Whenever President Trump brashly uses broad terms to cast suspicion on immigrants, Muslims or Middle Easterners, Sandra Jones thinks of her family friend from Lebanon or her husband’s cardiologist, who is from Pakistan — good people who have made this country better.

She doesn’t agree with Trump’s attempts to ban entire populations of people, block Syrian refugees or make it more difficult for hard-working immigrants to become citizens, and she’s often startled by the things he says or does.

At the same time, she is worried about terrorism, especially when she travels to major cities like Washington or through Europe. The United States needs to be more careful about whom it allows into the country, she said. And while she disagrees with how the president conducts himself, she thinks his tough talk has done some good and intimidated dictators around the world.

“I don’t want to sound disrespectful, but as dumb as he sounds sometimes — when he goes up there and acts like a 12-year-old bully — I think at the end of the day, he has good intentions,” said Jones, 45, a stay-at-home mother of two from Syracuse, N.Y., as she wrapped up a recent visit to the National Museum of American History on the Mall in Washington with her college-age son. “If you want someone to keep you safe, I think he’s the guy that’s going to keep you safe.”

To Jones, it’s the job of the United States to keep peace in the world and intervene when people are suffering — like in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has been accused repeatedly of using chemical weapons to kill people.

“Something needs to be done,” said Jones, a registered Republican who considers herself more of an independent and doesn’t want to say how she voted in the last presidential election.

She’s not sure what should happen in Syria or when, saying that Americans have to trust the leaders they elected to make such decisions.

“At the end of the day, you have to trust the people that are in charge,” she said. “There’s a lot that we don’t understand that goes on behind the scenes, and I think you just need to put your faith that they know what they’re doing, because that’s really all you can do.”

— Joyce Koh

DORAL, Fla. — When Jose Antonio Colina first got to the United States in 2003, he expected a hero’s welcome.

He had joined other military officers in demanding the resignation of Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, and was forced into hiding. He eventually slipped across the border into Colombia and got a plane ticket to Miami. He thought his training with the U.S. military would help him when he arrived.

“It wasn’t like that,” he said. “They treated me pragmatically. That’s the reality.”

The United States denied Colina asylum — and also denied an extradition request from Venezuela. He lives in immigration limbo in the Miami area.

Colina, 44, owns a company that distributes food to gas stations in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods, runs a nonprofit group that helps political refugees like himself, and avoids marriage or having children so nothing will keep him from going back to Venezuela.

Colina discussed U.S. policy as he sat in El Arepazo, a bustling restaurant connected to a Doral gas station that serves Venezuelan comfort food. He is grateful that Trump has placed heavy sanctions on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — but he hopes Trump will also establish an oil embargo, challenge Maduro’s authority and make it easier for refugees like him to move to the United States.

He suspects that Trump is simply taking a hard line on Venezuela for political benefit or to divert attention from other issues.

“When he has spoken about Venezuela, that has won my support,” said Colina, who describes himself as extremely conservative. “But on the other hand, half of my heart hurts because . . . he doesn’t offer any solutions for the Venezuelans here.”

— Carlos Harrison

Jitu Brown talks in his office at the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. (Adeshina Emmanuel/For The Washington Post)

CHICAGO — Before the United States can address the problems of other nations, Jitu Brown believes, it must first confront problems at home. The racism that infects this country also clouds U.S. relations with other countries, he said, particularly regarding treatment of immigrants from Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

Racism, Brown said, is behind Trump’s description of some Mexican immigrants as rapists and behind decisions about who is allowed into the country .

“I don’t think Haitian immigrants should be rejected if they’re trying to get to this country,” said Brown, 51, a longtime community organizer in Chicago who votes for Democrats but doesn’t think the party does enough for African Americans. “I think that our immigration policy should be humane.”

Americans need to consider how U.S. policies destabilize other countries, he said, and reserve military action for when the United States is truly at risk. He suspects that sometimes military engagement is driven by political agendas or a desire to help certain businesses.

Instead of spending more on the military or getting involved even more deeply in the Middle East, the country should confront poverty, reform an unfair criminal justice system and tackle racial inequities in education, Brown said.

“The issue that has never been addressed, and folks have never been held accountable for, is this maniacal hatred of black people that infects every institution,” he said.

Brown, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago and lives with his wife and 9-year-old son in Chicago’s Austin community, worries about the effects of gentrification and the closures of public schools.

“There are major problems here that have gone unresolved,” he said. “So to me, I think that should be our work.”

— Adeshina Emmanuel

Alysha Nishikawa (Family photo)

MAUI, Hawaii — Soon after the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency sent out an all-caps alert that warned of an incoming ballistic missile, Alysha Nishikawa’s husband — deployed with the Navy — contacted her through Facebook.

“There was that one minute that I was like, ‘Oh no,’ and he’s not here,” said Nishikawa, 32, who had moved to Japan with her husband but returned home to Pukalani, Hawaii, last summer. Their son is nearly 2 years old, and they have a 3-month-old daughter.

The couple quickly realized that it was a false alarm. It was one of the few moments of panic for Nishikawa during her husband’s latest deployment, which ends next month and has taken him to Bahrain, Oman, the Red Sea, Singapore and Thailand. Even as Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un exchanged threats, the couple weren’t worried about Kim following through.

“President Trump has fired two attacks on Syria. . . . So if they were to attack the U.S., I’m sure President Trump would obliterate North Korea, and Kim Jong Un knows that would happen,” Nishikawa said, adding that she hopes a peaceful agreement can be reached soon.

Nishikawa — a Democrat who didn’t vote in 2016 — envisions a world in which the United States is able to continue to care for those who are suffering in other countries, while fully meeting the needs of Americans. The country should value education and encourage compassion and understanding, especially between opposing religious groups, she said. And it should work to reduce violence in the Middle East through diplomatic means, limit military intervention and try to reach resolutions without any civilians being killed or injured.

“I would like the U.S. to be known for freedom, equal rights, compassion, all those things,” she said. “But at the same time, I don’t think that’s how a lot of places see us.”

— Kalani Takase

GOOSE CREEK, S.C. — When Bill Campbell and his wife celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in the late 1990s, their twin sons — who run a successful plumbing business in the Charleston area — offered to send them on a vacation anywhere in the world. The couple passed.

“What’s the good of celebrating an anniversary if nobody’s around?” said Campbell, 66, a retired truck driver who lives in the Charleston suburbs and has three grown children. “Other parts of the world are great to visit and learn history. I just prefer not to travel outside of the United States.”

Campbell’s view of the world has been shaped by watching the news — usually Fox, but he flips to CBS to “see the other side” — and the 13 years that he worked as an independent truck driver, often picking up and dropping off loads at the Port of Charleston. He hauled anything from automotive parts to photography film until he retired in 2010. As the United States traded more with other countries, especially China, Campbell watched the port transform from a sleepy operation to a major entry point.

He understands why Trump has threatened to pull out of the trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, rejected a huge Pacific trade pact and announced new tariffs on imported steel and aluminum — to exert American authority on the world stage. He also understands why China announced new tariffs on soybeans, pork and a host of other products in response.

Campbell said that if those changes actually go through, prices on groceries and other items will probably go up for consumers like him and that there might be less work for truckers and others who rely on the steady flow of goods through the port. He said such sacrifices are worth enduring now for the long-term good of the country — but he doesn’t think that any of the tariffs will be implemented.

Those large tariffs are simply a starting place, he said, and the United States and China will eventually negotiate down to much smaller tariffs. China needs American farm products, he said, so Trump will probably be able to call its bluff.

“I think within a year, everything’s going to be straightened out,” Campbell said. “It might be a rough road, but every country needs each other. Donald might not get what he wants, but it’s going to work out.”

— Allyson Crowell

CANTON, Mich. — Hours before the United States bombed Syria this month, Mariam Zaiat texted with her cousins in Damascus.

“Just kind of jokingly they were saying, ‘Tell your president not to bomb us,’ ” said Zaiat, 32, who was born in Michigan, lived in Damascus during elementary and middle school, then moved to the Detroit suburbs when she was 12. “When it happened, it was like 5 in the morning there, so my cousin was texting: ‘It’s very loud. It’s the loudest noise that we’ve ever heard. The sky is blowing. It’s all kinds of colors and smoke.’ ”

Her relatives support Assad, the Syrian president, and live in a wealthy enclave near his palace. While hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed in the conflict and millions have fled their homes, no one in Zaiat’s family has been injured or had their home damaged. They can hear the sounds of war, but they often lack a full understanding of what’s happening in Syria, Zaiat said.

“They tell me that the war is over,” said Zaiat, who works as an occupational therapist and lives in the Detroit suburbs with her husband and 2-year-old daughter. “They’re celebrating that. They feel so much safer, and they’ve kind of regained some sense of security and safety, and a sense of normal within their life” now that Assad has regained control of the Damascus outskirts.

The United States bombed a number of facilities within miles of where Zaiat’s relatives live.

“When it ended, I think it lasted an hour. . . . My cousin texted: ‘It’s done. It’s finally done,’ ” she said. “I felt a sense of relief.”

Zaiat is trying to figure out where she stands on issues involving Syria, beyond simply wanting peace and stability in the country. She doubts that Trump suddenly cares about the Syrian people, given that he has blocked refugees from resettling in the United States and repeatedly said he doesn’t want to get more involved in Syria. She is troubled that the United States has yet to provide solid evidence that the regime carried out a chemical attack — reminding her of the Iraq invasion in 2003, based on inaccurate information.

“If evidence was provided, I would not deny it,” said Zaiat, who describes herself as left-leaning, although not a Democrat. “I guess I’m skeptical of the reasonings behind the strikes. . . . And like my cousins would say, ‘Where were they the past seven years?’ ”

— Trevor Bach

STANTON, Ky. — The Rev. John S. Rausch, who has spent his career working in Appalachia and making occasional trips to places such as Bangladesh, Ghana and Sierra Leone, says he has found that the root causes of most problems are rather simple.

“So many of our social problems flow from the fact that people are in need and also in fear — fear of going off the edge financially, fear of being shut out, fear of having violence perpetrated on them,” said Rausch, a 73-year-old Catholic priest who works with the Glennmary Home Missioners. “A lot has to do with economic insecurity.”

Rausch’s view of the world is rooted in church doctrine but tested by a lifetime of advocating for the poor and trying to protect the environment from destruction.

Human beings should treat one another with respect, he said. That means an end to robbing poor nations and Appalachia of their natural resources and to deporting good people who have contributed to the country.

He said the United States should become much less obsessed with its military and realize that already “there is nobody even close to where we are in terms of the military power we command.” But sometimes its use is a necessary evil — one that should be used sparingly and with the support of a coalition of nations, as “a coalition stops us from being self-righteous, saves us from making a mistake,” Rausch said.

U.S. leaders need to realize that if they are too “uppity with our allies” when it comes to trade, other nations will turn elsewhere, he said. And leaders should remember that “the United States, for good or for ill, has been a template for freedom and a model for civility, stability and transition of power.”

Rausch is a Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and keeps a photo of former president Barack Obama in his office. He worries that Trump and his followers are dismantling the country as if it were a junkyard selling parts.

“The United States has to start sowing trust in the world,” Rausch said. “Trust is how things get done, how diplomacy operates, how you avoid wars and things of that nature. We have to build that, and we can’t bully it.”

— Daniel Heyman