The illegal alien criminals weren’t so hard to find after all
I knew that if Trump was elected president, he would attempt to deport illegal aliens who had committed criminal acts (in addition to the original criminal act of coming here illegally). That wasn’t rocket science on my part; it was merely what Trump had said he would do.
I also assumed, without thinking much about it, that locating these people would take time. I also knew that the Biden administration had made little to no effort to find them or to deport them, for the most part. What I didn’t realize was that the location of so many were well known.
The speed with which it’s happened has made it clear that it was just a matter of rounding them up rather than finding them:
As the leftists whine about invading schools (not happening) and mamacitas being terrorized by Tom Homan chasing them with cattle prods (not happening), the real story is that ICE and law enforcement knew all along where so many of these bad hombres were. …
Mayorkas, NGOs and churches, and local government officials were actively protecting the worst of the worst just because they preferred helping illegal aliens to protecting Americans. …
Local, state, and the federal government knew where these people were and left them on the streets to terrorize people. We paid for their food, housing, and medical care in many cases, and in sanctuary jurisdictions, they rushed them out the back doors to prevent ICE from picking them up.
They were indeed being protected, but why? Yes, I know that the more illegal aliens, the theory was it meant the more Democrat voters later on. And sanctuary cities were virtue signaling pure and simple. But what else was going on? For years, the word was getting out that there were criminal illegal aliens here committing heinous crimes, and the general population was not the least bit happy about it. Even Hispanic voters, considered a Democrat mainstay, were defecting, in part because they bore the brunt as victims of this criminality.
Did the Democrats not think this would all come back to bite them? Because it did. Did they think they could continue to “rig” elections and continue to win them indefinitely? Because they didn’t.
Why would a mayor of even a very blue city want dangerous criminal aliens to remain at large? Is virtue signaling more important than anything else? Is there some other payoff of which I’m not aware?
Yes. They thought they had it all figured out in 2020 and would never leave office again.
Same as when Harry Reid changed the judicial nomination procedure.
I think it’s beyond that. The things the people who acted as president did over the last four years seem aimed at harming the US. How else to explain opening the border, shutting down pipelines, giving billions to Iran, allowing most of the federal workforce to goof off, the COVID lockdowns etc?
Might have something to do with the amount of federal funds the states receive. For example, my wife worked in a school district that had a very high percentage of kids who were the offspring of illegals, or were illegal themselves. The school district gets paid based on average daily attendance. Take away the illegals, the number of pupils in attendance would plummet, and along with it the money.
We may have Jesse Jackson to “thank” for this, at least indirectly — he perfected the diversity shakedown of major corporations. Professional Hispanic agitators took note, and emulated the reverend. Being loud, obnoxious, and demanding pays pretty well for a few, while there’s little to nothing in it for the people they supposedly advocate for.
I also assumed, without thinking much about it, that locating these people would take time.
This was the legacy media narrative. Along with “tariffs mean you won’t be able to afford beer” and “crops will rot in the fields without illegals to pick them”.
That’s what’s so fantastic about Trump’s first weeks in office. All the stuff people said was true, he is proving that it never was true, it just took someone willing to do things differently.
The legacy media is no longer able to bury what they want buried and highlight what they want highlighted. It’s time to be ready to question all kinds of notions we had going in.
For decades Europeans have been voting to end immigration, but it has never ended. My best guess: Global elites want one world government from which no one can hide or escape. They want to destroy western civilization. We know those things are true.
It’s the eternal question that pops up so often on this blog: Fools or Knaves? Of course, those aren’t mutually exclusive and in reality almost always aren’t. A fool imagines the world to be what it is not. A knave places their own self interest far above and to the detriment of others without regard or compunction. In this particular case, these Democrats imagined replacing voters with voters who are more pliable to their false promises and explanations. They also imagined that they would be able to do so with impunity and with minimal pushback, least of all from the very voting demographics that they rely on. Fortunately we now know that this was foolish. And generally most of these Democrat politicians also likely knew that this would be destructive since flooding communities with what amounted to unvetted violent criminals and then refusing to remove them was inarguably evil.
It’s likely that they imagined that they could control the narrative as they often had successfully in the past, using the legacy media to supress or downplay reports of the violent criminal activity. They underestimated the rise of new forms of media and information distribution channels and how they would undermine the carefully curated narratives of the legacy media. They failed to see the trust that had been lost by years of ceaseless lawfare against Donald Trump. They turned Trump into a folkhero rather than a villian. They were fools in that.
I think Sgt. Joe Friday has a rational explanation, besides the leftist virtue signaling. Inflated populations in schools and other groups needing services lead to more federal funds.
On illegals it’s a confluence of people. Some people want more clients for their politicians, some people want more funding for population based programs, some people want to suppress wages, some people got paid to bring them in, some people got paid to do services for them, some honestly think that letting them live and work here is the right thing to do.
This is why our immigration and employment laws are designed to be unenforceable. The law says you can’t hire an illegal, but forces you to hire them before finding out if they are or not and makes you liable if you fire them or refuse to consider their applications. The law says H1-Bs are non-immigrant visas, but the law allows a process for them to get permanent residency. Etc, etc.
These confluences of interests spread across both parties and so they collude against the American people on this issue. (Marc Rubio is working for Trump now but do we remember his Gang of Eight days, along with John “Complete the danged fence” McCain, who wrote a bill to legalize illegals and import more foreign workers legally?)
Illegal immigrants are one thing when it comes to, even passively, preventing the government from finding them. There are benefits for NGOs based on numbers, self-approval, presuming they’re all the Holy Family (The Holy Family were refugees, illegal immigrants, you know.). Lots of reasons to be passively resisting their deportation. Personal sympathy.
Big difference when it comes to actual criminal acts in this country against our citizens.
Why the latter? Not many guesses fit, here. But, back in the Sixties when I was in college, I was becoming aware of (was it just getting going then?) a generalized, deep-seated hate, proof against any facts, of this country, society, history and its citizens.
Normals are victimized…? It’s what they deserve. People may not be able to say this out loud, or to themselves, when some horrid crime is done to a kid…but you’ll hear a rationalization creep in , if only for letting the creep out on the streets.
Arguments about crime by illegals. Numbers conflated with those committed by legal immigrants. One sheriff said they can’t officially ask a perp if he’s an immigrant but in questioning him it will come out. But, officially, the crime wasn’t committed by an illegal.
It’s difficult to contemplate, but many, many of the people we know hate our country and society and our normal people. You’ll hear it when something is dismissed or downplayed. Or ignored. No big deal. George Floyd versus Justine Damond. Matthew Shepherd versus Jesse Dirkhising. Kyle Rittenhouse versus the Waukesha Christmas massacre.
While it is difficult to overstate the importance of virtue signaling in some people, even multiples of it don’t account for what we see.
To me, it’s reminiscent of a line from the “Avengers” movie :
Bruce Banner : “How did you find me ?”
Black Widow : “We never really lost you, Doctor”
They knew where these people were, they just weren’t allowed to act on the knowledge – now they are.
As mentioned above, it’s Follow the Money(TM).
Massive increases in funding followed close behind by massive kickbacks to Democratic Party honchos…
…all made palatable because of the HUMANITY of it all…
Yep, it’s those, um, entrepreneurial Democrats…at it again!
While shopping today, I went to a local Mexican bakery. I found it was closed in commemoration of February 3 being declared nationwide a Day Without Immigrants protest.DuckDuckGo:day without immigrants February 3.
Funny that when ICE targets illegal aliens who have committed heinous crimes in the US, the protests start.
BTW, it is not difficult at all to find in Texas Hispanics who are not in favor of coddling illegal aliens. Most of the Texas counties on the border with Mexico voted for Trump. (Starr Cty: 19% in 2016 to 52% in 2024)(One exception: El Paso, which like other big cities in Texas, voted for Harris.)
Barry Meislin:
That’s what the refugee resettlement racket is all about, and Vance was right to call out Catholic Charities. Most people assume these “charities” are funded by what’s deposited in the collection plate on Sunday mornings, but they’re not. Something like 2/3 of their funding comes from the federal government, which gets used to provide generous salaries and fringe benefits packages for the executives, who then make political contributions to guess which party?
Unfortunately this is the case with too many charities. Mothers Against Drunk Driving largely accomplished the founder’s goals, but did it close up once they’d done that? No. You see, you cannot fold up the tent once you have an infrastructure in place that is generating cash flow, providing jobs, and raising money for political candidates. As the saying goes, they start out as a cause, turn into a business, and eventually become a racket.
@ Sgt. Joe Friday:Vance was right to call out Catholic Charities. Most people assume these “charities” are funded by what’s deposited in the collection plate on Sunday mornings, but they’re not.
Same for Catholic hospitals, they’re not nursing Sisters funded by the poor box any more and have not been for decades.
“Local, state, and the federal government knew where these people were and left them on the streets to terrorize people.”
“A criminal charge “after the fact” refers to an “accessory after the fact” charge, meaning someone is accused of knowingly helping a criminal avoid arrest or punishment after they have already committed a crime, like hiding them, destroying evidence, or lying to the police about their involvement.”
There are as cited here a number of explanatory factors. Of them, Crystal points to the most important one. Without the support of the Global elite, the invasion of illegals into western societies never could have been so devastating. Their motivation is indeed the dissolution of western society’s cultural autonomies. The ‘theory’ of trans-nationalism is the ideological foundation and ‘justification’ for their actions.
The other part of the exchange ‘we kept interested parties off your scent
Yes, it’s Follow the Money. First the Progressive Democrats got their hands on funding, apparently a good bit of it through Federal agencies, laundered though NGOs to grease the flow of illegals. But money can also buys lots of other things: Professional agitators, radical fringe groups, more NGOs for policy pushing like DEI, educational grants to universities to corrupt departments and students, so on. Censorship programs came quite close to making dissent a thing of the past. Money flow also helped subvert an election in 2020. They came pretty close in my estimation. If they had won in 2024, it would have been difficult for a free society to recover. I wonder if we’ll ever know how much federal funding was diverted to fund these things on the sly.
Trump is right to go after the money flow, it’s fundamental to putting a stop to it. What shocks me is how empty the Democrat leadership is right now. They have nothing constructive to say, only bleating and outrage. No message. I’m starting to wonder where – or who – their thought leaders are.
“Is there some other payoff of which I’m not aware? ”
While I read and agree with many of the hypotheses posted above as to why the Democratic machine is so attached to illegal immigration, I’m going to put on the tin foil hat and forthrightly step into the conspiracy theory breach.
If you were to ask your favorite Lefty why a group of American politicians favors a foreign, multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporation (let’s call it VeryBig Corp) even against the wishes of their own constituents, the Lefty would answer without hesitation “Because the politicians are on the take from VeryBig Corp”.
Well, what are the cartels other than foreign, multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporations? The politicians are on the take, and now crypto-currencies make international graft much more difficult to detect. It’s not like Hunter Biden with his international wire transfers through banks anymore, easily traceable and reported by banks.
Do you ever wonder how the Harris campaign could raise $1.5 billion in such a short period of time? Just wait — there are two scandals brewing that may destroy the Democratic Party, the first from within, the second from without — 1) how did the Harris Campaign spend $1.5 billion in 3 & 1/2 months and 2) where did that $1.5 billion come from? Expect cartel money to be in that mix.
Possibly it did take time to locate them. The thing was that ICE, realizing it would be off the choke chain at the inauguration, might have done the preliminary footwork, everything right up to the moment where everyone would notice, beforehand.
Thus they could leap into action, both to carry out their mission as they had been prevented from doing, and to show the new president that they were not anti-American slugabeds.
They really are that stupid.
I saw several interviews with Ton Homan before the inauguration. He was always asked how he would find the illegals. His answer was that the local cops knew where they were and so did many citizens.
He didn’t come right out and say it, but the gist was that these people would tell ICE where the illegals were. Many people in the cities where the illegals are in abundance don’t like what they see and are ready to help ICE get rid of them.
Homan knew that ICE was gathering that intel. They were ready to roll after the inauguration.
They [criminal illegals] were indeed being protected, but why?
Great question and answers by commenters. My thoughts:
1) Party “ownership” of a block of voters. For decades the Dems had a lock on black voters. That’s beginning to crumble now, although the Dems probably still have 70+%.
Here’s my assertion: The Dems are pro-criminal simply because they will “own” that segment. The average citizen won’t believe that’s true, but criminals know that it is true and will vote accordingly. If the number of career criminals is very small it doesn’t make any difference. But what if… we import a large block of criminals. Then it gets interesting and valuable.
2) How is it possibly that cities like Detroit and Chicago have been on a downward spiral for decades and yet people vote Dems into office for decades? Crime, chaos, and destruction spur the general desire for more government action. If people were smart (often they are not), they’d be carefully considering the kinds of government action. It’s a bit like medical treatments that can either ameliorate a few symptoms temporarily versus a treatment that cures the disease. The former keeps them coming back for more.
3) …seem aimed at harming the US. – Bill
They want to destroy western civilization. – Crystal
a generalized, deep-seated hate, proof against any facts, of this country, society, history and its citizens. – Richard Aubrey
Their motivation is indeed the dissolution of western society’s cultural autonomies. – Geoffrey Britain
This one is sort of hard to accept for many people, but I believe there’s truth to it. At the simple reflexive level, some of it is just that many people resent very successful people. Remember also that the origin of many of these toxic social influences began as Marxist efforts to degrade western civilization.
The Marxist sees wealth as coming from land and natural resources and sees wealth and income as a zero sum game. If some people have a lot, they must have robbed others from those resources. Of course, they miss the fact that real innovation and progress and collaborative efforts really does create wealth from “thin air” as it were.
3b) An anecdote: Saul Alinsky, an uber leftist, learned his early tradecraft from Frank Nitti, an uber organized crime boss.
TommyJay — re: your #3, on the Marxist view of the fixed wealth pie.
(And I’d add: the view of many regular ol’ Democrat socialists, anti-capitalists.)
Yes, they use that view to stoke hate and ENVY of success.
DEI is built around it, too.
Their concept of “social justice” versus merit-based achievements keeps many in the victim mindset.
…
I can’t help but notice this is a factor — if not a root — of anti-Semitism.
This – like “who will pick our crops” – comes from very deep in Democrat party history… even before you could really call them Marxists, since the mid 19th century they were engaging in the politics of division in the big cities.
Tammany and other Democrat machines catered to the working class, showering them with taxpayer money in a sort of proto-Welfare. They fanned and exploited ethnic, labor, and political violence.
This was calculated to drive the middle class out of the city, into the suburbs. The Democrat machine was left with captive voters. There was no core of principled, independent citizens around which an opposition could coalesce.
The old Democratic machines were already engaging in the divisive populism that the Reds would later adopt. It is a moot point which group absorbed the other.
There were even wealthy bien-pensant proto-progressives and dabblers in social reform who romanticized the poor from afar…. All the parts of this parasitic coalition were already in place in the mid-late 19th century.
It is rather ironic that Demos will, in support of illegal aliens, say “who will pick our crops?,” considering that Cesar Chavez, the iconic leader of the farm workers’ union, was very much against illegal aliens.
I think TommyJay and Ben David have the correct angle on this.
For the last few years I’ve been following the work of James Lindsay and more recently Karlyn Borysenko regarding the far left aka Marxists and their efforts to usher in their Revolution. Borysenko regularly emphasizes they have four goals. One of which is to destabilize/disrupt our society. The New Marxists *want* people to be divided and upset. So that instead of thinking we can fix our social and economic problems through the democratic process they conclude our society is irredeemably broken and unjust because of capitalism.
The problem with this take (which I think is basically correct) is it’s unclear how much Democrat politicians in “blue” cities or “blue” states are consciously aware of this. I think most of them inherited this mindset from the genuine far left without realizing what it is or what it represents. Which is preparing the way for Socialist Revolution.
I think Democrats were sure they would win, by hook or crook, again in 2024, and they had a plan to create a pathway to citizenship for the Illegals. Insuring election victories forevermore.
A graph about how illegal migration had flourished under the Biden regime, displayed on a big screen, changed all that when Trump turned his head just slightly at the precise moment an assassin’s bullet arrived.
TommyJay wrote
How is it possibly that cities like Detroit and Chicago have been on a downward spiral for decades and yet people vote Dems into office for decades?
I think there is often a racial component. Blacks (and Hispanics?) voting against whites. Chicago’s last two mayors have been terrible. The latest (and worst) is Brandon Johnson, a black former Chicago Teachers Union honcho. I have read that his second biggest campaign contributor (after the teachers union) is a rapper/gang member/thug. Johnson (whose only talent seems to be rabble-rousing) defeated an experienced, “progressive” white candidate. Johnson plays the race card at every opportunity.
Also, the Chicago Democrat machine reportedly uses gang members to get out the vote.
Recently some Chicago blacks have turned to Trump because they are angry that illegal Hispanics have been given preference in government resources.
Yes, virtue signaling is just that important!