Category Archives: Immigration

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Yet another immigration sob story

We have noted, many times, that the Lexington Herald-Leader is out-of-touch with its potential audience. I say potential audience because what used to be the newspaper for much of central and eastern Kentucky is barely a shadow of its former self, publishing only thrice a week, and a day early so it can be delivered not in the morning, but by the United States Postal Service, at whatever time the mailman gets to your house.

What my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal has been all-in on the Democrats, but in 2024, Kentuckians gave 64.47% of their votes to Donald Trump, not just a landslide margin, but Mr Trump’s highest percentage total in three campaigns. When Mr Trump ran on deporting illegal immigrants, Kentuckians said, “Yes!”

As a witness, I can say our immigration reform is the ‘worst of the worst’ | Opinion

By Mary Cobb | Monday, January 19, 2026 | 5:30 AM EST

In the fluorescent haze of the ICE office lobby, an agent hands the plane ticket back to me. Outside in the rain, a man peers in through the glass door, watching his son with an ankle monitor do a check-in with officers. A gnome dressed as Santa dangles from the metal detector, and laughter from “The Price is Right” studio audience bounces from the lobby TV. I try not to get distracted by the mix of frivolity and stress around me.

“But, the judge’s written order says to deliver this ticket to you….” I can feel right away that my words don’t matter. Neither, apparently, does the court order.

I am there on a cruel errand: deliver someone’s passport and plane ticket to ICE, so that they can deport him. It is a favor to a friend, because the deportee’s family finds the thought of the ICE office too intimidating, and they wanted someone else to go. I said yes.

The “criminal” to be deported — I’ll call him Cesar — is an average guy in our part of the world. Early 20s, loves his family, grew up in Appalachia attending church and public schools and playing sports, eventually married a young woman he had met in high school. His “crime?” Being brought across the border from Mexico when he was 3 years old. Like the majority of ICE detainees, Cesar has no criminal record. What he does have is a decent job, a loving family, and a baby due in April.

Really? He has no prior criminal record, we are told, but how can he have “a decent job” when it is illegal for non-citizens without a green card to work in the United States? Every employer — not every employer beyond a certain size, but every employer — must complete an Immigration Form I-9 on every employee, which demonstrates his legal ability to work in the US, whether by being a citizen or by having a valid work permit, generally known as a green card. How is it that “Cesar” has that “good job” if he doesn’t have those documents? How is it that “Cesar’s” employer, who is obligated under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 to discharge any employee he discovers is an illegal immigrant, let him stay employed?

Under the Handbook for Employers M-274, Section 11.8, it is specified that:

Unlawful Employment Criminal Penalties
Engaging in a Pattern or Practice of Knowingly Hiring or Continuing to Employ Unauthorized Aliens

If you or your business are convicted of having engaged in a pattern or practice of knowingly hiring unauthorized aliens (or continuing to employ aliens knowing they are or have become unauthorized to work in the United States) after Nov. 6, 1986, you may face fines and/or six months imprisonment.

Engaging in Fraud or False Statements, or Otherwise Misusing Visas, Immigration Permits, and Identity Documents

You may be fined and/or imprisoned for up to five years if you:

  • Make a false statement or attestation to satisfy the employment eligibility verification requirements;
  • Use fraudulent identification or employment authorization documents; or
  • Use documents that were lawfully issued to another person.

Other federal criminal statutes may provide higher penalties in certain fraud cases.

This is what the author, Mary Cobb, “a ninth-generation Kentuckian, and . . . the Director of Kentucky Refugee Ministries/Lexington,” fails to address. Rather, her OpEd tells us what a good person, what a great guy, “Cesar” is, and how he’s an asset to the community. While I have no doubt that he’s everything she said about him, he’s still here illegally, and was apparently working here illegally as well. The IRCA does not have any particular “great guy” exceptions.

“Cesar’s” wife is expecting their baby in April, we are told. Well, good for them, but if she is due in April of 2026, that means she became pregnant around August of 2025, seven months after Donald Trump became President again, and months after he showed that his intention to deport all of the illegals, “anchor babies” notwithstanding. Surely “Cesar” and his wife knew about that, but they decided to reproduce anyway.

“No one is above the law” our good friends on the left, including then-President Joe Biden, several state governors, senators and congressmen, constantly told us, when they were trying to throw Donald Trump in jail. Well, “Cesar” is not above the law either, he was here illegally, and he had to go.

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How to Win Friends and Influence People Don Lemon never read that book!

In 1936, Dale Carnegie published his famous self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. This is clearly a book that Don Lemon, a television journolist[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading best known for being a host on CNN from 2014 until 2023 never read. He had been plagued by allegations of misogyny, something made more credible due to his homosexuality, and was eventually fired because CNN was having other trouble with him.

Well, here he goes again:

Don Lemon And Rabid Anti-ICE Loons Invade Minneapolis Church Service

by Nina Bookout | Sunday, January 18, 2026

The anti-ICE protestors are getting worse by the minute. Today, the rabid shrieking harpies and loons decided it was totally fine to invade church services in Minneapolis.

Anti-ICE protest disrupted a Sunday church service in Minneapolis after a group of activists entered a congregation and forced worship to stop, according to footage shared online.

The incident occurred at Cities Church, a Southern Baptist Convention congregation, where protesters stormed into the sanctuary chanting anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement slogans. The group alleged that one of the church’s lead pastors was affiliated with ICE, a claim the protesters repeated while interrupting the service.

So, without any genuine facts in evidence, these rabid loons decided one of the pastors is with ICE and thought it was totally fine to invade a church service and disrupt the proceedings. This as other anti-ICE goons have been stalking people for driving the wrong kind of vehicle (yes, really), or dressing the wrong way thus making it ok to be accosted while having lunch.

Conveniently, Don Lemon, former CNN hack, was prancing alongside these asshats.

There’s more at the original.

I have no idea whether one of the ministers at Cities Church supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or is “affiliated” with ICE. Although Hennepin County went strongly for then-Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff, 502,710 (69.80%) to 197,244 (27.39%) for then former and now current President Donald Trump, he still had some support. Statewide, Mrs Emhoff carried the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but not by a ridiculous margin. There are clearly some people in the state who support President Trump’s immigration enforcement policies.

The congregation at Cities Church? Well, who knows, but the Southern Baptist Convention tends to be politically conservative, moreso than some other Protestant denominations. But I would imagine that Dale Carnegie would be shaking his head at the demonstration and incursion that Mr Lemon led as not being a very effective way of persuading the worshipers they interrupted and bothered. I would guess that, if anything, the protesters both strengthened the resolve of the good congregants who support the detention and deportation of the illegals, and caused those who don’t want to see the illegals deported to see the boorishness of those on their side.

The Golden Age Times tweeted:

Disgraced ex-CNN host Don Lemon & anti-ICE Leftists STORM into a Minneapolis church, shouting anti-ICE slogans.

“This is the beginning of what’s going to happen here.”

“You have to make people uncomfortable.”

I can’t speak for others, but I wouldn’t feel ‘uncomfortable,’ I’d just be pissed off. This is just another version of idiotic climate cultists trying to destroy art or blocking major roads, making people late for wherever they were headed.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Bad causes attract bad people

I have said, more than once, that a facial tattoo means automatically guilty. It also makes the person automatically stupid, because a facial tattoo makes a suspect instantly recognizable.

Nick Sortor claimed to have been the one who captured the theft on tape, including an image of 33‑year‑old Raul Gutierrez, along with the license plate of the getaway vehicle. Mr Gutierrez is currently a guest of the federal government, at least until some Obama-appointed, America-hating crackpot judge like James Boasberg orders him released.

Latin Kings Gang Member Arrested For Stealing FBI Weapons

by Billal Rahman | Friday, January 16, 2026 | 12:01 PM EST

An alleged Latin Kings street gang member was arrested Thursday after federal authorities said he stole equipment, including body armor and weaponry, from a vandalized FBI vehicle in Minneapolis. . . .

The Department of Homeland Security said in a post on X that it had “caught one of the individuals that was part of destroying the FBI vehicles [and] he will now be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. His life has changed forever due to his foolishness. Don’t be like him.” . . .

Multiple FBI vehicles had been vandalized and broken into during the protests, and federal property was taken from inside some of the vehicles, according to an FBI public notice seeking information on the incidents.

Fox News reported that 33‑year‑old Raul Gutierrez was arrested on January 15 in a joint operation involving the Department of Justice and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

“The suspect is a member of the Latin Kings gang with a known violent criminal history,” FBI Director Kash Patel wrote in a post on X.

If Mr Gutierrez is a known gang member with a violent criminal history, the obvious question is: why wasn’t he already behind bars?

Good causes attract good people, while bad causes attract bad people, and protesting the enforcement of our immigration laws, our forty-year-old immigration laws is a bad cause; just the people that cause has attracted shows us that the cause itself is bad. Minnesota’s and Minneapolis’ response to legitimate immigration law enforcement fostered an attitude that the police weren’t going to do anything, which may have inspired Mr Gutierrez and his fellow Latin Kings gangbangers to make their raid on the FBI’s vehicles.

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A Catholic parish commits a crime Church policies on immigration do not supersede American law

That the Roman Catholic Church, of which I am a proud member, supports far less restrictive transnational immigration is well known, and His Holiness Pope Leo XIV has been pushing hard on the subject. Thus, the following article comes as no surprise to me:

UPDATE: ICE deported Minnesota church employee, surveilled parish during Mass, mayor says

ICE’s presence outside the church impedes parishioners’ free exercise of religion, said the pastor of St. Gabriel Catholic Church in Hopkins, Minnesota.

By Kathleen Murphy · DC Bureau · Friday, January 9, 2026 · 3:01 PM EST

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents surveilled St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church in Hopkins, Minnesota, on Epiphany after deporting the parish’s beloved maintenance worker to Mexico five weeks earlier.

The Trump administration last year eliminated a federal policy that generally prohibited immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations” such as schools, churches, and hospitals. Attendance at St. Gabriel’s Spanish Mass has dropped by half since the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, and parishioners have expressed fear of churchgoing about eight miles from where an ICE agent shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good on Jan. 7.

Father Paul Haverstock, pastor of St. Gabriel’s, said he had vested for the 1 p.m. Spanish Mass Jan. 4 when a parishioner told him about men wearing ski masks in a car outside the church. He said he was disturbed to receive the report, went to the sacristy to get his cellphone, and placed it next to his chair in the sanctuary.

“If there is an incident of agents coming in, I want to make sure that it’s recorded, and I want a clear recording of me letting the agents know that we’re in the middle of a religious service,” Haverstock said.

Two of the hyperlinks in the quoted story above were not in the original, but researched and added by me.

It has to be asked: why were Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents outside the church?

Church employee Francisco Paredes, 46, who had lived in the U.S. for 25 years with one conviction for driving under the influence, was handcuffed by ICE Dec. 4, 2025. Eight federal vehicles pulled into a large parking lot adjacent to St. Gabriel’s on 13th Avenue South after Paredes picked up coffee on his way to work, Paredes said, and he was driven to a processing facility. . . .

Until Paredes’ arrest and before ICE parked outside St. Gabriel’s, more than 400 people had usually attended the Spanish Mass, Haverstock said. Haverstock said he is considering offering a temporary Sunday Mass dispensation in his parish for those who are afraid.

So, St Gabriel’s holds well-attended Masses in Spanish, and the church previously employed an illegal immigrant; the article stated, in its mealy-mouthed way, that Mr Paredes “lacked legal permission to live in the U.S.” It is reasonable to suspect that significant numbers of illegal immigrants live in the area and attend those Masses.

Father Haverstock stated that Mr Paredes was a great employee, fully bilingual, and a tremendous help around the parish. That’s fine, but then there’s this:

Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, requirements come out of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). IRCA prohibits employers from hiring and employing an individual for employment in the U.S. knowing that the individual is not authorized with respect to such employment. Employers also are prohibited from continuing to employ an individual knowing that he or she is unauthorized for employment. This law also prohibits employers from hiring any individual, including a U.S. citizen, for employment in the U.S. without verifying his or her identity and employment authorization on Form I-9.

The IRCA was passed in 1986, which was 40 years ago; Mr Paredes has been in the United States for a stated 25 years, which means that he was hired by the parish church well after the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 became law.

Under the Handbook for Employers M-274, Section 11.8, it is specified that:

Unlawful Employment Criminal Penalties
Engaging in a Pattern or Practice of Knowingly Hiring or Continuing to Employ Unauthorized Aliens

If you or your business are convicted of having engaged in a pattern or practice of knowingly hiring unauthorized aliens (or continuing to employ aliens knowing they are or have become unauthorized to work in the United States) after Nov. 6, 1986, you may face fines and/or six months imprisonment.

Engaging in Fraud or False Statements, or Otherwise Misusing Visas, Immigration Permits, and Identity Documents

You may be fined and/or imprisoned for up to five years if you:

  • Make a false statement or attestation to satisfy the employment eligibility verification requirements;
  • Use fraudulent identification or employment authorization documents; or
  • Use documents that were lawfully issued to another person.

Other federal criminal statutes may provide higher penalties in certain fraud cases.

For Mr Paredes to have been employed by St Gabriel’s, at least one of these things had to have happened:

  • The parish hired Mr Paredes without a reasonable effort at verifying the documents provided; or
  • The parish hired Mr Paredes without checking his documents at all or filling out Form I-9; or
  • Mr Paredes presented false or fraudulent documents good enough to have passed a reasonable inspection by Pastor.

All of these are crimes!

The article provided by EWTN News does not tell us how long Mr Paredes was an employee of St Gabriel’s. The parish staff page tells us that Fr Haverstock first became Parish Administrator in 2020, and assigned as Pastor on Independence Day of 2021, so, if Mr Paredes was hired before those dates, Fr Haverstock could not have been the person who hired him. However, if he became aware that his employee was an illegal immigrant after he became Administrator, but before Mr Paredes was detained, yet continued to employ Mr Paredes, he would be in violation of the law. Fr Haverstock would not be required to report the illegal immigrant’s presence in the United States, but he would have had to discharge him.

There are no exemptions for churches or church employees under our immigration laws. Church policy, even coming from the Pope himself, does not supersede American law.

Perhaps article author Kathleen Murphy did not realize it when she wrote, but she published the report of a crime. And while this is the documentation of one crime in one parish, who would be surprised if this hasn’t happened widely throughout the thousands of parishes and hundreds of dioceses in the United States?

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Larry Krasner beclowns himself Philly's chief law enforcement officer doesn't want our immigration laws enforced

Remember when Philadelphia’s criminal-loving, police-hating, George Soros-sponsored District Attorney Larry Krasner previously made a fool of himself with his spittle-flecked declaration that he would seek to find state charges against the January 6th Capitol kerfufflers who were pardoned by President Trump, despite the fact that the vast majority had already served their sentences?

Then we have this gem from the Philly persecutor. That’s right: Mr Krasner wants to go after anyone who might have been involved with the late Jeffrey Epstein. But, let’s tell the truth here: if Mr Krasner found anyone connected to Mr Epstein who has “ties back to (his) jurisdiction,” which is the confines of Philadelphia County — Philadelphia city and county are co-terminus — Mr Krasner wants to throw the book at them, but only if they are Republicans. As with his previous mentioned threat, nothing came of that, either. The late Mr Epstein’s homes and businesses were not in the City of Brotherly Love.

And now, here he goes again!

DA Krasner condemns fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis, says officers who commit crimes in Philly will ‘be convicted’

Krasner said the actions of the ICE agent who shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good were unlawful.

by Jesse Bunch | Thursday, January 8, 2026 | 3:50 PM EST

District Attorney Larry Krasner, responding to the killing of a 37-year-old woman by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, vowed to prosecute law enforcement officers who commit crimes in the city of Philadelphia.

“You will be arrested, you will stand trial, you will be convicted,” Krasner said during a news conference Thursday.

His remarks came a day after a masked ICE agent shot Renee Nicole Good multiple times in her SUV.

In widely circulated videos of the incident, Good appears to be driving away from a group of immigration agents as they order her to get out of her vehicle.

The District Attorney does not seem nearly as concerned with the law when it comes to our immigration laws. From the Tampa Free Press:

Shortly after entering office in 2018, the liberal prosecutor created the Immigration Counsel position in order to provide consultations on cases specifically involving foreign nationals. Krasner initially stated the position would work to achieve “immigration-neutral” outcomes, which in practice means evaluating and possibly lowering charges against migrants, including illegal immigrants, to ensure their conviction would not result in their deportation.

Krasner’s office repeatedly suggested early on that the Immigration Counsel would only focus on cases involving “low-level” offenders, but a case list obtained by a conservative immigration group in 2021 revealed that his office consulted in a myriad of cases involving foreign nationals accused of gruesome crimes, such as rape of a child, rape, sexual assault, arson and murder.

An additional case list released in 2024 revealed the Immigration Counsel has continued to be involved in serious criminal cases. Krasner’s office consulted with or worked on 21 aggravated assault, domestic violence and other crimes of violence cases; 26 possession of drugs with intent to distribute cases; 12 firearm cases; nine rape and indecent assault and sexual assault on a child cases, nine robbery or burglary cases and one vehicular homicide case, according to a case list for the 2023 calendar year.

Translation: Mr Krasner loves him some illegals, and would rather keep those who commit serious crimes other than those connected with their immigration status in the United States.

Mr Krasner said during the press conference.

I will charge you with those crimes. You will be arrested. You will stand trial. You will be convicted. Donald Trump cannot pardon you for a state court conviction. Do you hear me, ICE agents?

Arrests can get messy if the subjects being apprehended resist, and it looks to me as though Mr Krasner is encouraging illegals to resist arrest. And he’s attempting to intimidate ICE agents from coming to Philadelphia to enforce our immigration laws.

I would suggest that ICE do a deep dive into the members of Mr Krasner’s staff, to see if any of them might be here illegally.

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“No one is above the law.” — Joe Biden Unless, of course, it's immigration law, and then our good friends on the left support breaking the law!

We have previously noted how The Philadelphia Inquirer’s radical left columnist Will Bunch was adamant in his support for legality, railing against President Trump’s pardon of the January 6th Capitol kerfufflers, even though the vast majority of them had already been punished, already served their sentences, his indignation over the United States sinking drug trafficking boats rather than arresting the drug traffickers, and, as we reported last June, his support for illegal immigrant and accused wife beater Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Mr Bunch even said that he did not “like” President Biden’s final flurry of pardons “at all,” though he claimed that “they were understandable” to protect critics of then-incoming President Trump. Clearly, Mr Bunch believed the Democrats mantra of “no one is above the law,” used when they were trying to throw Mr Trump in prison.

But now, it seems that Mr Bunch has changed his tune. To him, some people clearly are above the law, those people being ones who have violated our immigration laws:

In New Orleans and across U.S., anger over ICE raids sparks a 2nd American Revolution

Everyday folks are rising up to resist immigration raids with whistles, car chases, and noisy protests. Revolution is in the air.

By Will Bunch | Pearl harbor Day, December 7, 2025 | 2:24 PM EST

NEW ORLEANS — In a city of frayed nerves over an invasion by more than 200 masked, tactical-gear-wearing federal immigration agents, a chaotic scene suddenly broke out right in front of the altar at First Grace United Methodist Church on Canal Street, just a couple of miles from the Superdome.

There follow several paragraphs noting that this was not the real thing, but a rehearsal for activists to disrupt actual immigration law enforcement.

This was a play-acting, casual-dress rehearsal during an emergency training session organized by the immigration-rights group Union Migrante. The activists were planting more seeds for what is rapidly sprouting as the most important American uprising of the 21st century.

It took about 66 hours to go from basic training to frontline action. On Friday afternoon, in a heavily Latino neighborhood near the New Orleans airport, the cartoon-villainous, strutting Border Patrol commander of the Louisiana immigration raids named “Catahoula Crunch,” Greg Bovino, struggled to conduct a sweep through blocks of low-slung apartments.

Word that Bovino and his masked secret police were in suburban Kenner spread quickly on a series of chat groups of activists who’ve played cat-and-mouse with his agents ever since their op began Wednesday, tailing government SUVs across superstore parking lots and down boulevards lined with strip malls.

Eventually, according to the local newspaper, The Times-Picayune, the caravan of citizen resisters following the agents grew to as many as 30 vehicles, until Bovino-friendly cops from the Kenner Police Department formed a blockade to stop them. That didn’t deter other neighbors who, as captured on video, chased the masked feds across lawns while filming with cell phones and blowing shrill whistles, a signal for immigrants to stay indoors.

In other words, the activists were attempting to disrupt and interfere with a legitimate immigration law enforcement action. Some people apparently are above the law!

You can feel the sheltering impulses of the antebellum Underground Railroad, combined with the righteous fervor of 1964’s Mississippi Freedom Summer. I spent much of last week in and around New Orleans, the resiliently rebellious heart of one of America’s reddest states. I watched everyday folks protest on street corners, create “Know Your Rights” pamphlets, and learn how to legally confront masked, armed law-enforcement officers. Nearing the end of a year that began with the grim inauguration of authoritarianism, I left here convinced I’d seen the green shoots of a second American Revolution.

Heaven forfend! “(A) second American Revolution”? I suppose that Mr Bunch would be in favor of anything that might get rid of our freely and legally elected President, but revolutions frequently do not turn out quite the way people expected. Our first, and hopefully only, American Revolution brought forth a nation of individual rights, freedom, and democracy, but most recent revolutions have produced authoritarianism, suppression of dissent, and dictatorship. Remember: our previous President tried to impose mandatory administration of a vaccine approved only on an emergency basis, pushed social media such as (pre-Elon Musk) Twitter and Facebook to censor posts the Administration didn’t like, and tried to create a Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board. Even The Grey Lady, our nation’s most famous newspaper, The New York Times, was giving OpEd space to those who wanted to restrict Other People’s — certainly not their own! — Freedom of Speech and of the Press.

However, I followed Mr Bunch’s link to the Times-Picayune, and found something somewhat different than the Inquirer columnist told his readers:

In Kenner, Border Patrol leader Gregory Bovino faces mixed reactions and police backup

By Lara Nicholson, Staff writer | Friday, December 5, 2025

As the U.S. Border Patrol conducted their third day of immigration raids in the New Orleans area, Chief Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino, the agency’s leader, toured the streets of Kenner Friday to mixed reaction from the public, taking photo ops at one point to fielding protesters at another before ultimately using a Kenner Police blockade to leave the area.

Bovino and a team of at least six agents conducted operations at gas stations and in neighborhoods along Williams Boulevard, the main corridor of the city lined with Latin American restaurants and department stores. At one point Bovino’s team approached a vehicle at a gas station to question a passenger before letting him go. It’s unclear if they detained anyone on Friday.

Bovino and his entourage wore green uniforms and face coverings, and he dismissed a request Friday from New Orleans Mayor-Elect Helena Moreno, a Democrat, that federal agents remove masks as part of a broader demand for more transparency.

“I think this is about as transparent as it gets right here,” Bovino told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune in response to Moreno’s demands.

But in Kenner, a suburban city of about 65,000, the political landscape is much different from its more progressive anchor. While having the largest Hispanic population per capita of any Louisiana city at 30%, its government is almost entirely Republican. Its police chief, Keith Conley, has in recent years complained about the increase in undocumented immigrants and is one of the only officials in the parish that’s been a vocal supporter of Border Patrol’s efforts in the city.

While New Orleans/Orleans Parish, the murder capital of the United States, gave 130,749 votes, or 82.16%, to then-Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff in 2024, and only 24,119, 15.16%, to then-former and now current President Donald Trump, Mr Trump carried Jefferson Parish, in which Kenner is the largest city, 98,810, or 55.45%, to 75,731, 42.50%, for Mrs Emhoff. Overall, Mr Trump carried Louisiana 1,208,505, 60.22%, to 766,870, 38.21%. Note that Mr Bunch reported that the activists were training at First Grace United Methodist Church on Canal Street, just a couple of miles from the Superdome, in New Orleans itself; the activists protesting in Kenner were mostly not from Kenner.

The Times-Picayune again:

At a Star Gas Station on Williams Boulevard where Bovino’s team stopped for a break, customers asked to take pictures with him while he waited to purchase pork cracklins and an energy drink. He offered to buy one of them their coke while a gaggle of photojournalists took pictures.

In the parking lot outside, a man in a camouflage jacket and a red “Make America Great Again” hat held up a makeshift metal sign saying “THANK YOU I.C.E ❤︎ U D.H.S. U.S.A!” in blue paint.

“We love you and we work for you,” Bovino told the man before entering his SUV.

Our frantic Philadelphian somehow didn’t include that in his column; perhaps he didn’t actually read all of the news report he cited?

Freed of the old constraint of 750 words, Mr Bunch continued, but if you read it, you’ll see that he was reporting on ‘resistance’ from New Orleans, which even he noted was but a “Democratic dot in a state that Trump won with 60% of the vote in 2024.”

One last bit from him:

In Charlotte, the Bovino-led operation dubbed “Charlotte’s Web,” which was also met with widespread community opposition, was abruptly cut short after just four-and-a-half days.

As my good friend and occasional website pinch hitter William Teach reported Monday morning, a previously, 2018 under President Trump, deported illegal immigrant who sneaked back in in 2021, under President Biden, was just arrested for stabbing a man in the chest on Charlotte’s light rail system, the same public transportation system in which Decarlos Brown — not an illegal immigrant, but a mentally ill man with dozens of previous arrests — (allegedly) murdered Iryna Zarutska.

Perhaps Mr Bunch never heard of the murder of Miss Zarutska, given that a site search of the Inquirer’s website foe “Iryna Zarutska” turned up zero results. Had Mr Brown been white and Miss Zarutska black or Hispanic, you can bet your last euro that it would have been all over the Inky.

Perhaps if our friends on the left in general, and Mr Bunch specifically, included our immigration laws and street crime under “no one is above the law” we’d have a safer society.
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Import the third world, get the third world. Is it any surprise that immigrants from a country in which stealing from the government is a way of life would steal from the government here?

Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) was just terribly, terribly upset that President Donald Trump used “hateful behavior and this type of language” when Mr Trump described him as “seriously retarded.”

“We have fought three decades to get this out of our school. Kids know better than to use it,” Walz told (NBC’s Kristen) Welker. “But look, this is what Donald Trump has done. He’s normalized this type of hateful behavior and this type of language. And mainly, look, at first, I think it’s just because he’s not a good human being, but secondly to distract from his incompetency.”

But when the Governor, and 2024 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, decided that junior high and high school boys needed tampon dispensers in their public school bathrooms, “seriously retarded” seems appropriate. Right now I’m reminded of season three, episode 8, of Shameless, where Sheila reclaims the dreaded “r” word. 🙂

Mr Trump wasn’t chastised, but ” target=”_blank”>doubled down on his characterization of Tampon Tim.

However now we have the stories, sourced from state workers, concerning how Governor Walz and the Minnesota state agencies ignored evidence of fraud perpetrated by Somali groups to raid federal funds. From The New York Times:

How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch

Prosecutors say members of the Somali diaspora, a group with growing political power, were largely responsible. President Trump has drawn national attention to the scandal amid his crackdown on immigration.

By Ernesto Londoño, Reporting from Minneapolis | Saturday, November 29, 2025 | Updated: Sunday, November 30, 2025

The fraud scandal that rattled Minnesota was staggering in its scale and brazenness.

Federal prosecutors charged dozens of people with felonies, accusing them of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a government program meant to keep children fed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

At first, many in the state saw the case as a one-off abuse during a health emergency. But as new schemes targeting the state’s generous safety net programs came to light, state and federal officials began to grapple with a jarring reality.

Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided.

Federal prosecutors say that 59 people have been convicted in those schemes so far, and that more than $1 billion in taxpayers’ money has been stolen in three plots they are investigating. That is more than Minnesota spends annually to run its Department of Corrections. Minnesota’s fraud scandal stood out even in the context of rampant theft during the pandemic, when Americans stole tens of billions through unemployment benefits, business loans and other forms of aid, according to federal auditors.

Note that the embedded link behind “rampant fraud” is dated April 9, 2024, when President Biden was still in office; this isn’t just some accusation by President Trump against his political enemies.

From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

The SBA estimates more than $200 billion of the $1.2 trillion it disbursed during the pandemic was obtained fraudulently, according to the Office of Inspector General.

Fraud was rampant during the panicdemic — not a typographical error, but exactly how I saw it — as it will always be whenever money from the government, federal, state, and local, is available, and while Minnesota is a blue state, it happens in states run by Republicans as well. From Breitbart:

The fraud has been so endemic in Minnesota that even the usually far-left Times is joining Breitbart News and calling it out. Indeed, the paper even noted that early on many liberals waved off the fraud as a “one-off abuse,” but as each new case rolled out from federal prosecutors the sense of alarm has grown and the blame is undeniable.

“Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided,” the Times reported.

The paper does not spare exposure of the Somali community.

Macalester College professor Ahmed Samatar, a Somali native, said that the fraud among Minnesota’s Somali migrants should not be surprising. The Times added that “Somali refugees who came to the United States after their country’s civil war were raised in a culture in which stealing from the country’s dysfunctional and corrupt government was widespread.”

Import the third world, get the third world!

The fraud has been so deep that it has undermined all of the state’s welfare programs.

“No one will support these programs if they continue to be riddled with fraud,” federal prosecutor Joseph H. Thompson told the media. “We’re losing our way of life in Minnesota in a very real way.”

Hey, the losses to fraud are very acceptable if they can somehow end welfare programs! But I seriously doubt they will.

Naturally, the left leapt to the defense of the Somalis:

Above and beyond this massive fraud and theft, investigators are also finding that Somali migrants have sent millions in taxpayer dollars to the African Islamic terror group known as Al-Shabaab.

A long list of Democrats have been rushing to stick up for the Somali community in Minnesota, including Rep. Ilhan Omar and a growing number of local officials.

Well, of course they did. After all, to note that the (alleged) fraud committed (allegedly) by Somali groups is raaaaacist. Is it any surprise that our friends on the left would leap top their defense? After all, they want to fight President Trump on everything, including his policies of enforcing our immigration laws. But the Herald-Leader story referenced a white husband and wife caught, prosecuted, and convicted of stealing from the COVIDiocy relief funds.

It’s simple: a clear pile of our taxpayer funds goes not to government agencies, but non-governmental organizations which promise, promise! to do only good things with the money, but which are only lightly, if at all, supervised or audited. That is not to say that government employees can’t commit fraud, but the sheer number of NGOs receiving taxpayer dollars multiplies the opportunities for fraud exponentially.

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“Now, only the best will drive”

In the aftermath of two illegal immigrants causing fatal accidents while driving tractor-trailers, there are a lot of stories, mostly in social media, about increased federal commercial driving regulation enforcement, particularly along Interstate 40 through Oklahoma. Drivers are being tested for the ability to read English, which is mandatory for holders of commercial driver’s licenses (CDL). It’s not just road signs, but the driver must be able to read manifests and the material warning data on potentially hazardous loads.

I’m old enough to remember the publicity when the federal government mandated CDLs to drive certain vehicles. “Now, only the best will drive” was the slogan. At the time, I had what was called a chauffer’s license in Virginia, and I occasionally drove dump trucks. The company for which I worked brought in all of the drivers one Saturday morning, to take the CDL written test, with their road tests grandfathered. I didn’t bother because we had a concrete pour out of the plant in Newport News Shipbuilding, I was doing the quality control work, and I hadn’t driven a truck in a while. I never bothered with getting my CDL because I didn’t really want to drive anyway.

That the fee for the CDL was $40.00, while a regular operator’s license was just $5.00 might have had a little bit to do with it as well.

Now, “only the best will drive” means that commercial drivers have to meet qualifications. They’re getting tested for English proficiency by being asked to read a passage out of a children’s book; it’s not quantum physics. They’re being pulled for wearing flip-flops, when regulations require full shoes while driving, supposedly because sandals can slip off your feet and get caught under the pedals. That one seems silly to me, but it’s still the rule, and virtually every truck has air conditioning these days, so it’s not as though the driver’s feet will get too hot.

I particularly liked this one:

He’d driven trucks for fifteen solid years, mastering every highway curve and weather condition. At a weigh station stop, an officer slid a simple kids’ book across the counter: “Read this.” The words blurred, the sentences tangled; he couldn’t. License gone in an instant. After all those miles, it wasn’t the road that ended his career—it was the system.

Say what? The driver had, allegedly, been driving here for “fifteen solid years” and he still hadn’t mastered enough English to read a passage from The Cat In The Hat?

A lot of the stuff on Facebook pictures drivers who are Sikh or Indian, and there’s no way to tell if the driver pictured is the one who lost his CDL on the spot, but it’s important to know that the story is real, even if the social media picture is possibly faked.

US bars 7,200 truck drivers for failing English tests, Indian-origin truckers hit hard

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the crackdown on October 30. It comes close in the heels of a crash involving an Indian-origin truck driver

Written by Manraj Grewal Sharma | Updated: All Soul’s Day, November 2, 2025 | 03:11 PM IST

More than 7,200 commercial truck drivers have been disqualified across the United States this year after failing mandatory English proficiency tests, in an aggressive enforcement campaign by the US Department of Transportation (DOT) after a series of fatal highway incidents involving Indian-origin drivers.

The North American Punjabi Truckers Association estimates that 130,000–150,000 truck drivers work in the US, coming directly from Punjab and Haryana due to established recruitment networks, and many of them have been impacted.

Announcing the crackdown on October 30, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed that 7,248 drivers were declared “out of service”—effectively debarred from driving—in 2025 for failing real-time roadside English Language Proficiency (ELP) checks. The figure, drawn from real-time data in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) national inspection database, marks a dramatic jump from roughly 1,500 such debarment orders until July 2025.

The move comes in the wake of several high-profile accidents, including a devastating pileup on a California highway in October involving an Indian driver accused of killing three Americans. According to Department of Transportation (DOT) sources, the driver, an illegal alien who was able to secure a California Commercial Driver’s License (CDL), failed the English test multiple times before the incident. DOT officials allege that the state’s lax adoption of Trump-era language rules enabled the tragedy, with Secretary Duffy publicly criticizing “sanctuary states” like California for flouting new federal guidance.

In another case earlier in August, Indian national Harjinder Singh was involved in a deadly triple-fatality on the Florida Turnpike despite questionable English language proficiency credentials, according to safety records. Both cases have intensified scrutiny of Commercial Driver’s License issuance practices, especially toward non-domiciled drivers from India and other South Asian countries, a demographic increasingly prominent in US trucking owing to persistent driver shortages.

When trucking companies can pay non-citizen drivers 52¢ a mile and get haulers, many don’t want to pay 75¢ or 80¢ to get a real American citizen who can read Green Eggs and Ham.

And here’s the money line:

The revived rule, 49 CFR 391.11(b)(2), requires all Commercial Driver’s License holders to read and speak English well enough to converse with the public, understand signs, communicate with officials, and maintain accurate reports. Enforcement was relaxed under an Obama administration memo, which since 2016 had discouraged inspectors from removing drivers solely for English language proficiency (ELP) deficiencies. This changed after President Trump’s 2025 executive order and a series of directives by the transportation department mandating immediate debarment for failing English language tests as of June 25, 2025.

In other words, the two fatal accidents reported in the article can be directly traced to the feet of Barack Hussein Obama! It’s not that immigrants are doing the jobs that Americans won’t do, but that immigrants are doing the jobs that Americans won’t do for 52¢ a mile. And when CDLs are being issued to “non-domiciled” drivers — meaning: drivers with no home address, drivers basically living in their trucks — those “non-domiciled drivers” can afford to work for 52¢ per mile, because they aren’t paying for a house and wife and kids.

It makes me wonder: how many “non-domiciled drivers,” men living in the sleeper cabs of their trucks, having little better to do, are maintaining separate logbooks to conceal how many hours they’re driving?

This is not to say that real American truck drivers don’t have accidents; they absolutely do. If there are any statistics showing a difference in accident rates between citizen and non-citizen drivers, I have not found them. But Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy noted that several states, including California, were improperly issuing CDLs to non-domiciled drivers and was working to get the practice within regulations.

It’s worth noting that the previous Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, whom Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff wanted as her 2024 running mate, but decided against it because he is openly homosexual, and who has aspirations of running for President in 2028, did not take any actions to get unqualified drivers off the roads.

Will this cost consumers? Yes, it will, but perhaps not that much. The difference between 50¢ a mile and 75¢ a mile, over a 1,000-mile delivery — and most are less than 1,000 miles — is an extra $250.00 for the driver, but if he’s hauling 50,000 lb, is only ½¢ a pound. Using some rough measurements, a 53 ft trailer, loaded to the max with toilet paper, not exactly a heavy load, could carry 15,500 rolls of TP, so $250 extra for the driver would add 6.45¢ to the cost of a four-roll pack, over that same 1,000-mile delivery. That, to me, is worth getting unqualified drivers, especially illegal immigrant drivers off the road. When they find that they can’t work anywhere, they’ll eventually head back to India, or Mexico, of from wherever else it is they come.

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Democrisy: the left said that no one is above the law, right up until the law impacted the people they favored.

Our good friends on the left spent much of the Biden Administration years telling us what Senator Dick Durbin did in a tweet pictured to the right, telling us that no one is above the law. Letitia James said the same thing, many times, in her witch hunt against then-former President Trump, yet, today, she’s denying that she has any responsibility as far as her clearly fraudulent mortgage applications are concerned. And one of my favorite columnists, Will Bunch, was appalled, aghast, everything rolled into one that Mr Trump wasn’t thrown in prison and that, upon returning to office, pardoned the January 6th Capitol kerfufflers as well as some police officers, even though the vast majority of them had been punished, having already served their sentences.

Yet somehow, some way, our good friends on the left believe that illegal immigrants are above the law!

How an ICE shake-up will bring Chicago-level terror to Philly

The brutal arrest tactics and stepped-up immigration raids that have roiled Chicago are coming to Philadelphia after an ICE shake-up.

by Will Bunch | Thursday, October 30, 2024 | 1:33 PM EDT

There was sheer terror and panic in the voice of the sobbing woman who dialed 911 in Chicago on the afternoon of Oct. 4. It was a day of utter chaos along Kedzie Street in a heavily Latino neighborhood on the city’s South Side, as federal agents led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brutally arrested brown-skinned residents and clashed with a growing group of protesters.

The woman told the 911 dispatcher that the federal agents swarming her block had just slammed a man to the ground in front of her, according to a recording from the city’s emergency dispatch center obtained by the Talking Points Memo site.

“The agents started beating him up,” the unidentified caller said. “They have rifles and they’re pointing it at people.” She added that the man who was getting pummeled was unarmed, then said, “We have rights, we’re citizens here, please help us.”

If you’ve been following the news out of Chicago this fall, you know this 911 call wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s been about two months since Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced “Operation Midway Blitz” in the nation’s third-largest city, boosted by a Trump-posted meme promising a hellish “Chipocalypse Now.”

We reported, in September, how the columnist lamented that President Trump wasn’t giving Venezuelan drug smugglers a fair chance to escape and deliver their cargoes to our shores. We noted last June that he was cheering on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, even while admitting that he did “find quite troubling the allegations of domestic abuse that caused Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, to briefly seek a protective order.”

Why then is the distinguished Mr Bunch so upset that President Trump is enforcing our immigration laws? Why isn’t he telling us that no one is above the law, including illegal immigrants?

Mr Bunch’s own newspaper reported, last inauguration day, that there were roughly 47,000 “undocumented immigrants,” to use the left’s mealy-mouth whitewashing of the more correct term, illegal immigrants. We did the math, and calculated that slightly over 3% of the city’s population were there illegally. If 47,000 illegals living in the City of Brotherly Love were sent back to their home countries, of left voluntarily, wouldn’t that help alleviate one of the city’s other problems, a lack of affordable housing, with tens of thousands of housing units becoming vacant?

If Mr Bunch specifically, and the newspaper in general, truly believed that no one is above the law, shouldn’t the Inquirer be advocating that the illegal immigrants take advantage of programs to help them return home, or, if being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, comply peacefully?

No one likes being arrested, and criminals frequently resist or try to get away, but most people have little sympathy for an accused thief or rapist or murderer winds up being rather forcibly arrested if he doesn’t simply surrender. Yet Mr Bunch complains that resisting arrest by ICE doesn’t usually work and has sympathy for those roughed up or even injured while resisting arrest.

And America has watched with shock and awe as ICE and Border Patrol agents have racially profiled and body-slammed Latinos, fired tear gas and painful pepper balls at pastors, journalists, and peaceful protesters, and indicted anyone who stands in their way, even a candidate for Congress.

Yeah, that kind of happens when people are trying to obstruct law enforcement agents in the performance of their duty. Violation of Title 18 USC §372, Conspiracy to impede or injure officer, is a federal offense, a felony which carries a sentence of up to six years in prison.

We get it: the curmudgeonly columnist absotively, posilutely hates President Trump, hates him with a white-hot passion, but should that get in the way of Mr Trump doing the right thing and enforcing our laws? Remember: no one is above the law, as our friends on the left have told us time and again, or at least they did so before November 5, 2024.