This letter has been prompted by the editorial written by Nico Bleu on April 16 titled “No one is coming to save you so stand the f#*k up,” and by the second Nico Bleu editorial titled “They took our neighbors today,” dated June 3.

Nico Bleu is a pseudonym. He has been granted anonymity by the River Reporter.

The author is by his own words in the earlier editorial an “activist” who went to Washington, D.C. to demonstrate against President Trump’s administration on the grounds that “Trump’s administration is illegitimate because of its involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection.”

The second editorial contains such vulgarities as “F*%king fascists.” Nico Bleu passed the news up the chain and “the network was working perfectly.”

Vulgarities aside, which in my opinion should have never been printed by your paper, I write not only because I disagree with this position politically. I fully recognize the right to free speech codified in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

More importantly, I am concerned about our democracy when I read the decadent ideas propounded by Nico Bleu. As Winston Churchill observed, democracy is the worst political system with the exception of all those that have been tried before.

(Notwithstanding such pundits as Mark Levin, an attorney, who claims we do not even have democracy in this country because we have a constitutional republic.)

We live in the most democratic, free and affluent country with a standard of living for the common man never before seen on Earth.

I know this as I lived for three decades under communism before spending 50 years in the U.S.

Some on both sides of the aisle, as in the sentiments expressed in your editorials, fail to understand that a democracy can work only by consensus. It is a mistake to regard one’s political opponents as subhuman and not even worth talking to.

Thus, when the majority of my countrymen puts a candidate into the White House, he becomes my president, regardless of whether he comes from my party or from the other party. If the president comes into the room, I get up and salute him, because he now represents my country to the rest of the world.

And if I disagree with the president from the other party, I will work diligently to have the candidate of my own party win the next election.

Therefore, it does not do us any good—and it is damaging to our democracy—if we engage in such decadent behavior as calling the majority of my countrymen “stupid” when they put the president of the opposing party into the White House and calling such an election “illegitimate.”

Regarding the detaining of three Elegante employees, the editorials insist that all three people have a “legal asylum status” in the United States as per the owner of Elegante pizzeria.

The serious journalistic mistake, which amounts to a journalistic misconduct, was that the paper published the editorials and articles without verifying the facts of the matter or at least making it clear to the reader that the “legal status” was merely an unverified statement by the owner of Elegante.

The detainees will be released by ICE forthwith as long as they can provide documents verifying the following:

1. The application for asylum in the U.S.
2. The disposition of the application by the immigration court, i.e., approved, denied, the future hearing has not taken place yet or the applicant skipped the hearing
3. The documentation showing that the employment in the U.S. has been authorized and that the employer has a record of it on file as required

I sent an email to the owner of Elegante in which I explained that, although I am not a lawyer, I can be of help since I have successfully sued Attorney General Eric Holder in another immigration case and won.

I called Elegante today. My offer was turned down. This leads me to believe that the three detainees lack at least one or perhaps all the documents outlined above.

While all these laws and regulations have been on the books for decades, none of this mattered in the minds of illegal immigrants who are now euphemistically called “undocumented immigrants.” Now the laws and regulations matter under the Trump administration, the vulgarities by Nico Bleu notwithstanding.

Ivan Orisek lives in Forestburgh, NY.

[Concerning the use of the word “editorial”: The original My View by Nico Bleu is marked as a My View on the page in the print paper and on its page online. On the website, it is also listed under the word “Editorial,” along with poetry, letters marked as such on their pages, and much more. In this case, “Editorial” refers to the editorial pages, not to an editorial written by a staff member and representing the opinion of the paper as a whole. 

When you’re unsure of whether something from the editorial pages online is an official editorial by a staff member, click through to the story and check for the words “My View” or “Letter to the Editor.” If you see either phrase (which can be found above the headline), it is an opinion by a contributor, not an official editorial.]