the first time I’ve seen a NAME of someone abducted from the island. Absolutely heartbreaking…Thank you, Bill for bringing visibility here. I am standing by to see how we can help…saying prayers for Newton Waite, his family + each other.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
Abduction is correct.
We must fight with and for the immigrants. We cannot stand by and watch our people and our nation be destroyed.
We can all contact the White House 202-456-7041 and our congressional representatives to complain. Every day we can voice our discontent.
Should we waste our tax dollars to purchase a private ice army for trump? That’s not how I want my tax money to be spent.
Absolutely, it is not a good situation, and yet, we’re using the wrong terms and words matter—citizens are citizens, unless we mean “citizens of the community” and immigrants are normally thought of—be honest—as those who have come to America and gone through the channels of immigration, not overstayed a visa or came without one. If we are going to solve this together as Americans, we have to be honest and address what the truth is—our system is broken and our friends are having real problems, it’s upsetting. We have to admit that in order for laws to matter, like the laws we wish the Trump administration would abide by, immigration laws are laws, too, our world has borders (try moving to Tuscany for quality of life next time you go, just stay and find work, I guess). We can solve this together, because what we are seeing with MAGA is not the answer. But we have to get honest with ourselves and each other.
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