Not Everyone Hates ICE
"Best thing I’ve seen today is watching an ICE agent arrest somebody and send them back to where they came from." Small town Minnesotans reacting to ICE arrest.
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Before we start this essay, I thought you all might enjoy these photos. It’s amazing that one day I can be hiking in the mountains, like the second picture, and today I’m looking out my window at this beautiful snowy scene as I write. This is America, the land I love.
So, what’s going on in America that threatens these peaceful scenes. Well, here’s part of it …
You can listen to me read this essay here:
It’s important to tell the whole story. What’s happening with ICE is not all positive and it’s not all negative. Here’s a side of the story I hadn’t heard before and I think you should hear it, too:
The woman in this video said people in a Minnesota grocery store in a small town were cheering in support of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as they watched them carry out a detainment.
“Nobody in the grocery store stopped them from doing their job. Everybody was clapping and excited about ICE being there. People were hooting and hollering, you know, chanting for ICE.”
Gotta love small towns… or not. What do you think?
The man in this linked video asks everyone if they’ve ever heard of 19 yr old DeCara Thompson who was murdered, raped, and thrown over a bridge like a sack of garbage by Hugo Hernandez- Mendez, an illegal from Guatemala.
No coverage for DeCara like that for Renee Good. No $1.5 million raised for DeCara like has been raised for Renee.
This is reminiscent of the protests for “Palestinians”. Complete silence for Israelis killed on Oct 7th, even for the Bibas babies, and derision for Jewish women who were raped.
Illegal immigration is out of hand in America. We just have to look to Europe and the UK to see how bad it will get if we don’t do something about it.
But is ICE taking the right approach? It’s a fair question to ask if they could be more laser-focused on who they round up.
The United States already incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. China comes next.
Even worse, the United States incarcerates more children than any other nation.
And when it comes to children and migration, in 2019, there were more than 100,000 children in migration-related detention in the US.
Having started a creative writing program for incarcerated youth in the 1990s and seeing firsthand how dehumanizing the juvenile justice system can be, I find this to be an unbearable tragedy.
But the harsh reality is that under 8 U.S. Code § 1325, entering the United States without proper authorization is a CRIME.
Imagine any wealthy Muslim Gulf State allowing illegals into their country to take advantage of the system, attend their schools, become citizens. IT NEVER HAPPENS. Instead, millions of slaves under the Islamic kafala system from poorer countries serve the much smaller population elite Muslim citizens. Migrants are bused back and forth to their jobs as construction workers or as maids, living in unsanitary compounds under lock and key outside of the luxurious cities.
And then there are refugees who come to the US, fleeing Islamic nations like Syria and Afghanistan. Instead of thankfulness, they take advantage of our freedoms to incite riots to overthrow our government.
Mahmoud Khalil is one such person. I was encouraged to read that the US appeals court has reversed the decision that freed Mahmoud Khalil from ICE detention, a decision that could lead to his rearrest and deportation.
I sincerely hope he is deported. Otherwise, more dangerous agitators just like him will be encouraged to come to the United States.
His arrest has been treated by the left as an infringement on his “rights” instead of protection for our nation. The irony is that any American behaving as Khalil did in Khalil’s home country of Syria would be imprisoned and no doubt tortured or thrown out of the country if he was lucky.
Surely, we should applaud when criminals like the ones ICE arrested in Minneapolis last week as part of Operation Metro Surge are taken off the streets.
Here are a few of them. Who wants these men living in their neighborhoods?
Hien Quoc Thai, a Vietnamese national who was previously convicted of murder.
Brian Anjain from the Marshall Islands has 24 criminal convictions, including assault causing bodily injury, domestic abuse, public nudity, theft, and more.
Others arrested include criminal illegal immigrants from Guatemala, Cuba, Mexico, Honduras, South Africa and Romania, with several facing prior charges involving kidnapping, robbery with deadly weapons, and firearms possession.
Of course, these are not the majority of illegals. Findings by the CATO Institute showed 5% of people detained by ICE have violent convictions, and 73% have no convictions.
Is ICE wasting its time arresting so many who have no criminal convictions? Should they only focus on processing those with criminal records?
Polls show that two-thirds of Americans (65%) say immigrants currently working in the United States illegally should be able to apply for US citizenship, either immediately (43%) or after a penalty and waiting period (22%).
Only a minority overall favor forcing undocumented workers to leave their jobs and the country altogether (23%), relatively unchanged from last year’s figure (20%).
Palantir, in an effort to be more accurate, has developed a sophisticated tracking software used by ICE to identify and locate targets for deportation.
The app, named ELITE, generates detailed data-filled digital maps to track individuals across America, according to 404 Media. Using the app, ICE agents can view individuals’ names, photos and specific “confidence scores” for home addresses.
Critics argue that the system is a surveillance machine that can and will invade all of our lives. Some go so far as to call Palantir “the most dangerous corporation in America” and that it is building the infrastructure of ‘The Police State.” I worry about this, too. One of my most informative essays on this topic is The Age of Drones.
However, blaming ALL ICE agents for these quandaries is simplistic and just as destructive as demonizing all illegal immigrants. ICE agents are doing the job they were hired to do, just like anybody else. If they behave improperly, they should receive an appropriate punishment—just like anybody else.
On the other hand, protestors who impede officers’ ability to do their jobs, disrupt traffic, and prevent essential services are breaking the law. Protestors have been encouraged to believe there should be no consequences for their actions. Instead of going to the park on a Saturday, they go to a protest, as if it’s a fun way to spend the day. Many exhibit an obnoxious sense of entitlement and zero respect for law enforcement. But when they are in trouble, they are the first to call law enforcement for help.
Documents show Renee Good’s connection to training (even through her son’s leftist school) and subsequent efforts to monitor and disrupt ICE operations– an association that federal officials have made clear is at the center of their review into the deadly incident that occurred as she partially blocked ICE agents in the street with her SUV. (1)
When it comes to unbiased facts, looking at who’s behind the protests tells us a lot about the legitimacy of the protestors themselves.
Funding sources mentioned here also funded #MeToo, BLM riots, and Anti-Israel/Pro-Palestine college protests. By the way, what happened to the protestors who seemed to care so deeply about those causes?
All of the above causes are still there, nothing has changed in the plight of Gazan children, for example. But the protestors have moved on to the next hot topic: ICE.
The fact that protestors abandoned the children of Gaza so suddenly for illegal migrants in America, shows how fickle they are. Those protesting ICE care as little about illegal migrants as they cared about Gazans. The way they move from one cause to the next show their motivation to feed their own self-righteous importance, proving their relevance by how many views their videos get on social media.
Here are a few examples of funding sources:
Indivisible Twin Cities, which describes itself as a grassroots group of volunteers, has led many of the protests against ICE raids in Minnesota.
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.
The group was also behind recent pro-Venezuela protests and “No Kings” demonstrations against the Trump administration throughout the country last year.
National Education a Association (NEA) which boasts more than 3 million members, sent $300,000 to the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a far-left dark money group Fox News Digital has reported on extensively. Why is our educational system funding far-left political organizations?
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the anti-Israel group’s Minnesota chapter’s executive director Jaylani Hussein has rallied against ICE at protests.
Just to give an idea of how much CAIR hates Jews, here is a video of Shaheen Nassar of CAIR Los Angeles speaking about how “Arabs Are Semites, While Most European Jews Converted in the Middle Ages.”
CAIR’s Jaylani Hussein was quick with his version of events regarding Renee Good:
“A young observer killed in the line of observing, we believe in a peaceful manner. They are lying, as you hear today. They already shared lies about what took place,” Hussein said, speaking into a megaphone at an anti-ICE demonstration Wednesday.
While her death was tragic—and I do not know anyone who would say otherwise—Renee Good was not an “observer.” Observers do not do what Renee Good did. Read my essay on the topic and watch the videos HERE.
In the video below, find out how Hussein and other CAIR representatives’ mission is to “hunt’ for people across the country who they think should be fired due to Islamophobia.
Everyone from a lowly Starbucks employee to high-profile celebrities and politicians, thousands upon thousands of dollars are spent on blacklisting anyone they deem is Islamophobic. But then they cry foul when some of their own are accused of undermining the very country to which they came for refuge.
Listen to the gentleman in the video give the example that “if somebody says something against Islam in a small town in Kansas, we’ll pick it up Inshallah pretty quickly and we can react to it in real time.”
This is not to say that there aren’t serious cases of discrimination against Muslims that need to be addressed. However, CAIR has long had ties with terrorist organizations. CAIR should be designated as a terrorist organization and should not be allowed to operate in the United States. In the 2000s, CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association'” of CAIR with Hamas. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
The topic of illegal migrants is complex, and we should not boil it down to demonizing one group while elevating another group, depending on which side we are on.
Illegal migrants who have built lives here over a period of many years, who have no history of criminal behavior, should not be deported, that’s my opinion. Children who attend school, entire families, should not have to return to war-torn countries where they have no connections and could face severe hardship and death. And absolutely, children should not be separated from their parents.
There will always be some who make it across the border, no matter how vigilant we are. I have heard some incredibly inspiring stories of resilience, perseverance and hard work by illegals whose talents have led to making America a better place, not worse. Not everyone deserves to be demonized. But those who deserve to be deported should be deported, no matter how loud protestors scream to the contrary.
Some other essays on this topic:
Home-Grown Terrorists and the American Mosques that Encourage Them
The Mahmoud Khalil Controversy
You can find excellent information CAIR in CAIR’s Antisemitism Unmasked
My respect for the men and women within ICE grows with each day's removal and rendition of non-citizens back to their point of origin. May the population of Somalia grow by the thousands each day.
Thank you for your balanced , well researched, and un-pc reports, thank you for being there