Tag: illegal immigration

First Them, Then Us: America’s Shift from Police State to Prison State

“If Trump can disappear them, he can disappear you.”—Robert Reich

America, you got fooled. Again.

For starters, the war on illegal immigration was never just about illegal immigration.

If you fell for that, chances are you’re still falling for the government’s oldest trick: manufacture a crisis, identify an enemy, frighten the public, declare an emergency, and then use the resulting fear to justify another expansion of government power.

Terrorism. Crime. Drugs. National security. Illegal immigration.

Different threats. Same playbook.

Take a legitimate problem—or inflate it into an existential menace—and suddenly constitutional safeguards become inconveniences, extraordinary powers become necessities, and anyone who questions the government’s methods can be accused of siding with the enemy.

Immigration is a perfect example.

A highly charged issue that pushes all of the knee-jerk, polarizing buttons when it comes to deep-seated fears and prejudices, immigration has been the perfect vehicle for the Trump administration’s political fearmongering and authoritarian power grabs.

Trump has repeatedly described illegal immigration in the language of invasion, criminality and national-security emergency.

Yet a closer look suggests a far more complicated reality.

A 2026 Cato Institute analysis of Census data found that undocumented immigrants were incarcerated at a rate of 674 per 100,000 people in 2024, compared with 1,195 per 100,000 native-born Americans. Legal immigrants had an even lower incarceration rate of 303 per 100,000. Cato concluded that both legal and undocumented immigrants are less crime-prone than native-born Americans.

So, what is the government’s end game?

We’ve been so fixated on the overt cruelty, unapologetic authoritarianism, thuggish brutality, and blatantly unconstitutional abuses of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown that we missed the larger menace taking shape behind it.

While the country fights over who should be allowed in, who should be kicked out, and who can participate in a pay-to-play scheme that benefits the oligarchy, the government continues building the infrastructure of a prison state.

This is the real power grab.

The government is using its so-called war on illegal immigration to normalize something far more dangerous: a system in which due process can be bypassed, people can be detained and moved beyond easy public scrutiny, government agents can wield extraordinary enforcement powers with minimal accountability, and constitutional protections can be treated as optional whenever the government invokes security.

Immigration is the testing ground.

The precedent being established and the tactics being trotted out and normalized are the real danger. Because once the government establishes that it can suspend the Constitution’s safeguards for one disfavored group, there is nothing magical that keeps those powers confined to that group.

We are all at risk.

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CA Gov. Gavin Newsom Signs ‘No Kings Act,’ Making It Easier to Sue ICE Agents

Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed 21 bills into law on Tuesday, one of which, the “No Kings Act,” makes it easier for left-wing migrant activists and others to target Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

One of the bills attempts to impose a 25-percent tax on private detention centers, another purports to ban law enforcement from using electric shock gloves, and another has a provision that makes it easier to sue federal immigration officers for doing their job.

“Trump has put his political interests above the health, safety and livelihood of American families,” Newsom said in a statement upon signing the bills, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “California is taking action to strengthen transparency, accountability, and oversight around immigration enforcement in our state. This is about stepping up where the federal government has failed our communities.”

“We will continue protecting our people, upholding the rule of law, and making clear that if the federal government operates in California, we will hold them accountable,” Newsom added.

Radical left-wing state Senator Scott Wiener (D), who sponsored the bill, celebrated the signing.

“ICE and Border Patrol have terrorized California communities with impunity,” Wiener claimed. “That ends today.”

He continued:

When federal agents act lawlessly, they should be held accountable the same as any other lawbreaker. But for too long, a loophole in the law has shielded them from accountability. The No Kings Act provides long overdue accountability to end the impunity powering ICE and Border Patrol’s terror campaign.

It is likely that some of the provisions in these various bills won’t pass legal muster for their attempt to interfere in federal law enforcement matters.

Other provisions include requirements to disclose 911 and emergency response records, the creation of a so-called “detainees’ bill of rights,” a ban on the use of flash-bang devices, and a ban on former ICE officers being hired by state law enforcement agencies.

The Chronicle reported in August that ICE had arrested nearly 50,000 migrants across the state, some 6,800 of them in Southern California and 11,500 in Los Angeles.

California has opposed the Trump administration’s voter-mandated efforts to institute mass deportations of illegal migrants after the state used migrants for years to pad state tax subsidies, especially where it concerned the fattening of education budgets as millions of migrant children flooded the state’s school systems.

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“Extraordinary Rendition All Over Again”: U.S. Deportees Sent to Equatorial Guinea Beaten, Imprisoned

Two men deported from the United States to Equatorial Guinea were arrested by local police forces and transferred to a prison earlier this month, in apparent retaliation for speaking out about conditions they faced in the Central African country. Samson Birhane, who is from Eritrea, and Ahmed Soliman, a gay asylum seeker from Egypt, were both deported by the Trump administration despite U.S. immigration courts granting them protections.

On September 11, police forces arrived at Hotel Bamy in the city of Malabo, where more than two dozen people have been confined after their deportation from the United States to Equatorial Guinea, a country they have no ties to, as part of President Trump’s secretive “third-country” agreements. Birhane and Soliman say they were arrested and taken to prison for speaking out about the inhumane conditions endured by U.S. deportees at the hotel and threats by armed forces. While confined at the hotel, U.S. deportees have decried denial of medical care and legal assistance, and abuses they’ve described as psychological torture.

“Starting in November 2025, … the United States started this horrendous policy of sending immigrants not from Equatorial Guinea to Equatorial Guinea, a country that the U.S. knows very, very well that is a human rights violator,” says human rights lawyer Tutu Alicante. “The State Department reports that the U.S. has been putting out for the last three decades are consistent about the fact that Equatorial Guinea uses torture, uses incommunicado detentions, and often extrajudicial killings of people that it keeps in prison.”

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Boston Is Paying Illegal Aliens to Become Community Organizers

Boston is offering immigrants—including people in the country illegally—$575 to complete a city-sponsored course in community organizing and advocacy.

The eligibility language on Boston’s own website is explicit:

“Interested applicants are encouraged to apply regardless of their immigration status.”

Run through Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office for Immigrant Advancement, Immigrants Lead Boston teaches participants how to organize their communities, engage government officials and advocate for change. Its fall 2026 course runs from September 21 through December 5.

Boston calls the $575 completion payment a scholarship to make participation more accessible.

Participants must attend the sessions and complete outside civic activities. The city also promises introductions to key officials.

The published rules establish that undocumented immigrants can apply. They do not disclose how many have received payments.

The program’s political ambitions become clearer in a published profile of its approach, which describes teaching the “art of politics.”

Its power-analysis instruction includes:

“Networking with people in positions of power for community advancement.”

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DACA DUI Defendants Get Preferential Treatment over U.S. Citizens in Democrat-Run Arlington County, VA.

The Commonwealth’s Attorney in Democrat-run Arlington County, Virginia, instructed prosecutors to change the charges when a DUI conviction could prompt deportation of a migrant with DACA status.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, a Democrat, (pictured above) confirmed the practice in a closed-door deposition with the House Judiciary Committee in July which was published Monday in a 23-page report on the county’s sanctuary rules. Her office sent prosecutors a memo telling them to weigh DACA status and encouraging them to change a DUI charge to a different charge that will not cause the defendant to possibly lose their DACA status.

DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is the 2012 program that shields roughly 750,000 illegal aliens brought to the country as children and hands them renewable work permits. It was started by former President Barack Obama via executive order and has been curbed  — but not eliminated — by the courts.

Federal immigration officials consider a drunk driving conviction a significant misdemeanor that can cost illegal migrants their DACA status and leave them open to deportation.

In response, Dehghani-Tafti’s office offers the illegal alien a different misdemeanor of roughly equal weight  — what it calls a lateral charge.

The committee says an American citizen charged with DUI cannot claim similar benefits.

Dehghani-Tafti told Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) the swap has come up three or four times that she can recall, and fewer than 10 times for certain. She said her office does not dismiss the case or necessarily reduce it, and will not let the defendant expunge the original charge.

Explaining what she means by a lateral charge, she said a first-degree misdemeanor would still be a first-degree misdemeanor on the record. (Actually, however, Virginia has no first-degree misdemeanors; the state sorts misdemeanors into Classes 1 through 4.) Drunk driving is a Class 1 misdemeanor, the most serious one.

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DHS Chief Markwayne Mullin Under Fire After Declaring ICE Is NOT Arresting Illegal Aliens at Kansas Worksites Following Reported Pressure from Powerful Agriculture Lobby

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin is drawing heavy fire from conservative watchdogs and immigration patriots after issuing a startling public declaration that federal enforcement officers will not be targeting illegal immigrants at commercial worksites across Kansas.

The explosive statement came directly on the heels of mounting pressure from major agriculture and livestock lobbies, leaving grassroots conservatives asking why federal immigration law is seemingly being carved out for big corporate interests.

According to reporting from NewsNation’s Ali Bradley, DHS clarified its position on social media, asserting that ICE is deliberately avoiding sweeping worksite operations in the Jayhawk State.

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ICE Denounced for Enacting ‘Official Government Policy of Disappearing People’

Critics reacted with horror to a Monday report from The Associated Press detailing how US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has abruptly ended its practice of disclosing the locations of thousands of detainees.

According to the AP, ICE “has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding… detainees who are subject to final deportation orders, an unannounced move that has made it far more difficult for lawyers and relatives to find them.”

Immigration attorneys who spoke with the AP said that their clients had “vanished” from the system after ICE removed them from its online detainee locator system last week.

Greg Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the AP that families of detainees “are freaking out because they think the person has been deported and they don’t know where the person might be.”

Chen added that the new policy has “serious implications” for attorneys’ ability to make contact with their clients.

Michelle Mendez, legal director at the National Immigration Project, told the AP that the new policy is “just another iteration of disappearing people.”

“Why would we do that in the United States of America?” Mendez asked. “It’s something we’d hear about in another country and be concerned about individual rights and due process.”

Tom Jawetz, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, echoed Mendez’s analysis, writing in a social media post that the AP report reveals “an official government policy of disappearing people,” as “systems for attorneys and loved ones to know where—even whether—a person with a final removal order is in ICE custody have been wiped clean.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, described the new ICE policy as “unprecedented” for US immigration enforcement.

“People who have been detained for months are suddenly disappearing from the locator system—even if they haven’t been moved anywhere,” Reichlin-Melnick explained. “And people newly arrested are not showing up at all, their location now hidden from view.”

Georgetown University political scientist Jonathan Ladd argued that the ICE policy was a fundamental violation of long-established rights in the US that date to before the country’s official founding.

“The government moving or hiding jailed people to avoid review by courts isn’t some loophole in our habeas corpus rights,” Ladd explained. “This government behavior has been considered a violation of the people’s habeas corpus rights since at least the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679.”

Ladd further pointed out that “habeas corpus rights are guaranteed by Article I of our Constitution,” which means “hiding prisoners from the courts is unconstitutional.”

Journalist Gillian Brockell observed that the new ICE policy “will make it nearly impossible to file habeas petitions, because attorneys won’t even know what federal district their client has been moved to to stage for their removal.”

Among those sharing the AP report on social media was Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, an attorney for Wilbur Rafael Garces Perez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan shot by ICE in Austin, Texas on Sunday.

Initially, she and the immigrant’s wife could not make contact with him, because ICE moved him from the hospital “to an undisclosed location,” but Lincoln-Goldfinch said Monday afternoon that her client “is being held at Pearsall for interrogation.”

“We got Wilber on the phone live from detention at the press conference,” the attorney added. “He says he still has the bullet lodged in his shoulder. He says he is not doing well and has not received the medical care he needs.”

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Two-tiered justice: Local DAs shield noncitizens from immigration consequences

District attorneys across the country are accused of providing illegal immigrants preferential treatment when they commit crimes, allowing them to remain free in the country and put U.S. citizens’ lives at risk. The related reports seem to indicate that when the arrested person is a U.S. citizen, they are denied much of the leniency shown to illegal immigrants accused of the same crime. 

The House Judiciary Committee and its Immigration Subcommittee released a report this week detailing how Arlington County, Virginia’s Commonwealth’s Attorney, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, “obstructs the enforcement of federal immigration law and shields foreign national criminals from accountability.” Dehghani-Tafti’s campaign received $515,000 from George Soros-affiliated political entities, Fox News reported last October.

Congressional committee says policy ensures that certain foreign nationals are never convicted of DWI

“Democrats’ open-borders policies and sanctuary jurisdictions have had devastating consequences for U.S. citizens. Even after the American people resoundingly rejected Democrats’ pro-illegal alien policies in November 2024, Democrats across the country reinforced sanctuary policies to ensure that the millions of illegal aliens who entered the U.S. are never removed from the country,” the Committee wrote in its announcement of the report.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data contained within the report showed that sanctuary jurisdictions – cities that have vowed not to work with ICE – have declined at least 41,085 detainers between Oct. 2022 and early 2026.

The Judiciary Committee’s report included testimony from Dehghani-Tafti about her office’s policy to shift outcomes for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients charged with Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) to ensure they don’t lose their DACA status. “This policy ensures that certain foreign nationals are never convicted of DWI in Arlington County, [Virginia] solely due to their status as non-U.S. citizens,” the Committee wrote.

“Arlington County treats illegal aliens differently than similarly situated American citizens. Immigration-specific considerations, and the potential for a different prosecutorial outcome based on those immigration considerations, are not available to American citizens charged with similar crimes,” the Committee added.

Arlington County’s refusal to work with ICE also extends to cases involving felons and terrorists, the Committee found.

Lax treatment, tracking of illegal immigrants leads to deaths of American citizens

In neighboring Fairfax County, the situation is largely the same with Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano, who is under investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for possible discrimination against American citizens. “This investigation will uncover whether this prosecutor is putting the community at risk in offering sweetheart deals to illegal immigrants charged with serious crimes,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in May.

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Alaskan Sex Offender Given Probation After Bringing Migrant Mom, Child Across Border

A previously convicted sex offender from Alaska received a sentence of three years’ probation for paying to have a woman from Honduras and her 14-year-old daughter brought over the border.

This week, Douglas Eugene Price went before U.S. Southern District of Texas Chief District Court Judge Randy Crane, who accepted a recommendation from federal prosecutors after Price had pleaded guilty to one count of harboring aliens. Prosecutors dropped a second count of the same charge in consideration for the plea agreement.

As Breitbart Texas’s Randy Clark reported, the case began on January 16, when a 14-year-old girl from Honduras crossed into Hidalgo, Texas, with the intention of being released to Price as her sponsor through the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). The girl’s mother crossed into the country separately, planning to meet up with them and stay in Alaska.

However, during an investigation by U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, agents learned that Price was a convicted sex offender and was listed on child abuse and kidnapping registries.

Agents interviewed the woman’s mother, who said she had known Price for years and that they had worked together in the past. The woman had also worked as Price’s housekeeper and babysitter before she was detained by immigration authorities in 2025 and deported to Honduras.

During the investigation, agents found messages between the two and a transfer of $5,000 meant to pay for the smuggling fees to have the woman and her daughter illegally brought into the country.

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Report Exposes California’s $11B ‘Shadow Welfare System’ for Illegals

The State of California has spent more than $11 billion tax dollars to give illegal migrants free healthcare, free food, housing, legal assistance, education, smart phones, and even free car insurance, a report finds.

It’s all more evidence of the Democrat Ponzi scheme of subsidizing illegals to give the party more power and more money to spread around to maintain that power.

The state’s generous welfare system is, of course, intended to give California citizens a helping hand when they come on hard times, but the state’s far-left Democrat establishment has warped the programs to support criminal illegals, according to City Journal’s Christopher Rufo.

Rufo calls the abuse a “a shadow welfare system” that hands tax dollars over to noncitizens. And during his reseearch into his article he visited four state offices in Southern California each of them said that illegal aliens are permitted to sign up for California’s public assistance programs. Rufo adds that the state has spent more than $11 billion for illegals.

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