Dear Editor,

So the U.S. is being sued, piecemeal and in a class action lawsuit, for separating immigrant children and their parents — and sometimes apparently losing the children. Whether you think they were illegal immigrants — and therefore that was OK – or not, my guess is the immigrants are going to win in court and the U.S. is going to have to pay.

Sometimes a business gets carried away and claims its cookies contain real strawberries when really maybe they don’t. If they get sued, they sit down and try decide whether it would be cheaper just to pay the people some amount they’ll agree to or to let the court decide.

That’s probably where the $450,000 figure we’re hearing comes from: how much is the court likely to award — which in today’s world could be millions – versus how much would these people be willing to settle for, because after all, they could lose in court.

I think President Joe Biden and the Democratic administration needs to just sit this one out and let the courts set the amount. If they don’t, the Republicans are going to hang the blame on them for giving away $450,000 each to illegal aliens — even though the separations were actually President Trump’s policy, as are the lawsuits.

This is just silly. This country needs to abolish political parties and let our representatives vote their consciences on legislation, rather than being coerced to toe a party line. These two parties are playing children’s games.

That’s not how a democracy works, and they are going to end ours if we don’t watch it.

Pete Westover,

Russell