One of the shortest posts - but - necessarily one of the most important posts!

 

Immigration and values — then and now

Eric Utter | January 2, 2026 www.americanthinker.com

The current immigrants differ in many ways from the previous immigrants.

Nearly all early immigrants to the United States of America came from Europe.

More to the point, earlier immigrants came to America to become Americans.

They came because they wanted opportunity and they shared America's founding values.

It appears the majority of latter-day immigrants, particularly from North Africa and the Middle East, do not wish to become Americans, do not wish to assimilate, and do not share our values. In fact, in many cases, they detest them.

They do not want just an opportunity. They want cash. They want to live off the American taxpayer. Perhaps permanently. In the case of Somalis in Minnesota, statistics prove this to be the case, as 81% are on one or more forms of American taxpayer-funded welfare. Similar dependency (or fraud) is likely taking place in numerous other states.

In fact, many -- if not most -- Muslim immigrants want to change our values to suit theirs. Several surveys show that the majority of Muslims, not just “radical Islamists,” prefer sharia law to the American Constitution and other founding documents, protections, and principles.

Make no mistake, sharia law is utterly, inarguably, and irrevocably incompatible with a free society and a free market capitalist system, not to mention the Bill of Rights.

Do we really want to change our values to those of a society that encourages or tolerates clitoridectomies for girls as young as 4 -- and allows men to treat their women as property, marry pre-pubescent girls, rape infidels, and stone homosexuals?

Only mad men, a society hell-bent on its own destruction, would allow this to happen. (And it is certain that such a society will be hell-bent.) Memo to karens: all cultures are not the same. All beliefs are not equally valid.

We are on the proverbial highway to hell, pedal to the metal. And no one seems in a particular hurry to find an exit ramp.

If we do not soon find one, it will be lights out for America.

At which point, all a rational person could say to those possessed by a bizarrely suicidal empathy would be, “Enjoy your sharia law.” “And say ‘hi’ to China.”

This post proves law enforcement is its own worse enemy. Statistics are often times created to represent a pre-conceived outcome.

 

Canard about illegals committing fewer crimes than other Americans gets blown apart from DHS data

Monica Showalter | December 30, 2025 www.americanthinker.com

Writing at the New York Post, John Lott shows how data are skewed to make illegals look like sweet little daisies.

A common leftist canard, promoted by activists, foundations, Democrat politicians, Catholic bishops, Episcopalian bishops, and other open-borders advocates, holds that illegal aliens commit way fewer crimes than ordinary Americans.

It's sugar-coated garbage, and not just because we look around and confront the evidence of our own eyes, or consider the incentive an open border offers to criminals who can't get into the states otherwise.

Writing at the New York Post, John Lott has come up with a doozy of a report showing how data are skewed to conceal the fact that illegals commit at least three times the crime of ordinary Americans and those legally present, putting paid to the rubbish that crime from illegals is minimal, any illegal-alien crime in the news is just an aberration, and anyone thinking otherwise is just a MAGA racist xenophobe.

Lott points out that the baseline mistake for these claims is that official data lumps legal and illegal immigrants together. Separate them out, and vetted legal immigrants commit very few crimes -- but illegals commit way more than they are given 'credit' for by the open-borders lobby.

Citing DHS data for New York alone, Lott writes:

The DHS data gives us a handy metric to calculate relative rates of criminality.

Altogether, roughly 50,803 people are incarcerated in New York’s prison and jail systems: about 32,469 in the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, and another 18,334  in the state’s city and county jails.

The 7,113 illegal aliens currently incarcerated thus make up 14% of New York’s total inmate population — and this share is likely an underestimate, because the state doesn’t actively identify immigration status.

But assume the DHS data is correct, and illegals make up 14% of incarcerated individuals in New York.

 

New York is estimated to have between 676,000 and 825,000 illegal aliens out of a total state population of 19.99 million — meaning illegal immigrants make up only 3.4% to 4.15% of the state’s population. That means they are overrepresented in the state’s prisons and jails by at least 3.4 times. And even if the population estimate undercounts the number of illegal aliens in New York, and the true number present is two to three times higher, illegal aliens would still be massively overrepresented among New York’s convicted and accused criminals.

Lott points to some factors that likely mean the proportion of illegals committing crimes compared to the rest of the population is even higher than the mere threefold number:

One, once illegals are picked up by lawmen for committing crimes, they are often deported before facing charges or any jail time, which leaves them out of the statistics. Alternatively, illegals are deported before completing their terms.

This implies that the three-times-the-average numbers are likely even higher because these numbers don't show up in crime data.

Lott doesn't mention it, but other factors that likely skew the data away from illegals showing up in it are district attorneys who refuse to prosecute violent crime, cops who retire at their desks, prosecutors who reduce felonies to misdemeanors to prevent illegals' deportation, which happens a lot. There are also judges out there vacating convictions to help the illegals remain in the country. All of that skews crime data to suggest that the crimes never happened, which, to the victims, is quite an insult.

And it puts paid to rest the ridiculous claims from the NGOs, the bishops, the Democrat hacks, and the mainstream media that illegals commit very few crimes.

 

Sanctuary policies for cities and states has proven to be wrong in every situation. It is a devastating menace to Law Enforcement!

 

The Sanctuary Showdown

Brian Mark Weber patriotpost.us 10-10-25

Democrats like Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson want the rest of the country to think ICE agents are targeting the innocent for simply being, you guessed it, black or brown.

Since the George Floyd riots broke out across the country in 2020, Democrats have made it clear that they’re opposed to the very notion of the Rule of Law. Then, they told us violence was an acceptable remedy for injustice. Now, they’re taking issue with President Donald Trump enforcing federal immigration law by sending agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement into cities across the country.

There are legitimate opinions on both sides of the issue. After all, it’s not ideal to send federal agents into American cities and workplaces. Then again, the fact that it’s necessary in the first place is the result of Democrats putting the safety of their own citizens at risk by giving criminal illegal aliens free rein within sanctuary cities and setting up ICE-free zones.

What’s lost in all the talk about providing sanctuary for illegals is this: Where is the sanctuary for the law-abiding citizens who fear for their lives daily?

Federal agents have the constitutional obligation to enforce the law, and that’s what they’re doing. And while sending ICE agents into cities may not solve the issue in the long term, politically, it has exposed big-city Democrats as frauds.

For those of us not living in blue cities, imagine living in a neighborhood where illegals sell drugs, burglarize businesses, and commit rapes or other egregious offenses, and then hearing the mayor of your city boast that federal law enforcement officers are not welcome and ordering the police not to help them if they do show up.

That’s exactly what Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has done by seeking to block ICE agents from entering the city and threatening them with criminal charges if they violate his executive order, which aims to ensure that “physical barriers such as locked gates are used to limit access to City property for the purpose of federal immigration enforcement. The measure directs that City employees immediately report any attempted use of City property for immigration enforcement.”

It’s all part of Johnson’s broader attempt to incite city residents into an angry mob, preventing the enforcement of federal law.

It comes as no surprise when we see violent assaults on the very agents there to protect the people of Chicago. As Hot Air’s Beege Welborn reports, “The City of Chicago covered itself in utter craven disgrace this weekend when federal officers came under attack, requested assistance from the Chicago Police, had every right to expect it, and then nobody showed up to help. Why? Because they received orders NOT to go to the besieged federal police officers’ relief.”

Johnson took his rhetoric to another level of ridiculousness by claiming, “The president of the United States of America has declared war on the people of Chicago and people across America.” He added, “The right wing in this country wants a rematch of the Civil War.” Johnson didn’t mention the real civil war taking place on the streets of Chicago, where law-abiding citizens fear walking down the street. And now Johnson is threatening criminal charges against agents for doing their jobs to enforce the law. Democrats like Johnson want the rest of the country to think ICE agents are targeting the innocent for simply being, you guessed it, black or brown.

Think again — “innocent” has nothing to do with it. The Department of Homeland Security reveals that the people ICE arrested on the streets of the Windy City include a Tren de Aragua gang member from Venezuela and illegal aliens from Mexico with charges including driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, aggravated assault with a weapon, drug trafficking, kidnapping, pedophilia, and endangerment of a child.

For his part, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is pulling his weight in helping Mayor Johnson protect the criminal class. As legal scholar Jonathan Turley writes, “Pritzker has been using equally inflammatory language about a few hundred National Guardsmen ‘occupying’ the city and, most recently, told Rachel Maddow that the National Guard would intimidate voters at polling places and it might even seize voting boxes or ballots to steal the upcoming election.”

“Both leaders are attempting to marshal the mob for political purposes,” adds Turley. “At a time of rising political violence, including the recent sniper attack on an ICE facility and the Charlie Kirk assassination, Pritzker and Johnson are fueling the rage.”

The rage, unfortunately, is not limited to Chicago. In Portland, Oregon, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has warned that she will send four times the number of federal officers to ensure their safety in response to recent threats on ICE agents. Meanwhile, Portland Police Chief Bob Day has called the protests at the scene mostly peaceful.

Sounds like something we’ve heard before. As American cities were burned and looted in 2020, we were told repeatedly that we were witnessing peaceful protests. If you’re in a Democrat city and hear about a “peaceful” protest, you know it’s not safe to go outside. And now, it’s not safe for law enforcement either. It’s egregious enough for sanctuary cities to forbid local police from aiding federal immigration officials, but to stand down while ICE agents are threatened with violence is something we haven’t seen before.

This is a defining moment of clarity in American politics. Democrats are definitively declaring that they stand with the criminal class and against the Rule of Law. They are loyal to illegal alien gang members instead of the innocent, hardworking citizens of their cities. For all their talk about threats to our democracy, they’re doing everything they can to turn it into a third-world hellhole where the powerful and corrupt elite align themselves with those who seek to undermine our civilization.

 

What a few months can make at our southern border! A Biden nightmare has turned into a dream of coordination, cooperation and sensibility!

 

Illegal entries into Arizona plummet, 60% fewer gotaways than in Biden years

By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square contributor justthenews.com

Stats represent roughly a 92% drop from illegal entries and a record number of gotaways reported in Arizona during Biden era.

In President Donald Trump’s first year in office, illegal border crossings in Arizona plummeted to record lows.

They represent roughly a 92% drop from illegal entries and a record number of gotaways reported in Arizona during the Biden administration.

Under the Trump administration, illegal entries in Arizona this year were 66% less than the total number of gotaways that Border Patrol agents reported in Arizona during the Biden years, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data and gotaway data exclusively obtained by The Center Square.

In fiscal 2025, 65,813 illegal border crossers were apprehended in Arizona, excluding gotaways, according to CBP data. The fiscal year goes from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.

By comparison, more than 775,000 illegal border crossers were reported in fiscal 2023, including nearly 577,000 reported by CBP and nearly 200,000 gotaways that Border Patrol agents reported and exclusively obtained by The Center Square at the time.

Fiscal 2025 apprehensions represent a fraction of those apprehended in previous years, including 564,215 in fiscal 2024, 576,901 in fiscal 2023 and 571,720 in fiscal 2022, according to CBP data.

These totals exclude gotaways, the official CBP term for those who illegally enter between ports of entry to evade capture, don’t file immigration claims and don’t return to Mexico. CBP doesn’t publicly report this data. The Center Square obtained gotaway data from Border Patrol agents, reporting it each month. At least two million gotaways were reported during the Biden administration nationwide, The Center Square exclusively reported.

Many gotaways are known to have criminal records. Some are on the terrorist watchlist and many have previously been deported, law enforcement officers told The Center Square.

Arizona and Texas CBP sectors were among the hardest hit during the Biden administration, each reporting unprecedented numbers.

Arizona’s 378 miles of shared border with Mexico are divided into two CBP sectors: Tucson and Yuma. Tucson Sector’s 262-border miles extend from the Yuma County line to the Arizona-New Mexico state line. Yuma Sector’s nearly 182,000 square miles of primarily desert terrain extends from Imperial Sand Dunes in California to the Yuma-Pima County line.

For the majority of 2022 and 2023, three of Yuma Sector’s interior checkpoints were down, Deputy Chief Border Patrol Agent Dustin Caudle told Congress, expressing concerns about gotaways, The Center Square reported. The checkpoints are critical for interdicting gotaways but because agents were pulled from the field to process illegal border crossers into the U.S., the checkpoints were closed, leaving the border wide open and unmanned, he said.

In 2023, the Tucson Sector reported the third-highest number of illegal entries along the southwest border, behind the top two sectors of El Paso and Del Rio in Texas. Border Patrol agents apprehended 373,625 people and reported at least 185,866 gotaways – nearly half as many as who were apprehended, or 49%, The Center Square reported.

Tucson Sector Border Patrol Chief John Modlin testified before Congress that the majority of gotaways were single military age men working for transnational criminal human and drug smuggling organizations, The Center Square reported.

Modlin described the tactics they used to pull agents from patrolling the border and interdicting illegal crossers, called “task saturation.” It refers to when “smuggling organizations split large groups of migrants into many smaller groups [and direct them] to illegally cross the border all at once at different locations, effectively saturating the area with migrants and exhausting our response capability.” This overwhelms Border Patrol agents’ response, enabling illicit contraband and criminal gotaways to move through another area of the border without getting caught, he explained.

By 2024, the situation in the Tucson Sector reported more apprehensions than other southwest border sectors, The Center Square reported.

That changed this year after Trump implemented a series of border security policies that resulted in record low illegal crossings at the southwest border, The Center Square reported.

Under Trump’s direction, Arizona Border Patrol agents are now in the field, assisted by the National Guard and Coast Guard members. They’re no longer releasing illegal border crossers into the interior but processing them for expedited removal. The Department of Homeland Security is expanding smart wall construction and the Department of War is expanding border barrier infrastructure in Arizona. DOW, DHS, CBP and Border Patrol recruitment also reached record highs this year, including in Arizona, The Center Square reported.