No one is above the law, and that includes our immigration laws We need to go after the people who knowingly employ illegal immigrants.

Thanks to my good friend and occasional blog pinch-hitter William Teach, I found this wonderful story:

Immigration arrests left NC restaurants short-staffed and job sites idle, owners say

By: Ahmed Jallow | Friday, February 20, 2026 | 5:30 PM EST

For two weeks last November, kitchens at David “Woody” Lockwood’s restaurants ran short of dishwashers, prep cooks and servers as workers stayed home, afraid to leave their houses during a federal immigration crackdown that resulted in more than 400 arrests across North Carolina.

“We had a lot of people, mostly in the kitchen, that didn’t feel safe coming to work,” said Lockwood, a co-owner of Trophy Brewing and The Bend. That meant managers working extra shifts, longer waits for customers and paying employees who were not on the job to help them get by.

“We decided, at least for those two weeks, to pay those people for the hours they missed, which is not a sustainable thing,” Lockwood said.

So, Mr Lockwood now knows exactly who among his employees is here and was working illegally. Perhaps he didn’t look at their I-9 documents closely, or perhaps he ignored legal requirements on hiring illegals, but now he knows who was working there illegally, and has absolutely no f(ornicating) excuses: he needs to discharge them all immediately, and inform Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, exactly who they were. If he does not disclose this information to ICE, he needs to be arrested for knowingly harboring illegals, along with the penalties for not insuring that those he hired were legally eligible to work in the United States.

It is possible that a few of his Hispanic-looking employees were in the country and working legally, and should now have their documents in hand to prove that if ICE comes calling, but the odds are that most were not legal.

It’s simple: if the illegals cannot find work in the United States, they’ll go home on their own.

Business owners and educators said the effects of the crackdown extended well beyond those taken into custody, disrupting construction and hospitality – two of the state’s largest industries – and keeping some students home from school.

Mikki Paradis, chief executive of PDI Drywall, said construction sites fell silent for more than a week during the November operations.

“There was not a single person working on those jobs,” said Paradis, who has relied on Hispanic workers throughout her 21-year career. She said these labor shortages would slow housing construction and drive up costs.

Translation: Miss Paradis has been knowingly hiring illegals, and ICE needs to visit her offices and start pulling the company’s I-9 files. If it can be proved that she knowingly hired illegals, she’s in a heap of trouble. 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.

Six months behind bars ought to teach Miss Paradis and Mr Lockwood the error of their ways, and scare the poop out of the other employers of illegals, scare them enough that they get rid of the illegals right away. If the illegals then self-deport, it just makes everything easier for ICE and law enforcement.

Will it cost Mr Lockwood and Miss Paradis their businesses? Perhaps it will, but if they were knowingly employing illegals, they deserve it. That, too, will get other employers to straighten up and fly right.

No one is above the law our Democratic friends told us when they were trying to get Donald Trump thrown in jail. Well, if no one is above the law, then no one is above our immigration laws as well.

Will Bunch and due process of law

This site’s favorite whipping boy, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s far, far, far left columnist Will Bunch, who’s even crazier than Amanda Marcotte if such a thing is possible, has told us how important it is to enforce 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, insisting that this illegal immigrant be given the full protection of the laws. He was all about the law when President Trump was eliminating drug trafficking boats coming from Venezuela, an action that Philadelphians should at least somewhat understand given the Hellhole that the Kensington neighborhood has become with strung out junkies sleeping on the sidewalks, in alleys and the Allegheny Avenue SEPTA station.

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, when it comes to our immigration laws, all of a sudden he doesn’t want those enforced. Apprehending and deporting illegals he told us is indistinguishable from the Geheime Staatspolizei rounding up Jews to send them to the concentration camps and their deaths.

Now we have this:

Europe is holding its Epstein creeps accountable. Why can’t we?

Europeans are pushing to hold Jeffrey Epstein’s creepy pals, including billionaires like Elon Musk, accountable. The U.S.? Not so much.

by Will Bunch | Sunday, February 8, 2026 |12:56 PM EST

The slow drip of the U.S. government’s still grossly incomplete release of its files on late financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has nonetheless become a who’s who of Planet Earth’s rich and famous — from billionaires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk to cultural icons like filmmaker Woody Allen and, of course, two presidents.

You can see what the distinguished Mr Bunch did. He wants us to associate Messrs Gates, Allen, Musk, Bill Clinton, and, of course Donald Trump with Mr Epstein’s sex trafficking, because that’s for which the late financier is spectacularly infamous.

The average American paying any attention to this global bonfire of the vanities probably barely noticed this name: longtime British politico Peter Mandelson, who most recently served as the U.K.’s ambassador to the United States.

Across the pond, it was another story. The Fleet Street tabloid press went wild over revelations that Mandelson — a key insider in the ruling Labor Party, long known to have been one of Epstein’s globetrotting pals — maintained his close ties even after the American’s 2008 child-prostitution conviction, writing Epstein in 2009 to hail his release from jail as “liberation day.”

But unlike the fallout in the United States, Mandelson’s Epstein problem didn’t end with some embarrassing headlines. Back in September, when an initial batch of Epstein’s emails went public, Prime Minister Keir Starmer — Mandelson’s longtime ally — immediately fired his friend from his ambassador’s post in D.C., and the scandal has only intensified.

Mr Bunch wants Americans named in the Epstein files ‘held .  .  . accountable,’ as he sees Mr Mandelson so being. But how was the now former Ambassador held accountable? He was fired from his appointed post by the man who appointed him, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, after the British tabloids had a field day going “wild” over the revelations.

Yet, through several subsequent paragraphs, Mr Bunch mentions only resignations by prominent people mentioned in the Epstein files. Oddly enough, the columnist who so vociferously wanted due process of law and a presumption of evidence for Mr Abrego Garcia seems totally uninterested in such for the Americans he hates, which means, of course, President Trump and Mr Musk.

The time-lapsed released of the Epstein files hasn’t yet produced a smoking gun concerning his close friendship with Trump, but the fact that lurid tips to federal authorities about the two-time president don’t seem to have been really investigated speaks volumes about the utter lack of elite accountability on this side of the Atlantic.

“(D)on’t seem to have been really investigated”, huh? The Epstein files have been under the control of President Trump and his subordinates for one year and 19 days so far, but they were under the control of then-President Joe Biden and his Attorney General, Merrick Garland, who absolutely hates Republicans for denying him a seat on the Supreme Court for four full years. It could reasonably be argued that the Biden Administration could not do much with them until the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell was concluded, but she was convicted on December 29, 2021, leaving the previous administration, an administration determined to do all it could to put Mr Trump in prison and prevent him from ever becoming President again, all of 2022, 2023, and 2024 to pore through those files. The Democrats would like us to believe that yes, there really is incriminating evidence against Mr Trump in those files, but somehow, some way, they never went through the files.

How stupid would you have to believe something like that?

Even Mr Bunch described Mr Epstein as a “late financier and sex trafficker,” which means that at least some of his contacts were about finance rather than young girls; contact with Mr Epstein simply proves contact with him, not sexual offenses. Mr Bunch, like the rest of the #TrumpDerangementSyndrome-afflicted, want to assume that contact must mean knowledge of and cooperation with Mr Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, but that’s not the case. More, for Mr Bunch, who was so very concerned that Mr Abrego Garcia receive due process of law, wants to see punished anyone who spoke with Mr Epstein, even if such contact had nothing to do with trafficking young girls.

People whose jobs are to enforce the law band together to not enforce the law Unless it's against cops. They want to throw law enforcement officers into jail!

We reported on Wednesday how the Democrats in the Philadelphia city government apparently believe that illegal immigrants are above the law. Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating District Attorney Larry Krasner, who even got one of his office’s lawyers disbarred from the federal court system for deliberately lying in trying to get a convicted murderer off death row even though he’d never actually be executed.

Now the distinguished Mr Krasner wants to keep criminals from being arrested:

DA Larry Krasner forms coalition of progressive prosecutors committed to charging federal agents who commit crimes

Krasner was joined by eight other prosecutors from U.S. cities — including Minneapolis DA Mary Moriarty — to announce the initiative.

by Ellie Rushing and Anna Orso | Wednesday, January 28, 2026 | 10:00 AM EST | Updated: 4:07 PM EST

District Attorney Larry Krasner on Wednesday announced the formation of a new coalition of progressive prosecutors committed to charging federal agents who violate state laws.

Krasner joined eight other prosecutors from U.S. cities to create the Project for the Fight Against Federal Overreach, a legal fund that local prosecutors can tap if they pursue charges against federal agents.

The abbreviation for the group, FAFO, is a nod to what has become one of Krasner’s frequent slogans: “F— around and find out.”

The move places Krasner at the center of a growing national clash between Democrats and the Trump administration over federal immigration enforcement and whether local law enforcement can — or should — charge federal agents for actions they take while carrying out official duties.

Note that last sentence, which reporters Ellie Rushing and Anna Orso couldn’t ignore: Mr Krasner wants to find ways to charge federal officers for “carrying out their official duties”!

What are their official duties? The apprehension of people in the United States illegally. Mr Krasner does not want law enforcement to actually enforce the law. Then again, he never has.

The tactic is simple: Mr Krasner and his fellow travelers want to try to intimidate Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, agents from carrying out their duties. With the public resistance of the left, there has been considerable chaos as protester Eenee Good, who tried to run down an ICE agent with her vehicle, and Alex Pretti, an out-of-control rager looking for a fight and who attacked ICE agents were killed as they tried to interfere with legitimate arrests.

Mr Krasner and the rest don’t like that ICE has had to be aggressive in some apprehensions? The solution is simple: have the local police assist in keeping protesters back, and supporting the arrests. Have state and local authorities honor ICE detainers, so those illegals already arrested for another crime can be handed off to immigration rather than having ICE having to track them down and arrest them at their homes or on the streets.

But what about actual violent crime in the City of Brotherly Love?

Woman charged with pepper-spraying conservative influencer on SEPTA bus

A video allegedly showing the Jan. 19 altercation went viral on right-wing social media accounts. The case will be led by the state attorney general’s mass transit prosecutor.

By Michael Tanenbaum, PhillyVoice Staff | Thursday, January 29, 2026

A woman who was filmed pepper-spraying a right-wing influencer during an argument on a SEPTA bus earlier this month now faces charges after the clip went viral and garnered national attention from conservative groups on social media.

Paulina Reyes, 22, was charged Thursday with simple assault, harassment, disorderly conduct and possession of an instrument of crime, the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General said. The case will be prosecuted by the attorney general’s mass transit prosecutor, a role that was created in 2023 to oversee some crimes that occur on SEPTA property.

On Jan. 19, Reyes was riding a SEPTA bus when she got into a heated argument with Frank Scales, the conservative influencer who runs the website Surge Philly and frequently posts clips of himself interviewing people at protests in the city. Scales has been an especially outspoken critic of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat now in his third term who’s been a steadfast opponent of the Trump administration.

My good Twitter friend, Philly Crime Update, said that the state had to charge the lovely Miss Reyes because Mr Krasner would not. The charges will be prosecuted by the special prosecutor position, created in 2023 to pursue crimes committed on SEPTA, a position Mr Krasner filed suit to challenge the law that created it, claiming that it was it was unconstitutional and stripped his office of authority, even though the prosecutor only rarely exercised his authority to protect decent people on SEPTA.

Translation: if the District Attorney had his way, Miss Reyes would not face any charges at all, because the special prosecutor’s office wouldn’t exist, despite the fact she was angered by the fact that Mr Scales did exactly the things Mr Krasner said ought to be protected for the demonstrators in Minneapolis!

 

Philly Dems say “Illegal immigrants are above the law!”

It is to the surprise of absolutely no one that Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating District Attorney Larry Krasner wants to “hunt down” Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, agents for daring to do something really radical like enforcing the law.

Wackjob Philly DA Vows To “Hunt Down” ICE Agents

By William Teach | Wednesday, January 28, 2026 | 7:00 AM EST

He’s really skirting the line of being a criminal threat to federal law enforcement. Maybe he should worry more about Philly’s crime rate, which is a 1 (100 is best), with violent and property crime rates over 3 times the Pennsylvania average and well over double the US average

Soros-backed Philadelphia DA vows to ‘hunt’ down ICE agents: ‘We will find you’

Philadelphia’s top prosecutor, a George Soros-backed district attorney, is facing scrutiny and backlash after vowing to “hunt” down federal immigration agents as city leaders move to curb ICE operations.

Speaking during a morning event outside City Hall tied to newly unveiled “ICE OUT” legislation, District Attorney Larry Krasner sharply criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

“This is a small bunch of wannabe Nazis. That’s what they are,” Krasner said. “In a country of 350 million, we outnumber them. If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities. We will find you. We will achieve justice.”

I heard about this yesterday, but didn’t write about it. I expected our nation’s third-oldest, continuously-published daily newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, to have more on this than they did, but this was all I could find in a search Wednesday morning:

On the other end is District Attorney Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s most prominent progressive, who has on several occasions threatened to file criminal charges against ICE agents who commit crimes in the city.

“There will be accountability now. There will be accountability in the future. There will be accountability after [Trump] is out of office,” Krasner said Tuesday. “If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities.”

The article concerns the responses of Democratic officials to enforcement of our immigration laws, and is about more than Mr Krasner.

As we have previously noted, the distinguished Mr Krasner has also threatened to file state charges against the January 6th Capitol Kerfufflers after they were pardoned by President Trump, even though most of them had already served their federal sentences, but hasn’t actually done anything, perhaps because there was nothing which he could find which occurred in his jurisdiction, which is limited to the City of Brotherly Love.

The Inquirer reported, on Inauguration Day, that there were about 47,000 illegal aliens living in the city, but the currently cited article uses a different source to guesstimate an “unauthorized population” of 76,000. With a July 1, 2024 estimated population of 1,573,916, that would put Philly’s illegals at 4.83% of the total. And the Democrats want more than to tone down the enforcement of immigration laws: they want to protect the illegals from everything:

Philadelphia officials said the best way they can prepare is by limiting the city’s cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

City Councilmember Kendra Brooks, of the progressive Working Families Party, and Councilmember Rue Landau, a Democrat, were joined by dozens of activists and other elected officials during a news conference Tuesday to unveil a package of legislation aimed at codifying into law the city’s existing “sanctuary city” practices.

Those policies, which are currently executive orders, bar city officials from holding undocumented immigrants in custody at ICE’s request without a judicial warrant.

So, the Democrats want to protect the illegals who are caught breaking other laws as well.

Landau and Brooks’ legislative package, expected to be introduced in Council on Thursday, goes further, preventing ICE agents from wearing masks, using city-owned property for staging raids, or accessing city databases.

Erika Guadalupe Núñez, executive director of immigrant advocacy organization Juntos, said the legislation “goes beyond just ‘We don’t collaborate.’”

Juntos gets regular calls about ICE staging operations at public locations in and around Philadelphia, and people have been worried, despite official assurances, whether personal information held by the city will be secure from government prying.

What happened to “no one is above the law”? The Democrats proclaimed it, loudly and clearly, when they were trying to throw then-former President Trump in jail, and we’re hearing it — sort of — from Mr Krasner, as he wants to ‘hunt down’ ICE agents, for as many years as it takes, even if it takes ‘decades,’ because they are charged with enforcing our immigration laws.

When former Philadelphia Police Officer Eric Ruch, Jr, was tried, convicted, and sentenced for killing an unarmed suspect following a police chase, Mr Krasner filed an appeal to reconsider the 11½-to-23 month sentence as too lenient. Instead Mr Ruch was released after nine months, the same amount of time former state Attorney General Kathleen Kane spent locked up for her 10-to-23 month sentenced for perjury. If that angered Mr Krasner, so much the better.

In the meantime, we have documented how the city’s scumbag of a prosecutor has the criminals’ backs, while he hates the cops.

But is that really a surprise? The Democrats in city government are all supporting those who have broken our immigration laws, not only entering illegally or overstaying a visa, but who must commit felonies, must break our employment laws every day to live in the United States. But to the Democrats, illegals really are above the law.

Are you tired of winning yet?

Our good friends on the left have been telling us how much foreigners hate President Donald Trump, how the United States is the laughing stock of the world, yada, yada, yada . . . until we come to a story like this. From the Associated Press:

Mexico’s president says it was ‘sovereign decision’ to send cartel members to US

By Megan Janetsky | Wednesday, January 21, 2026 | 4:47 PM EST

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico sent 37 cartel members to the United States at the request of the U.S. Justice Department, with President Claudia Sheinbaum saying Wednesday that it was a “sovereign decision” by her government.

Sheinbaum responded to criticism from analysts and opponents who said that the transfers on Tuesday were the result of mounting pressure from Washington. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to take military action on cartels.

Sheinbaum said that although the transfers were made at the request of the U.S. government, the decision was taken by the National Security Council after analyzing what was “convenient for Mexico” and in terms of its “national security.”

“Mexico is put first above all else, even if they ask for whatever they have to ask for. It is a sovereign decision,” she said at her regular morning news briefing.

We do not begrudge President Sheinbaum trying to save face, and it certainly is a benefit to our south of the border neighbor to be rid of the 92 criminals sent to American custody during President Trump’s second term. But who would think that Mexico would have taken this action at all had President Trump not asked for it? And who would have believed we’d have even asked if Kamala Harris Emhoff had won the 2024 election?

Sheinbaum, who has been praised for her level-headed management of relations with Trump, has been forced to walk a fine line between making concessions to the Trump administration and projecting strength both domestically and internationally.

Observers say that the Mexican government has used the transfers as a sort of pressure valve to offset demands by Trump and show authorities are cracking down on criminal groups. Tension has only mounted since the U.S. carried out a military operation in Venezuela to capture then President Nicolás Maduro to face charges in the United States in an extraordinary use of force that set leaders across Latin America on edge.

There was also the blowing out of the water speedboats trying to ship narcotics from Venezuela to the United States. It seems that President Trump is serious about trying to defend us from drug traffickers.

The American left, of course, seem to think that this is a bad thing!

Those sent to the U.S. on Tuesday were alleged members of the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel, known by its Spanish acronym CJNG, and the Sinaloa Cartel, which Washington has designated as terrorist organizations, and a number of other groups. It’s the third such transfer of capos over the past year. Mexico’s government said it has sent 92 people in total to the U.S. in total.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday said that the transfer was a “landmark achievement in the Trump administration’s mission to destroy the cartels.”

This is winning, this is the President of the United States doing everything he possibly can to use American strength to defend the United States against foreign threats. The left don’t like it, the left see us using strength as bullying, because the weak wimps of the left have only known bullying from the perspective of being bullied by stronger people.

So, if our own leftists are foaming at the mouth in hatred of Mr Trump, if the rest of the world hates our President, a whole lot of Americans don’t care as long as he’s getting good things done for our country.

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?

It’s too bad she is gone, but Renee was up to no Good

The left really, really needed a sap like Renee Nicole Good to become a martyr for their cause. They want to completely end immigration enforcement, and hope that the death of this not-very-bright woman — and how great for their propaganda it was that she was a white woman! — will persuade more Americans that we should stop enforcing our immigration laws.

I have wondered how the leftist rallying groups managed to get their parade signs printed so quickly and professionally and identically across many cities after events. The American left protesting against the military raid and capture of Venezuelan narco-terrorist Nicolas Maduro were out in the streets that very morning, complete with professionally printed signs. That points to just one thing: a dedicated and professional organization pushing their stuff, with plenty of money behind them.

Here’s who’s really behind the Minneapolis ICE resistance movement

By Isabel Vincent | Thursday, January 8, 2026 | Updated: Friday, January 9, 2026 | 6:32 AM EST

Radical leftist groups, including one financed with $7.8 million from progressive billionaire George Soros, are behind the anti-ICE protests in Minnesota, The Post has learned.

Indivisible Twin Cities[1]Hyperlink not in cited original, but added by me., which describes itself as a grassroots group of volunteers, has led many of the protests against ICE raids in Minnesota, where Renee Nicole Good was shot dead Wednesday after allegedly trying to mow down an ICE agent with her vehicle.

Indivisible is an offshoot of the Indivisible Project in Washington, DC, which bills itself as a movement to defeat the “Trump agenda,” and received $7,850,000 from Soros’ Open Society Foundations between 2018 and 2023, according to public records.

Make no mistake here: many of those outraged liberals who are trying to interfere with immigration law enforcement have no connection with the Soros crime family, and are outraged on their own, but that doesn’t matter: they are nevertheless the “useful idiots,” to use the term Vladimir Ilich Lenin supposedly coined, aiding an enemy they might not even understand exists. Few really understood how George Soros tried to undermine American society by sponsoring criminal-loving, police-hating district attorney candidates, but millions voted for those same candidates, unwittingly doing the Soros’ family’s work for them.

As a 13-year-old boy, Mr Soros was used by the Nazis to hand out deportation notices to Jews living in occupied Hungary, and if we can forgive a young teenager for doing what the Nazis forced him to do, it doesn’t look like he wants to do the democratic West any favors.

77,303,568 Americans voted for then former President Donald Trump, and his promises to close the border and deport the illegal immigrants already here, while then Vice President and not really “border tsar” Kamala Harris Emhoff, assigned by President Biden to address the renewed surge in illegal immigrants that came once Mr Trump’s first term was over, received fewer, 75,019,230, the voters clearly chose President Trump’s policies over the surge in illegals Mr Biden and Mrs Emhoff allowed.

When Republicans sought a greater say in the crafting of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus bill and healthcare reform legislation, the President reportedly told them, “Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election,” and then added, “Elections have consequences.” It seems that our good friends on the left don’t like those consequences, now that Mr Trump is President again, but he is doing what he said he would do, and what the people voted for him to do.

The law is simple: 18 U.S. Code § 111 – Assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers or employees

(a)In General.—Whoever—

(1)forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes with any person designated in section 1114 of this title while engaged in or on account of the performance of official duties; or
(2)forcibly assaults or intimidates any person who formerly served as a person designated in section 1114 on account of the performance of official duties during such person’s term of service,

shall, where the acts in violation of this section constitute only simple assault, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both, and where such acts involve physical contact with the victim of that assault or the intent to commit another felony, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both.

(b)Enhanced Penalty.—
Whoever, in the commission of any acts described in subsection (a), uses a deadly or dangerous weapon (including a weapon intended to cause death or danger but that fails to do so by reason of a defective component) or inflicts bodily injury, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

Whether she realized it or not, Miss Good, in attempting to block ICE agents was in violation of §111(a)(1), and striking the agent with her vehicle became eligible for the enhanced penalty specified in §111(b).

The penalty should not be death, but in the series of actions in the event, that’s what she got.

References

References
1 Hyperlink not in cited original, but added by me.

Deonte Demarcus Carter ain’t in too big a heap o’ trouble

Sadly, my usual title for these articles, “You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!” doesn’t really apply to Deonte Demarcus Carter, because he’s in far less trouble than he should be for killing two men.

Mother says she was failed by KY courts after man gets 10 years in 2 killings

Deonte Demarcus Carter, mugshot via Kentucky Online Offenders Lookup, and is a public record.

By Taylor Six | December 26, 2025 5:00 AMCristina Sandusky feels failed by the Fayette County justice system.

Deonte Demarcus Carter was sentenced this month to 10 years in prison for his role in a pair of fatal Lexington shootings that happened 21 days apart. One of those killed her son.

No, of course what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal didn’t publish the killer’s mugshot, but it was easy enough for me to look it up. While the McClatchy Mugshot Policy describes the non-publication of mugshots as meant to protect those accused but not yet convicted of a crime, something which would not apply to Mr Carter, but also frets about “disproportionately harm(ing) people of color.”

Carter pleaded to lesser charges of manslaughter in both cases, and Judge Julie Muth Goodman sentenced him to a total of 15 years: two 10-year sentences, to be served simultaneously, for the killings, and five years for criminal facilitation to robbery.

The charges were reduced as part of a plea negotiations made with prosecutors, who felt they didn’t have enough evidence to convict Carter of murder.

In a Dec. 9 interview with the Herald-Leader, Sandusky described different parts of her experience with legal officials as “dismissive,” “disheartening” and “disrespectful.”

“They didn’t do anything for my son,” she said of Fayette County prosecutors. “Just got to have a win under their belt.”

Sadly, if Cristina Sandusky feels failed by the justice system, she would feel even more failed if she chose to use the Kentucky Online Offender Lookup system, to see what Mr Carter is facing. According to the system, Mr Carter’s maximum date of release is December 21, 2036, eleven years from now. However, his potential “good behavior” release date is March 21, 2033, 7¼ years from now, and he will be eligible for parole as early as June 21, 2030, in just 4½ years from now, when he will be just 32 or 33.

From the moment Carter’s case was assigned to Judge Goodman, Sandusky said she was told the judge was not friendly to victims’ families.

Goodman has been criticized, including by Kentucky’s attorney general, for previous rulings deemed lenient. But Sandusky maintained faith the judge would do the right thing.

For the mother, that meant sentencing Carter to the maximum sentence of 20 years — 10 years apiece for the killings, plus some additional time for the robbery charge.

But Sandusky instead described Goodman’s comments in the courtroom as “more sympathetic to the defense.”

“She was nasty and dismissive,” Sandusky said. “She didn’t look at me one time.”

I would suspect that Her Honor was at least slightly ashamed of what she was about to do, but to be ashamed requires a sense of shame, and too-lenient judges have none.

Goodman lauded Carter and said the justice system had failed him throughout his youth, Sandusky recalled.

The judge “lauded” Mr Carter, a man who killed two people? “(T)he justice system had failed him throughout his youth”? How does that excuse him murdering two people?

Judge Julie Muth Goodman, from 2022 Kentucky Voter Guide.

So, who is Judge Julie Muth Goodman? The 2022 Kentucky Voter Guide gave the Her Honor the opportunity to post a campaign biography, as well as answer a couple of questions:

What do you see as your primary responsibilities and duties if elected to this office?

My primary responsibilities are to enforce our laws and by doing so make sure our community is the safest and fairest possible.

I will admit to not seeing how a sentence which could have a two-time murderer to possibly be back on the streets in just 4½ years, still at a young age, as “mak(ing) sure our community is the safest and fairest possible.”

What are your views on whether the court, as a whole, deals effectively with racial bias? What could improve that?

Unfortunately I do not believe that the Court system or our community always effectively addresses racial bias. I have effectively worked with the Administrative Office of the Courts to mandate that the county attorney’s diversion program which often denied people of color the opportunity to participate because the office inappropriately used Juvenile records which are adjudications and confidential to deny people of color access to the program and to also require that the program use a sliding scale so that all eligible people can afford to participate. By making these changes more people of color have been given the same access to the program as others.

Translation: she’s going to give defendants “of color” a real break, or at least she certainly did for Mr Carter. Even with the Alford plea, she could have sentenced him to 25 years in the state penitentiary — two consecutive ten-year sentences for manslaughter plus five years for the robbery — but chose to give him an extreme break. It should be noted that both of the men Mr Carter killed were black; do black lives not really matter to Judge Goodman?

Of course, Kobby Martin and Devon Sandusky are both stone-cold graveyard dead, pushing up daisies for four years now, so what’s the point of locking up their killer for 25 years; it won’t bring Messrs Martin and Sandusky back to life, will it? Just because Mr Carter is a ‘persistent felon,’ as described under Kentucky law, but not prosecuted this time as part of the plea deal, doesn’t mean that he won’t straighten up and fly right after this prison term, does it? And if Mr Carter kills someone else after he gets out of prison, whenever that is, it won’t be Judge Goodman’s fault in the slightest, will it?

Philly ADA Paul George disbarred from federal court, but so far, his boss, Larry Krasner, has skated

When an attorney of many years experience gets disbarred by a court, it is not a trivial thing, but a serious, serious punishment, and not something judges take lightly. But, congratulations to Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating District Attorney, Larry Krasner, for getting one of his minions kicked out of practice for deliberate lying to a a federal district court. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

A supervisor in Philly DA Larry Krasner’s office has been disbarred in federal court

A panel of judges said Paul George “lied repeatedly” while seeking to overturn the death sentence of Robert Wharton, who killed a Mount Airy couple and left their 7-month-old baby behind to die.

by Chris Palmer | Thursday, December 11, 2025 | 12:33 PM EST

A veteran lawyer in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has been disbarred in the region’s federal courts after a panel of judges concluded he “lied repeatedly” while seeking to overturn the death sentence of a man who killed an East Mount Airy couple in their home and left their infant daughter inside to die.

Paul George, an assistant district attorney who handles appellate cases, was a key player in his office’s attempts to have Robert Wharton’s death penalty reversed so he could serve a life sentence instead.

U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg denied that request, but not before finding that District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office had provided incomplete and misleading information in its efforts to free Wharton from death row.

After Goldberg made his decision, George and a colleague who handled the case faced federal disciplinary proceedings to examine whether their conduct — which was also criticized by an appeals court — was intentionally deceptive.

We get it: Mr Krasner is a long-time opponent of capital punishment, having campaigned on, among other things, never seeking a death sentence in a capital murder case.

But this paragraph, from the same article, shows the ridiculousness of Mr Krasner’s moves:

Krasner says his defense work doesn’t make him soft on crime, but rather someone who can differentiate between redeemable defendants and hardened criminals.

Mr Krasner and his minions are not seeking to have Mr Wharton released, or be granted a new trial, but simply to convert his death sentence to life in prison. We fail to understand how the District Attorney could consider Mr Wharton, now 62 years old, to be a “redeemable defendant” and still want to keep him locked up for the rest of his miserable life. Mr Wharton was tried and convicted in 1985, forty years ago. Here is Judge Goldberg’s memorandum opinion from May 11, 2022, noting all of the appeals filed in Mr Wharton’s behalf to save him from execution.

There’s also a particular degree of stupidity in all of this. Despite the current case being federal, as Mr Wharton’s attorneys, now joined by Mr Krasner’s office, sought relief under the Sixth Amendment, the killer was tried and sentenced in Pennsylvania’s state courts; he’s under a Pennsylvania capital sentence, not a federal one. The Commonwealth has executed exactly three men since the restoration of capital punishment in 1976, all in the late 1990s, and all having voluntarily dropped all of their appeals. Pennsylvania’s governors do not have the authority to commute sentences or pardon criminals on their own, but the two most recent governors, Tom Wolf and Josh Shapiro, the current Governor, have declared moratoria on executions, and refuse to sign death warrants. Ed Rendell, Governor from 2003 up until 2011, signed 78 death warrants, and his successor, Republican Tom Corbett, signed 48, but none were actually carried out due to various stays and legal appeals. The chances that Mr Wharton will actually be executed are slender, and Mr Krasner as well as Mr George have to know this. Why lie to the court, why deceive the court, why risk the legal sanction Mr George has now received, for this?

Maybe they’ll try next for Lewis Jordan, who’s only 39, and was sentenced to death for killing Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy, since Mr Krasner hates the police.

Remember: Mr Krasner wanted to find state charges he could bring against the January 6 Capitol kerfufflers after President Trump pardoned them, even though most had already served their federal sentences.

There is an issue of culpability here. Yes, Paul George and Nancy Winkelman were the ADAs making the appeals on Mr Wharton’s behalf, but Larry Krasner is their boss, should have known what they were doing, and taken action against it. If anyone should be disbarred, it’s Mr Krasner, but instead he was just re-elected for another four miserable years as District Attorney, to continue a previous eight years of lax and lenient prosecution, eight years which may have influenced the eight young gentlemen who thought they could rob a Dick’s Sporting Goods store in Polk County, Florida, and get the same no-consequences treatment in the Sunshine State, a story which made the national news as well as two Philadelphia television stations, but somehow, some way, never made the Inquirer.

OK, OK, that last sentence violated all sorts of run-on sentence rules, but it’s the truth nevertheless.

Larry Krasner is all about politics, not about justice, and not really about the law. He uses the law as a tool where he can, but he’s still nothing but a partisan hack.

 

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