I would like to respond to Gary Pacheco’s May 6 letter, “Support the governor on illegal aliens.” In his last sentence, he addressed Providence Police Chief Dean Esserman and charged him to “carry out the [executive] order. It’s called law enforcement, Sir.”

In the same day’s paper on Page A-7 was an article entitled “Va. woman’s marriage made history.” The article told of a black woman and a white man who fell in love and got married in 1958. Even though they lived in Virginia, they had to go to Washington, D.C., to marry because interracial marriage was illegal in Virginia at the time. When they returned to Virginia, they were both awoken at their home at 2 a.m. and arrested for the crime of unlawful cohabitation. They pleaded guilty and were given a choice of one year in prison or banishment from their home for 25 years. The judge who issued the sentence (this esteemed member of the judicial system) explained that “Almighty God created the races . . . and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Mr. Pacheco’s letter asserted that people who rally against the executive order don’t care that illegal immigration is “undermining our country and threatening our very survival.” It seems to me that both Sheriff Garnett Brooks and Judge Leon Bazile, who were both paid to serve the public within the law-enforcement system, no doubt felt the same way about interracial marriage 50 years ago as you do about immigration today.

Just because it’s the law, doesn’t necessarily make it right. So Mr. Pacheco, I ask you. Have we learned anything in 50 years about people’s motives, values, ethics, and prejudices? Or is still just simply a matter of “it’s called law enforcement, Sir”?

WARREN O. JUSTICE

Cranston