The Social World

Tag: ICE

  • Should Karoline Leavitt’s family be deported? 

    Standing at the podium in the White House, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was, instead of answering questions about the Trump administration, answering questions about her own family. 

    The mother of Leavitt’s nephew was detained by ICE this week. Bruna Caroline Ferreira, “a criminal illegal alien from Brazil,” allegedly overstayed a tourist visa that expired in 1999 according to the Department of Homeland Security. No doubt an embarrassing moment for the usually forthright Leavitt, it also crystallized how the shockwaves of Trump’s immigration are being felt across America. 

    Now, I’m an upstanding citizen, thank you very much. I can’t say I personally know anyone who’s been caught up in an ICE raid. But as the administration expands its efforts at mass deportations over the next three years, I very well could run into a personal case like Leavitt’s. So could you – along with your friends, family, and neighbors. 

    This begs the question: how will Americans respond when the idea of “mass deportations” ceases to be an abstraction, and instead comes knocking on the door?

    Leavitt is the public face of the administration caught up, through no fault of her own, in a very personal scandal. While other administration officials pursue their given policies, her job is to communicate and if need be spin, those policies to the media. Smoothing over stories unpalatable to the general public – such as a beautiful young mother without a serious criminal record nabbed by ICE just before Thanksgiving – is the most important part of the job. A DHS statement on upholding the rule of law won’t change hearts and minds. 

    Still, Leavitt rightly declined to comment on the incident from either a personal or professional capacity. But she must certainly have some conflicted feelings. On the one hand, Leavitt has long proven herself an ally to the president and his America First agenda. No one can doubt that she supports the overall goal of deporting criminal illegal aliens. Who knows: maybe she tipped off Tom Homan in the first place after Ferreira spurned her brother? If only we could all do that to our annoying family members. 

    As deportation stories shift from abstract and absurd to the sympathetic and personal, the American taste for strict immigration enforcement could start to fall away

    On the other hand, Ferreira might not quite be her family, but the situation surely has a direct impact on her family. Her nephew may lose access to his mother, leaving her brother to pick up the pieces. It’s only human to feel compassion as someone close to you struggles with hardship, but it would be unprincipled (to say nothing of career suicide) to plead for special favor. It’s easy to see how an average voter could be similarly conflicted. 

    After four years of an effectively open border under the Biden administration, “mass deportations” were actually quite popular. An Ipsos poll from September 2024 showed 54% Americans supported a mass deportation plan, including even 58% of Independents. A year into Trump’s presidency, and that figure still holds. An October Harvard/Harris poll showed 56% of Americans in favor of deporting all illegal aliens, while 78% supported deporting criminal illegal aliens. 

    While that effectively puts Republicans on the winning side of an 80/20 issue, it hasn’t yet led  Democrats to alter course. In just the last week, The New York Times sympathetically profiled an illegal migrant caught with the stolen identity of an American while The New Yorker lamented a murderer “disappeared to a foreign prison.” 

    It’s hard to feel any sympathy reading stories like these, but it’s equally hard to read a story like Leavitt’s and not have it pull on the heartstrings. So far, however, the media has had little opportunity to show the public the latter case. But that will surely change if and when mass deportations truly begin. 

    As deportation stories shift from abstract and absurd to the sympathetic and personal, the American taste for strict immigration enforcement could start to fall away. Notably, the figures have been constant over the last year; the administration isn’t convincing anyone who isn’t already convinced. This peak anti-immigration sentiment in a country generally amenable to a diverse melting pot could easily settle back down to the pre-Biden average. 

    It’s easy to say we must all harden our hearts to the reality of illegal immigration, but the human heart just doesn’t work that way. We’re all more sympathetic to something that touches us personally. The left has learned this the hard way, attempting to demagogue abstract issues that don’t often hit home for the average voter. In the last few years, their propaganda has seen diminishing returns. 

    The Trump administration must also learn this lesson before it’s too late. Move silent and swift on the deportations that must occur, but don’t let the public see how the sausage gets made. Just because Americans currently support mass deportations doesn’t mean they always will. 

  • It’s the cost of living, stupid

    It’s the cost of living, stupid

    Earlier this month, the Republicans lost their first set of elections after Donald Trump’s victory last year, proving once again that without Trump, the GOP is cooked. Because yes – it really is all about him. Are you a narcissist if the world actually does revolve around you? Or are you just right? The problem for the GOP is that they need Trump to win, but Trump loves watching them lose without him. OK, maybe he is a narcissist.

    What’s clear is that the 2024 election was not the final boss. It didn’t destroy wokeism. You have to picture the spider in The Lord of the Rings, Shelob, crawling back into her cave after being stabbed by Samwise. Is she injured? Yes. Dead? No. She will probably be back to kill you.

    Republicans and pundits and podcasters will come up with all sorts of reasons for the latest losses (including blaming the Jews), but it comes down to fundamentals. Ground game. Optics. And of course, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

    The GOP has no ground game in part because it depends on cultural momentum, in part because many of the biggest voices in conservatism right now are more concerned with grabbing market share in the attention economy than they are about winning elections. All of this underlines the tragic loss of Charlie Kirk. It appears Charlie really was the glue holding the entire conservative movement together. He was phenomenal at mobilizing and organizing Republican “get out the vote” efforts.

    Charlie knew that politics was about changing hearts and minds. He also understood that the only way to win an election is to do the hard work and compete on the ground. Knock on doors. Register people to vote. Encourage them to get to the polls or mail in their ballot.

    Zohran Mamdani won in New York because he focused on fundamentals. He ran a great ground game. He came up with creative ways to engage voters. He knocked on doors. He relentlessly spoke to the anxiety people feel about the cost of living.

    It appears Trump may have overestimated his mandate, his popularity and just how far the average American is willing to go to correct some of the problems we face, such as immigration.

    Americans are happy with the borders being secured. But the Trump administration’s attempt to bring back deterrence by turning ICE into a dystopian reality show is wildly unpopular with independents. I don’t think the average person is cool with masked men zip-tying abuela and throwing her into an unmarked van while tasing her grandson for trying to interfere. Obama deported more people than Trump has. But he did it the way Americans like: out of sight.

    For a media genius, Trump doesn’t seem to get that optics matter. Building a gilded ballroom while the government is shut down and people are cut off from food stamps and aren’t receiving paychecks and flights are being canceled does not suggest that he cares about the struggles of the average American.

    People are still poor (and getting poorer). AI is taking jobs. Grocery prices are high. Healthcare costs just increased astronomically. My groceries continue to go up in price. My electricity bill jumped 25 percent. Our healthcare premium went up a whopping 43 percent. All our insurances have increased in cost. Gas prices are down so that saves me about… $10 a month. In my podcasting business, I’ve also been giving work to talented freelance writers and designers who have been replaced with AI at big companies, just to help keep them afloat.

    Recovering investment banker and best-selling author of You Will Own Nothing, Carol Roth, has been warning everyone about the K-shaped economy for years.

    “A K-shaped economy describes an economy (or recovery or trend) where there is stark divergence in the experience or outcome of different groups – like the visual of the letter K,” Roth says. “Part of the country is experiencing an upward economic trajectory (you can think of that as the asset holders, with portfolios, 401(k)s, homes, etc.) that have been doing great (at least on nominal terms, meaning not inflation-adjusted). Others are experiencing a downward economic trajectory, dealing with a more expensive cost of living across [many] categories, as well as job losses or underemployment and wage stagnation.”

    I think a big problem with our K-shaped economy is that those at the top have zero idea how bad it is for those sliding down. They assume that the people whining about the fact that the average age of a first-time home buyer is 40 must just be bad with money. And lots of boomers have no empathy. Yes, young people have some bad habits, but the game is very different for them.

    Fielding questions from reporters and getting defensive about the economy, Trump says: “I don’t want to hear about affordability.” He doesn’t seem to understand that people can be pro-tax breaks and still think bananas are too expensive. (And thanks to his tariffs, banana prices happen to be up about 8 percent since April.)

    Americans will put up with a lot of crap from their leaders, but this administration should have learned from Joe Biden that we won’t put up with being gaslit about rising prices. We know. We are the ones buying things. We are the ones choosing to get this instead of that. We are the ones who go to bed with crippling financial anxiety, wondering how we are going to pay for childcare and utilities and insurance and kids’ activities and student loans. We are the ones worrying about what the future will look like for our children if it’s already this unsustainable for us. I said it before when Trump won and I’ll repeat it: if Americans don’t feel real material relief, the right-wing vibe shift will be a one-hit wonder.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 24, 2025 World edition.

  • Trump refuses to take 60 Minutes bait

    Trump refuses to take 60 Minutes bait

    “Have some of these raids gone too far?” Norah O’Donnell asked Donald Trump of ICE immigration arrests as he sat down with 60 Minutes for the first time in five years.

    Trump refused to take the bait. Instead of ranting or insulting O’Donnell, as she may have hoped, he was calm – and even counterintuitive.

    “We have to start off with a policy, and the policy has to be, you came into the country illegally, you’re going to go out,” he said. “We’re going to work with you,” he continued, “and you’re going to come back into our country legally.”

    Pressed on whether he plans to use the military to crack down on anti-ICE protests, Trump declined. “I could,” he said, “but I haven’t chosen to use it. I hope you give me credit for that.”

    On tariffs, a line of concern across the aisle, Trump simply pointed to the stock market. “Look, because of tariffs, we have the highest stock market we’ve ever had,” he said.

    O’Donnell parried. “When the stock market is doing well, that doesn’t affect everybody,” she said, as Trump shot back that record high 401(k)s do indeed impact the average Joe.

    The CBS News show contextualized the government shutdown under the specter of needy Americans losing their SNAP benefits as Republicans fight to purge the Obamacare rolls.

    Trump, however, simply blamed the Democrats. “The Republicans are voting almost unanimously to end it, and the Democrats keep voting against ending it,” Trump said of the shutdown. “This has happened like 18 times before.”

    Government shutdowns are, of course, nothing new. But it always works out, despite collective hyperventilation. Polls show that less than one-quarter of the country find themselves “very concerned” about the latest.

    As the interview continued, Trump touted the new trade deal with China, the ceasefire in Gaza and his efforts to resolve the war in Ukraine. He even dispelled the liberal fever dream of seeking a third term.

    Legal immigration, surging stock markets, modest diplomatic inroads and run-of-the-mill partisan bickering – it’s not exactly a groyper’s dream come true. Yet in-fighting has dominated right-wing discourse in recent weeks, perhaps to the greatest degree since Jan. 6 or even the launch of the original Never Trump movement.

    The Young Republican group chat leak from mid-October – filled with racist snark – set off a cycle of denunciations and apologias within the right, with some saying the conservative movement must draw a line at genuine bigotry while defenders countered that those pearl-clutchers were simply useful idiots for the left. This continued with the leaked messages of Trump nominee Paul Ingrassia, and has now seemingly reached its peak after Tucker Carlson’s controversial interview with Nick Fuentes last week. Still, it’s all anyone seems to be talking about on X.

    All of this has culminated in questions of whether the right can govern without tearing itself apart? But as Trump touts substantive and broadly appealing victories, the answer seems obvious to anyone outside an echo chamber.

    The “discourse” seems hysterically detached from political reality, symptomatic of terminally online influencers too content to hear themselves talk. Far from radicalism running amok in the GOP, the CBS interview suggests the opposite.

    In rare form, Trump did not in fact shoot himself in the foot. He didn’t go off on obscure tangents that appear inexplicable or scary to a CBS viewer. At the same, O’Donnell didn’t lean into the media’s most divisive attacks that have been used to demonize Republicans in the Trump era – Nazism, white supremacy or egregious “gotcha questions” designed to impart racist vitriol. She simply kept to the good old fashioned liberal bias.

    Is the world healing? Are we returning to the days of civility politics that self-declared centrists so longingly yearn for? Is Trumpism now so dominant that it can govern as a milquetoast status quo? It’s surely too soon to say.

  • Trump’s border policy is beginning to bear fruit

    Trump’s border policy is beginning to bear fruit

    The second Trump administration tends to characterize those who have illegally crossed the southern US border as drug dealers, criminals and rapists. That is, of course, exaggeration, but it is no more a fiction than is the alternative belief, common among liberals, that all migrants are desperate people fleeing for their lives, who cannot possibly be expected to live in their home countries and are utterly dependent on making it to America in order to survive.

    If that were true, illegal migration would be little to worry about and good for the soul – and indeed the economic well-being – of America. If illegal migrants’ lives seem a little messy now, and it is expensive to look after them, in time they will all settle down to become good citizens who boost the economy and make us all happier and more diverse.

    The folly of this belief has been exposed by the revelation that Mexican criminal gangs have been offering bounties for the heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. Kill an ICE officer in Chicago, apparently, and you will be due a reward of $10,000. Kidnap one and it is $2,000. This follows last month’s shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas, in which two detainees were killed by a gunman who had scrawled “anti-ICE” on his ammunition.

    Why the desperation to be rid of ICE officials? Because they have succeeded in disrupting illegal activities. It is no longer so easy for the cartels to bring personnel, drugs and weapons across the border. Criminal business models which relied upon easy transit between Mexico and the US are no longer viable.

    The gangs are not Dickensian petty criminals, they are highly complex, organized and lethal fighting forces

    Liberals used to like to say that it was unfeasible to close the border. It stretched too far. There wasn’t enough concrete in America to build the wall which Donald Trump proposed. People would just come in another way. Trump did not prove them wrong in his first term, but he has in his second. He has done so by designating large areas close to the border as military zones, which can then legitimately be defended by soldiers and military vehicles rather than just customs officials. Trump has been called a fascist for deploying the military in civilian situations. Crime had been falling in Washington, it is argued, so why the need to send in the National Guard? This month, the President has been the target of similar condemnation when the Department for Homeland Security sent 300 National Guard troops to Illinois. No sooner had they arrived than a district judge, in a case brought by state and city authorities, placed a temporary injunction on their deployment.

    Of course, the National Guard is being deployed to tackle not just illegal-migrant and international-gang activity but inner-city crime more broadly. Yet the depth and breadth of the cartels’ depravity is hard to exaggerate, as Katarina Szulc’s feature on baby-smuggling shows.

    When you have criminal gangs trafficking infants and offering bounties to contract killers to eliminate state officials, what are you supposed to do? The gangs operating in Chicago and many other cities are not Dickensian petty criminals. They are highly complex, organized and lethal fighting forces.

    Parts of America have ended up in the hands of gangs because their criminal activities have been tolerated for far too long. A rose-tinted view of migration failed to take into account that among the many plain economic migrants who have been crossing the US border illegally are criminals and terrorists who are capable of seriously undermining honest Americans’ quality of life.

    It is not just the US that has been naive about this. Sweden was once one of the world’s most peaceful nations, yet a soft migration policy which was practiced for several years failed to ask who was gaining entry. The result has been a surge of violence using grenades and other weapons which appear to have been sourced from the leftovers of the Balkans wars, three decades ago.

    Germany, Britain, France – all have suffered crime waves involving illegal migrants whose stories about seeking sanctuary from persecution were too easily swallowed.  Importing people from violent parts of the world always brings with it the risk that they will bring some of that with them, yet the asylum policies of developed nations have largely ignored the risk, tending to place far too much trust in the arrivals.

    Not everything ICE is doing is to be welcomed. There are too many tales of harmless tourists who have been speared by overzealous policing of visa rules. Cases such as that of Donna Hughes-Brown, an Irish woman detained by ICE officials in Chicago in July, do not do the department much credit. She is married to a US citizen, a military veteran, and had been living perfectly legally in the US for many years, but was taken into custody when her record revealed a minor misdemeanor involving a bad check a decade ago. It shouldn’t be too much of an effort to distinguish between a slightly wayward foreigner and a member of a vicious cartel. To subject them to similar treatment undermines otherwise necessary work in strengthening borders.

    That aside, there are many signs that enhanced measures against illegal migration in the US are beginning to bear fruit. The country will not become safer overnight, of course, because there are many criminals who are already active here. But the cartels’ threats of violence against ICE officials are a sign that the policy is beginning to work. The danger now is that the cartels will succeed in terrorizing those officials and deterring them from doing their jobs, as well as recruiting new members of staff.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 27, 2025 World edition.

  • Life in Chicago with ICE and the National Guard

    Life in Chicago with ICE and the National Guard

    Every day, Chicagoans outside the immediate areas where federal forces are deploying pick up fragments of what feels like an unfolding drama.

    Here’s a representative example: on the app NextDoor, the Chicago subreddit and in neighborhood Facebook groups, we watch cell-phone footage from Logan Square of smoke spreading through an intersection as a federal vehicle pulls away. Eventually, local outlets verify that a masked federal agent dropped canisters outside the Rico Fresh supermarket near Funston Elementary. It appears the air was filled with a chemical irritant, causing people to panic, and the vehicle departed. NBC Chicago asked Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security for explanations and, as of publication, had not received a detailed public rationale. Another cluster of videos captures tense scenes outside the ICE processing center in Broadview, a suburb just west of Chicago. In September, a federal agent positioned above the facility fired a projectile that struck Pastor David Black in the head.

    I witnessed an arrest last Saturday afternoon – a man purchasing a hot dog was picked up by CBP. A Greek-American friend, with olive skin and a mess of dark, curly hair, claims in a groupchat that he was asked to show his passport while walking downtown – sparse on details, high on alarm. Another friend, an undocumented immigrant from Ukraine, shares with me that she’s scared of being seized. Each day, a new story and mixed context for residents who may not understand what’s actually happening. 

    The Trump administration has deployed about 500 National Guard troops in the Chicago area for an initial period of 60 days – around 300 from Illinois and 200 from Texas. Federal officials say the mission is to protect personnel and property at federal sites, especially those used by ICE. On social media, there are reports that Chicagoans are preventing federal officials from doing their job through civil disobedience, which, some conservatives say, is justification for the Trump administration to step up operations.

    Illinois and the City of Chicago have sued, arguing the orders are unlawful and implicate the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the use oIf the military in civilian law enforcement. Filed October 6, the complaint challenges both the federalization of the Illinois Guard and the importation of Texas Guard forces. A judge in Chicago is set to rule on whether to block the deployment while the case proceeds.

    Northern Command has publicly declared the troops are there to protect federal workers and property, not to perform general urban policing – though the chatter online tells a different story. There’s a general sense that Chicago is a “war zone” and that the presence of the National Guard is “overdue.” The White House itself has described the deployment as a “protection mission,” while DHS refers to the broader ICE enforcement escalation as Operation Midway Blitz.

    Reporters have yet to work out a complete, detailed after-action account explaining why gas was deployed in Logan Square at that moment. Federal officials have not produced a cohesive public explanation tying together the scattered incidents across the city. And so residents and observers have basic questions that remain unanswered: who ordered the canisters in Logan Square? What does it mean, practically, that one of our alderwomen was briefly handcuffed? Was she arrested or just threatened? Eventually there are fractions of answers, but not all emerge in time to affect public understanding.

    What many Chicagoans are experiencing is uncertainty, amplified by a lack of clear news sources. Local journalists are doing the work: verifying incidents, seeking official responses, documenting what happens on the ground. But that reporting doesn’t reach most people in its original form. Instead, it gets broken apart and redistributed through social platforms, stripped of context, arriving as fragments rather than as coherent stories. 

    From social media, people assemble different stories. Some accept the administration’s framing – that the Guard is there to keep federal workers safe in a city that allegedly refuses to do so. Others see the footage as evidence that federal power is expanding into everyday life  –  understood as authoritarian overreach. Both sides point to authentic images and cite official statements, but few can point to a single, verified timeline that links them all.

    The Guard deployment is real, active and officially limited to protecting federal personnel and property. ICE enforcement in the region has intensified under a named operation, producing repeated confrontations with residents and protesters. And the public does not yet have a stable, integrated account that links these episodes into a common operational plan. This is, in large part, a distribution problem. The pieces are authentic. The whole picture remains incomplete.

  • Do cities need the National Guard?

    Do cities need the National Guard?

    “They are the ones who are making it a war zone,” Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois bloviated on CNN recently, as Jake Tapper listened, displaying his best Resting Serious Journalist Face. “They need to get out of Chicago. If they’re not going to focus on the worst of the worst, which is what the President said they were going to do, they need to get the heck out.”  

    ICE has overreached its authority, according to Pritzker, arresting innocent children and zip-tying grandparents in the middle of the night, asking people for their citizenship papers on the street. And yet here comes the National Guard, as ordered by Donald Trump, an “invasion” of trained soldiers from Texas. “Every American needs to stand up and stop this madness,” Governor McCheese tweeted.  

    Yet what are the feds supposed to do? Last month ICE launched “Operation Midway Blitz,” last seen deployed by the Chicago Bears in the 1980s. Unsurprisingly in Chicago, which has a contemporary left wing that makes Red Emma Goldman look like a Bircher, the operation soon led to daily protests outside the ICE processing center in the Chicago suburb of Broadview. This Saturday brought a scarily violent scene during an ICE patrol on Chicago’s South Side, when, according to the Department of Homeland Security, ICE agents “were attacked and rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars.” Agents shot (non-fatally) a woman who was allegedly brandishing a semi-automatic weapon. There’s some dispute about what role the Chicago Police Department played in all this, but a dispatch call does go, “per the chief of patrol, all units clear out from there, we’re not sending anybody out to that location.” The CPD doesn’t seem to want to get involved. Hence, the National Guard.  

    Meanwhile, in the People’s Republic of Oregon, federal judge Karin Immergut, who Trump appointed, said that Trump’s ordering of the California National Guard to deal with ICE protesters in Portland is illegal, and local officials “are likely to succeed on their claim that the President exceeded his constitutional authority and violated the Tenth Amendment.” California Governor called Trump’s order “a breathtaking abuse of the law and power.” Well, it’s no Covid-era lunch at the French Laundry, but Cockburn can understand Newsom’s concern.  

    Trump, who seeks peace abroad daily but war at home hourly, seems unfazed. In front of a thropping Marine One yesterday, he said, “Portland is burning to the ground! You have agitators, insurrectionists, all you  have to do is look at the television, turn on your television, read the newspaper. It’s burning to the ground. The Governor, the Mayor, the politicians are petrified for their lives. That judge oughta be ashamed of herself.”  

    Trump advisor Stephen Miller has emerged from his crypt to make the case in non-goombah language. The President, Miller says, isn’t trying to deploy the National Guard to rampage through the streets of Chicago and Portland, terrifying ordinary citizens and shaking down neighborhood bars (in Chicago) and feminist yarn stores (in Portland). They’re going to protect federal agents who are trying to enforce immigration laws.  

    “This large-scale political violence is domestic terrorism,” Miller tweeted. “And it is the absolute moral and constitutional duty of the federal government to stop this terrorism, defend the lives and safety of federal officers, and protect the American citizen and nation by ensuring the full and unrestricted enforcement of federal immigration law in all fifty states.” 

    Cockburn, who lives in Washington, DC, has personally enjoyed the side benefit of having the National Guard around. He feels quite secure watching them walk past while he’s at his favorite Asian foot spa, or enjoying oysters at the Occidental. If only Portland and Chicago would willingly open their city gates to the Guard, and let ICE do its job relatively unimpeded. Things would calm down very quickly. Let the Guard cook, and then they, too, can enjoy the true feeling of liberty.  

  • Why does Pope Leo think immigration is a pro-life issue?

    Why does Pope Leo think immigration is a pro-life issue?

    On Tuesday evening, the Illinois pope weighed in on Illinois politics. A reporter from the Catholic news outlet EWTN asked Pope Leo XIV about the Archdiocese of Chicago’s decision to award Senator Dick Durbin with a “lifetime achievement award” for his work advocating for immigrants coming to America. “Some people of faith are having a hard time with understanding this because [Durbin] is for legalized abortion,” the reporter said. How should Catholics feel about that?

    “I am not terribly familiar with the particular case,” the Pope conceded, speaking in English. Then he spoke more broadly, and vaguely, about what it means to be “pro-life”. “Someone who says ‘I am against abortion’ but says ‘I am in favor of the death penalty’ is not really pro-life,” he said. “Someone who says ‘I am against abortion, but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States,’ – I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”

    The new Pope is proving he’s consistent. From the Catholic Church’s perspective, being pro-life means standing up for the dignity of human life from conception until natural death. And there are growing examples of undeniably disturbing, gleeful responses to deportations and family separations (one only needs to look at the Department of Homeland Security’s X account). But to characterize support for a strong border and stricter enforcement of immigration law as “[agreeing] with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States” is a caricature of the complex feelings many Americans, particularly Catholic Americans (of which there are many in the Trump administration), have about the issue.

    After the Pope’s comments (though not clearly because of them) Senator Durbin declined to accept the award for his immigration advocacy, according to a letter issued last night by Cardinal Blase Cupich, who named him the recipient of the “Keep Hope Alive” award. Last month, Cupich defended his decision by saying that he was acting in accordance with Church instructions “advising bishops to ‘reach out to and engage in dialogue with Catholic politicians within their jurisdictions… as a means of understanding the nature of their positions and their comprehension of Catholic teaching’.”

    Cupich’s interpretation of “dialogue” misses the very clear point of those instructions given in 2021 by the Vatican’s Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Luis Ladaria. They ask US bishops to attempt to change the minds of pro-abortion politicians through civil debate, and to dispel the characterization that pro-life teaching is only about abortion and euthanasia, rather than a set of teachings about respecting human dignity throughout a person’s full life.

    The decision to interpret those instructions as a directive to give politicians awards seems bizarre, even deliberately ignorant. But it’s not surprising. Many US bishops and cardinals have been vocal in their criticisms of immigration policy under the Trump administration (more vocal than they were over, say, the last administration’s stance on gender ideology or the church closures during Covid). Some have written letters to Congress to reject bills funding immigration enforcement, or have turned up at ICE hearings to show solidarity with immigrants.

    The tension between Rome and the Trump administration on immigration came to a head during the previous papacy, and it is not going to disappear anytime soon. Pope Francis criticised Trump’s mass deportations, and in a letter to US bishops made a pointed reference to J.D. Vance’s interpretation of ordo amoris – that the “hierarchy of love” gives one a moral obligation to family and community first, and then the rest of the world. It’s an argument not dissimilar from the more secular one for America First. Francis wrote in that letter that the true ordo amoris is something we discover by “meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

    Francis’s approach to America’s border crisis struck many Americans as distant and hectoring, ignoring the realities of illegal migration – gang violence, murder, drug and sex trafficking – and choosing to remind us of what we learned in Sunday school: that Jesus, Mary and Joseph were immigrants. Pope Leo has tried to avoid that tone so far. “They are very complex issues,” he told the EWTN reporter. “I don’t know if anyone has all the truth on them.” It’s a most honest interpretation on Christianity’s offerings: not to say that Church teaching is muddled on these issues, but that there are no precise instructions from a universal Christian faith on how, for example, to deal with a specifically American border crisis.

    The Pope ended his answer by stating that “the Church teaching on each one of those issues is very clear”. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, all human beings must be treated with dignity and respect, the state should not have the power to end a life, and abortion is a moral evil. Even if immigration is considered the most urgent pro-life issue at the moment, that should have no bearing for American bishops and cardinals on the Church’s unnegotiable stance on the right to life.

  • Was Dr. Roberts the school board’s ‘Magical Negro’?

    Was Dr. Roberts the school board’s ‘Magical Negro’?

    When news broke that the head of Iowa’s largest school district was in ICE custody as an alleged illegal alien, the response from all quarters was disbelief. A school superintendent undergoes intense vetting, and every rung on the career ladder requires background checks. How could such a man possibly have slipped through?

    Anyone hoping the full story might provide a sensible explanation was quickly disappointed. The more you dig, the more absurd it becomes. Although we don’t yet know the full truth about his immigration status, there is already plenty in his record that raises red flags about the biographies he’s offered. Ian Andre Roberts’ life reads less like a CV than a pitch for a Hollywood script in the classic tradition of the charming conman.

    Roberts worked hard at his presentation. He cultivated a flamboyant look – tight suits in loud colors and patterns, topped with his signature cloth flower in the lapel and flashy sneakers. His social media feeds feature professional portraits, sometimes shirtless, sometimes in trousers so tight they left little to the imagination. He spoke in smooth clichés, delivered with a Caribbean accent that lent a whiff of exoticism to Iowan ears.

    And then there is his “life story” – or rather, his competing life stories. All reliable evidence points to Guyana as his birthplace, where he was schooled until the early 1990s. Yet in interviews he sometimes claimed to have been born and raised in Brooklyn, the child of a single mother. That contradicts his own statement that she immigrated only in the 2000s, by which time he was already in his 30s. Even his age shifts – legal records say 1970, while Roberts himself has variously given 1973 or 1978.

    Ironically, the most colorful elements of his tale appear to be true. A retired police commissioner in Guyana confirmed that Roberts graduated from officer training and joined the country’s police force. He was a standout runner in college in the United States and even represented Guyana in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. But once you reach other aspects of his life – degrees, awards, academic achievements – the truth grows hazier.

    On LinkedIn he lists seven universities, but curiously omits mention of any degrees. Elsewhere, he claimed several master’s degrees and a doctorate in education from Morgan State University in 2007. He began styling himself “Dr.” as early as 2012, yet records show he did not actually receive an Ed.D. until 2021, from an online institution widely regarded as a diploma mill. His official Des Moines biography boasted of being named “Principal of the Year” by George Washington University – an award the university says it has never given. And this is only a sampling of the inconsistencies.

    Why did no one bother to check before offering him a $300,000-a-year post? Why did no one even question the contradictions? The honest answer is race and ideology. In the current climate, pressing a man with a Caribbean lilt about where he was born is deemed a “microaggression.” Anyone schooled in the catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion knows better than to question the “lived experience” of someone like Roberts.

    And Roberts, to his credit as a conman, gave them exactly what they craved. He embodied the DEI narrative: a black immigrant who rose from poverty to academic brilliance, to Olympic heights, to leadership in education. In Iowa – one of the whitest states in America – the all-female school board glowed with pride when they announced his appointment in 2023.

    Spike Lee coined the phrase “Magical Negro” to mock Hollywood’s fondness for the saintly black character who redeems white protagonists. Roberts filled that role in real life. He promised not only to raise test scores but to cleanse Des Moines of its original sin of racism. He was their redemption, offered with a winning smile and a résumé that, if partially fictional, was at least inspirational.

    And now, exposed, he is still defended. Rather than express outrage at being deceived, his supporters rally. Some protests bear the fingerprints of unions and activists, but much of the outcry looks organic. People insist he was kind, inspiring, a role model. But the essence of a successful con is that people fall for the charismatic conman and cling to the illusion. Mark Twain’s old adage still holds true – it is easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled.

    The broader lesson is not merely that one smooth talker tricked his way into a prestigious office. It is that our institutions have made themselves especially easy prey. DEI ideology discourages skepticism, instructs people to rank themselves by race, and warns the “privileged” against questioning the “oppressed.” That ideology creates a golden opportunity for a resourceful grifter.

    The officials who hired Roberts failed in their basic duty to fact-check his résumé. They failed because their ideology told them not to ask questions. They preferred the fairy tale. But in the real world, when you believe in fairy tales, no wand appears at the end to make the story come true. You are left with failing schools, squandered money and the humiliation of realizing that the man hired to redeem you was simply playing the oldest role in the book – the conman who knew exactly what his audience wanted to hear.

  • Des Moines school superintendent is not a victim of ICE

    Des Moines school superintendent is not a victim of ICE

    When the superintendent of Iowa’s largest school district was detained by ICE on Friday, the story startled parents, educators and anyone paying attention to the integrity of our institutions. Dr. Ian Roberts, a man with a final deportation order, allegedly fled law enforcement, leaving behind a vehicle containing a loaded handgun, a fixed-blade knife and thousands in cash. Yet for months, he led thousands of children, set policy for an entire district and enjoyed the prestige and authority that comes with public office.

    The question society must ask is unavoidable: How did someone with an outstanding removal order rise to the top of a school district? How did a man technically in violation of federal law gain the trust of an entire community?

    This is not merely the story of one man flouting the law. It is a story about systemic failure, a window into the erosion of public trust and a lesson about what happens when the rule of law becomes optional. Immigration law is meant to maintain order, fairness and accountability. When enforcement is selective – ignored for some while ruthlessly applied to others – the system itself loses credibility. That credibility is the backbone of a functioning society, yet in Roberts’ case, it was nowhere to be found.

    The first failure lies in bureaucracy. A final deportation order is the result of a legal process that should have barred him from holding public office. Yet somehow, the vetting systems that are supposed to catch such issues failed completely. ICE did not notify the school board, and the board apparently did not discover his legal status during the hiring process. Ordinary Americans face background checks and employment verification at nearly every stage of life. They show identification to get jobs, pay taxes and secure professional licenses. Yet here, in a position of immense public responsibility, the system looked the other way.

    When bureaucracies fail, it is the public who suffers. The lesson is clear: if the government cannot enforce the law at the leadership level, why should citizens expect enforcement anywhere else?

    The second failure is in public trust. Schools are institutions that require adherence to rules, standards and moral leadership. Parents entrust their children to teachers and administrators expecting competence, integrity and respect for the law. If children are told to follow rules while their superintendent ignores one of the most consequential laws in the country, the message is destructive. Hypocrisy at the top does not stay at the top. It trickles down, eroding respect for rules, authority and the social contract itself. Parents should be able to assume that the adults in charge of their children operate by the same standards they demand of everyone else. When that assumption is violated, confidence in the entire system collapses.

    The third, and perhaps most important, issue is selective enforcement. Justice cannot bend based on convenience, identity or social standing. Rules should apply equally to all citizens, regardless of occupation, ideology or demographic profile. Yet in practice, the powerful and politically sensitive are often shielded, while ordinary citizens are held to the full force of the law. That is the definition of selective justice, and it is corrosive to the idea of America as a nation of laws rather than a nation of preferences.

    The pattern is easy to recognize. If a white conservative school leader had a firearm charge and a deportation order, the media and progressive activists would demand immediate resignation. There would be op-eds and social media campaigns insisting on accountability. In Roberts’ case, there is caution, hesitation, even implicit deference. Identity, status and perceived ideological alignment appear to confer immunity. This is not about prejudice; it is about principle. Justice that applies to some and not others is not justice at all.

    Some observers are already framing Roberts not as a man defying a lawful order, but as a victim of ICE. This is identity politics in action: shielding misconduct because the individual occupies a “preferred” category. Conservatives understand that such selective leniency corrodes both public trust and the legitimacy of the law. Excusing wrongdoing based on identity, occupation, or political sympathy is not compassion – it is hypocrisy. And hypocrisy, once institutionalized, becomes a cultural norm, weakening the foundations of governance and public life.

    The Iowa case is a flashpoint, but the lessons extend far beyond Des Moines. First, immigration enforcement must be consistent and credible. The law cannot be optional, or it ceases to function as law at all. Second, vetting and accountability mechanisms in public institutions must be strengthened. Leadership positions, particularly those entrusted with children and taxpayer resources, should not be available to anyone operating outside the bounds of the law. Third, society must confront the corrosive effects of double standards. Parents, students and taxpayers deserve institutions that are honest, lawful and accountable – not institutions that bend the rules for elites or shield them from consequences.

    Dr. Roberts’ arrest is more than a scandal; it is a mirror of the erosion of authority in public institutions. Selective enforcement teaches children and adults alike that rules matter only when convenient. It undermines respect for leadership, weakens bureaucracies and erodes confidence in the system of laws meant to protect everyone equally. Conservatives understand that respect for the law is the foundation of liberty. When that foundation cracks, the consequences ripple through every corner of society.

    This is the real story from Iowa: a superintendent detained by ICE should be an anomaly, a cautionary tale about the consequences of ignoring the law. Instead, it reveals a pattern in which rules bend, oversight fails and selective justice becomes normalized. America cannot survive as a nation of laws if enforcement is optional, particularly for those in positions of authority.

    Until these principles are restored, public trust will continue to erode, and the next child, parent or taxpayer will see that rules matter only if you are powerless enough to be held accountable.

    Dr. Roberts’ case is a stark reminder: justice that applies only to some is no justice at all. Until the law is enforced consistently, America’s institutions – schools, government agencies and the legal system itself – will continue to crumble under the weight of favoritism, bureaucratic failure and selective leniency.

  • Why is Apple hosting an assassin’s app?

    Why is Apple hosting an assassin’s app?

    ICEBlock is an app that uses real-time information to pinpoint the location of ICE agents in the field. Launched in April in response to Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, it now boasts more than one million users across the country.

    Among them, until recently, was self-styled “anti-fascist” sniper Joshua Jahn, who killed one person – a detainee – and critically injured two more at an ICE facility in Dallas. The FBI has discovered that Jahn used the app, or one like it, to track his intended victims. In a handwritten note, Jahn, who took his own life, wrote, “Hopefully this will give ICE agents real terror.”

    ICEBlock claims that its purpose is to help illegal immigrants evade arrest by alerting them to the presence of ICE agents. But its far more wicked use as an assassin’s tool has for a long time been all too easy to predict with the left’s prolific and incendiary rhetoric around “Nazis” and “fascists,” the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the new record-high of left-wing terror attacks.

    And it is almost inevitable that another targeted attack based on data from the app will happen again.

    That’s because Apple is still hosting ICEBlock and apps like it on its App Store. The big tech platform that notoriously removed the conservative social media app Parler for far more nebulous claims of harm after Jan. 6. seems perfectly content to aid future would-be assassins. Apparently, Big Tech is more worried about censoring conservative grannies for wrongthink than it is actual real world violence.

    ICEBlock was developed by Joshua Aaron, a tech bro and former indie musician from Texas. It allows activists to drop a pin on a map wherever they spot ICE agents, which then sends a notification to all other users in a five mile radius.

    “We don’t want anything being discoverable,” Aaron said in a gushing profile for CNN earlier this year. “And so, this is 100 percent anonymous and free for anybody who wants to use it.”

    Of course, ICEBlock would never explicitly incite violence, it would like you to know. Upon log-in, a legal disclaimer states, “Please note that the use of this app is for information and notification purposes only.”

    Aaron says he’s the good guy, someone who wants to “fight back” against the rising tide of Nazism in America. He only cares about “keeping people safe,” he told The Guardian in another fawning interview.

    And playing the victim in an interview with USA Today, he claimed it was “insanity” to link his app with the Texas shooting and that the DOJ was merely “trying to bully [him].” Indeed, he has seemed much more concerned that his wife was let go from her job as a forensic auditor at the Department of Justice because of her ties to the app.

    Most tech founders would sell their first-born to mirror ICEBlock’s growth: it boasted just 20,000 users in June, but as of September Aaron says there are 1.1 million active users across the country – all of whom seem perfectly happy to help would-be assassins find their next victim.

    The app has come under fire from both ICE agents on the ground as well high-ranking Trump officials for putting a very real target on agents’ backs.

    “The DOJ’s looking at it, and they need to throw some people in jail,” Border Czar Tom Homan said of ICEBlock over the summer.

    But little if anything beyond some angry letters and statements has so far been done.

    With the implicit endorsement of mainstream media and big tech, ICEBlock has enjoyed a stamp of institutional legitimacy along with all the impunity that affords. But the days of normalizing leftist agitators with a wink and a nod are over.

    Aaron can cry peaceful resistance as much as he wants, but violent attacks against ICE agents become inevitable in a climate where they’re deemed Nazis and any lunatic is free to track their real-time movements. Denying this reality beggars belief; anyone who does so is stupid, or more likely, lying, and indifferent to violence against agents.

    Attorney General Pam Bondi warned Aaron to “watch out” in July, but it’s time for her office to initiate a real crackdown. Whether through cultural or government pressure, Apple must no longer allow apps like ICEBlock to proliferate, and the full force of the federal government must be used to scrutinize Aaron’s activities. Or these attacks are only going to keep happening.

    This isn’t a matter of free speech, but a matter of very real harm as we saw in Texas.

    Yet it’s an even deeper question of what kind of country we want to live in: one where ICE agents are seen as brownshirts for enforcing basic U.S. law, or one where law, order, and common sense receive the unanimous respect necessary for a functioning nation?

    We can’t have a country without borders. Those who claim otherwise have enjoyed more than enough time dominating the Overton window, and deserve to go back to the fringe.