This post presents a totally different perspective about DHS/ICE. The Media, generally presents a negative narrative, the minority view, what they want you to read and see.

 

The voices no one asks: Communities most affected by crime

The people actually living where ICE is working are invisible in the national conversation. Why? Because their perspective doesn’t fit the preferred narrative.

Christian Vezilj | February 19, 2026

Let me ask you a question. When was the last time you witnessed a news team stroll into a neighborhood that has been experiencing criminal activity by illegal aliens and interview the residents about their thoughts on ICE? I mean, not the activists, celebrities, or the politicians reading from a cue card, but the people who live there, raise their kids, and suffer the consequences firsthand.

If you are having trouble thinking of such an example, you are not the only one. Such interviews are virtually nonexistent.

Instead, we get a steady stream of slogans: “Defund ICE.” “Abolish ICE.” “ICE out.” You’ve heard them. They’re repeated so often they start to sound like background noise. And if you only listened to the loudest voices, you’d think the entire country is united in outrage against immigration enforcement.

But here’s the thing — and you already know this instinctively — that’s not the whole story. In fact, it’s not even half of it.

The people shouting the slogans all share one thing in common: they’re not the ones living with the crime ICE is addressing. They’re not the ones who’ve had their homes broken into. They’re not the ones who’ve watched gang activity creep closer to their block. They’re not the ones who’ve called 911 so many times they’ve memorized the dispatcher’s voice. They are distanced from the issue, and so they are safe and can be outraged.

Now contrast that with the families who actually live in the neighborhoods where ICE conducts operations. These are the people who feel the difference when a dangerous offender is removed. They’re the ones who breathe a little easier when the gangs who have been terrorizing the neighborhood are finally gone. They’re the ones who know what it’s like to live with the consequences of inaction.

And yet, they’re invisible in the national conversation. Why? Because their perspective doesn’t fit the preferred narrative.

Think about what has occurred over the last year. Crime has dropped in many parts of the country. Not everywhere, but enough that people have noticed. And part of that decline — whether the media wants to admit it or not — is tied to the removal of individuals who were repeatedly victimizing the same vulnerable communities. When ICE steps in, it’s often because local authorities have run out of options or because the offenders have no legal right to remain after committing serious crimes. Then there are sanctuary cities that protect illegal aliens, rather than protecting the communities most affected. But you rarely hear that part.

Instead, the cameras stay focused on the protests, the signs, the chants, and the emotional appeals. They interview activists who speak in sweeping moral terms about compassion and justice. And look, compassion matters and justice matters. But compassion without proximity is easy, and justice without consequence is abstract. The people who live closest to the problem understand the stakes in a way that no slogan can capture.

Imagine if a reporter actually walked into those neighborhoods. Imagine the conversations they’d hear. A mother saying she finally feels safe letting her kids play outside. A shop owner explained how many times he had been robbed before someone stepped in. A grandmother who spent years praying for help because the local system failed her.

Those voices would change the entire debate. They would reveal a truth that activists and celebrities never have to confront: enforcement protects the vulnerable.But those interviews never make it to air, and this is media malpractice. The media has an agenda, and it is the reader’s or viewer’s responsibility to step back and look at the whole picture, as the loudest voices are the least affected. The quietest voices are the most affected. And the media amplifies the former while erasing the latter. It creates the illusion of consensus where none exists. The people who live with the consequences are never the ones shaping the narrative.

They don’t have platforms or publicists. They don’t have the privilege of pondering enforcement as a philosophical question. They endure the consequences. They experience the difference between when laws are enforced and when they are not, and they will bear the cost of a community without enforcement. A healthy society listens to the people closest to the problem. It honors their experience. It protects the vulnerable and refuses to silence them simply because their reality is inconvenient to someone else’s storyline.

Until we do that, we’re not having an honest conversation. We’re just amplifying the voices that shout the loudest while ignoring the voices that matter most. Thankfully, alternative media outlets are emerging, and people are gradually turning away from traditional elite media corporations. Although the shift is slow, it indicates healthy progress and positive change.

 

Illegal immigration continues to take its toll on our once great Republic. Driving on our Nation's highways can be a dangerous thing!

 

Illinois gave illegal big rig truck licenses, posing problems for Democrats pandering to immigrants

The Department of Transportation this week announced findings that the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office through the Director of Driver Services illegally issued nearly 1-in-5 of its commercial licenses.

By Steven Richards 2-18-26 justthenews.com

The Illinois Secretary of State, who is reportedly weighing a run for the office of Mayor of Chicago, is facing growing scrutiny over his department’s role in issuing illegal commercial driver’s licenses, in some cases to individuals who have failed to provide evidence of lawful presence, let alone proficiency in managing big rigs. 

The U.S. Department of Transportation this week announced findings that the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office, through the Director of Driver Services, issued nearly 1-in-5 of its commercial licenses illegally. 

The evidence was uncovered as part of the Transportation Department’s nationwide audit targeting states that issue “non-domiciled CDLs” after a spate of semi-truck crashes across the United States involving illegal immigrant drivers that were issued CDLs by Democrat-run states. Many of these accidents left victims dead.  

The Illinois audit is the latest in a series of audits that have exposed systemic non-compliance with federal CDL rules, including in California, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Colorado. 

The issue came home to Illinois last October, when an illegal immigrant, Borko Stankovic, who was driving under a suspended Illinois CDL previously issued to a family member, swerved into opposing traffic at high speed and slammed into a Subaru sedan, killing the driver.

Expired license, wrong driver, victim killed, but who cares?  

Though the license was expired in this case and not even being used by the right individual, the incident was part of a growing pattern of accidents across the United States involving illegal immigrants granted or using expired CDL's, prompting the Transportation Department’s review. 

The Illinois Secretary of State, Alexi Giannoulias’ communications manager, issued a statement on Tuesday pushing back against the Transportation Department’s claims. “Illinois is condemning the Trump administration’s assertions regarding the state’s past handling of non-domiciled commercial driver licenses (CDLs),” the spokesman, Max Walczyk, said in a statement shared with Just the News. 

The office insists that the Illinois Secretary of State has followed all federal guidelines on CDL licenses and suspended issuing them last fall in response to the new rules from the Trump administration. 

Giannoulias said the federal pause is damaging the state’s economy. “A strong economy depends on strong logistics,” he said in a statement. “If trucks don’t move, supply chains fail, prices rise, and families feel it in their pocketbooks. We can see the actions by the Trump administration taking their toll on our truckers and our farmers, both of whom are essential to Illinois’ economy.”

The audit, which sampled 150 non-domiciled (i.e., foreign national) CDL's, found that 29 of them were illegally issued by the Illinois Secretary of State’s office, according to a letter sent to liberal billionaire Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) and Director of Driver Services Kevin Duesterhaus on Tuesday. 

The audit showed that Illinois illegally issued non-domiciled CDL's to drivers whose licenses were valid long after their lawful presence in the U.S. expired and those whose lawful presence in the U.S. was not verified. Additionally, several of the sampled records showed the state issued CDL's to drivers that failed to provide the required proof of lawful presence in the United States. 

Illinois officials told the Transportation Department that the state has issued 10,088 non-domiciled CLPs or CDLs that remain unexpired, Just the News previously reported. 

The Transportation Department demanded that Illinois immediately halt the issuance of “all new, renewed, transferred, amended, corrected, reprinted, or upgraded non-domiciled CLPs and CDLs” until corrective actions are taken, to include reviewing all licenses that were issued illegally, conduct an internal audit of how such licenses are authorized, and provide a copy of those findings to the federal government.  

CDL's are for protection of the public, not illegal immigrants

“I need our state partners to understand that they work for the American people, not illegal immigrants who broke the law illegally entering our country and continue to break it by operating massive big rigs without the proper qualifications,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement announcing the audit’s findings. 

The fatal crash in Illinois is only one of the recent incidents that prompted the federal review of state CDLs.  

In Texas in March 2025, Solomun Weldekeal Araya reportedly caused a 17-car pileup on I-35 in Austin. The accident resulted in five fatalities. He was later charged with multiple counts of manslaughter and aggravated assault. The driver was reportedly detained by police after witnesses told law enforcement they saw him trying to leave. Officers reported Araya reportedly mainly spoke Tigrinya, a language spoken in the Horn of Africa, and not English. 

Araya failed a field sobriety test and law enforcement believed he was under the influence of a drug or controlled substance. A drug test later found no evidence of drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of the crash.

In August, an illegal immigrant driver made an illegal u-turn on the Florida Turnpike in his 18-wheeler truck, causing a crash that left three dead, the Homeland Security Department said. The immigrant was identified as Harjinder Singh, an illegal alien from India. 

Before the fatal crash in Florida, Singh reportedly failed his CDL driver’s test 10 times, before finally being granted a license in 2023 in Washington State, according to Fox News. Instructors also noted English proficiency, despite video evidence showing Singh struggled to speak English with police in the wake of the crash. 

The Transportation Department has also conducted audits on several other states, including New York, California, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Colorado, and North Carolina. The department said it uncovered “systemic non-compliance in issuing non-domiciled CDLs across those states."

In California, the department’s audit found that “more than 25% of non-domiciled CDLs reviewed were improperly issued.” In New York, it found that more than half of non-domiciled CDLs were issued in violation of federal law. In Colorado, the fraction was 22%. 

These findings led the administration to pull federal funding until the states remedy the license issuing process to prevent such failures. Secretary Duffy’s agency issued a final rule last week that would prevent foreign drivers from receiving a non-domicile CDL without undergoing a consular and interagency screening. 

“While U.S. drivers are subject to strict checks through national databases for past violations—such as DUIs, reckless driving, or crash involvement—states lack the ability to access the driving records of foreigners and illegal immigrants,” the agency said. “This loophole allowed individuals with dangerous driving histories to obtain a trucking license simply by presenting an Employment Authorization Document (EAD), which does not screen for transportation safety.”

 

This excellent article deserves your undivided attention. Cloward-Piven, Hegelian Principle - One in the same.

 

The engineered crisis: Cloward-Piven, border policy, and the architecture of modern dependency

The current trajectory of American policy suggests that the goal is not a stable, secure border or a flourishing middle class, but a state of perpetual emergency.

David DeMay | February 18, 2026 www.americanthinker.com

For decades, the Cloward-Piven Strategy was relegated to the fringes of political theory—a 1966 sociological paper by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven suggesting that the path to radical redistribution lay in collapsing the welfare state under its own weight. However, the contemporary reality of American border policy and urban decay has moved this from theory to a functional governing template. What is currently being witnessed is not a series of “policy failures,” but a calculated stress test on the American social contract, designed to prioritize political relevance over public welfare.

The Mechanics of Systemic Overload

The fundamental pillar of the Cloward-Piven strategy is the creation of a “crisis of enrollment.” By intentionally incentivizing a massive influx of individuals into a system with finite resources, the state forces a breakdown of local and municipal sovereignty. In the modern context, the “processing” model adopted at the southern border functions as a vacuum, pulling in millions who immediately require housing, healthcare, and education.

This isn’t just an immigration issue; it is a fiscal weapon. When sanctuary cities like New York and Chicago see their municipal budgets devoured by the costs of basic subsistence for non-citizens, the intended result is achieved: the local system fails, and the federal government is “forced” to step in with massive, permanent expansions of the administrative state. The crisis justifies the cure—a cure that always involves more centralized power and less local autonomy.

The Obama-Clinton Pivot: Deceit as Strategy

Perhaps the most disingenuous aspect of this era is the “strategic pivot” recently performed by the Democrat establishment. Former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have historically oscillated between border-enforcement rhetoric and “open-door” activism. Their recent expressions of concern regarding “urban disorder” and the “destabilizing” nature of migration are not signs of a moral awakening; they are survival-driven responses to shifting polls.

When these leaders remained silent during the initial years of the surge, they allowed the demographic and apportionment shifts to “lock in.” By the time they pivot to “toughness” in 2026, the damage to the fiscal infrastructure of American cities is already done. This “firefighter-arsonist” dynamic allows the establishment to distance itself from the consequences of its own ideology while retaining the political benefits of a redefined electorate.

The Erosion of the Social Contract

The hard-hitting reality of this strategy is the deliberate abandonment of the existing citizenry. When a government prioritizes the housing and care of non-citizens over its own veterans and homeless populations, it has effectively dissolved the Social Contract. The “managed decline” of cities like Seattle and San Francisco is a feature of this shift. By refusing to enforce existing laws—creating “zones of exception”—the state signals that the rule of law is now secondary to ideological goals.

This creates a self-perpetuating cycle:

1. Destabilize: Flood the system until services fail.
2. Redefine: Claim the failure is due to “inadequate funding” or “systemic flaws” rather than the surge itself.
3. Consolidate: Pass massive spending bills that create a permanent dependent class and a permanent bureaucracy to manage them.

Conclusion: Power Over Welfare

Ultimately, the modern invocation of Cloward-Piven is not a conspiracy theory—it is an observation of outcomes. The current trajectory of American policy suggests that the goal is not a stable, secure border or a flourishing middle class, but a state of perpetual emergency. In this environment, “public welfare” is merely the camouflage used to mask the consolidation of a new, dependent political coalition. The pivot by the Democrat elite is the final stage of the maneuver: pretending to solve the very crisis they spent years facilitating, all to maintain their grip on a changing nation.

In spite of a 'partial government shutdown', ICE does its job!

 

Exclusive: ICE arrests illegal migrants convicted of violent crimes in Presidents' Day crackdown

The arrests occurred while DHS is in a government shutdown due to a lapse in federal funding. ICE operations are still going on because of funding from the "One Big Beautiful Bill" that was passed last year and its designation as essential to public safety.

By Misty Severi 2-17-26 justthenews.com

The Department of Homeland Security told Just The News exclusively Tuesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested multiple illegal migrants who have been convicted of serious crimes on President's Day.

The arrests occurred while DHS is in a government shutdown due to a lapse in federal funding. ICE operations are still going on because of funding from the "One Big Beautiful Bill" that was passed last year and its designation as essential to public safety. 

The department said the arrests include illegal migrants who have been convicted of "heinous crimes" including false imprisonment, sexual assault and strangulation. 

“While Americans celebrated Presidents’ Day, the heroic men and women of ICE law enforcement arrested more convicted criminals from our communities,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. “Yesterday’s arrests included gang members, rapists, and violent offenders. We won’t let anything slow us down from arresting and removing criminals from American neighborhoods—not even a federal holiday. Nearly 70% of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S. ”

The arrests include an illegal migrant from El Salvador, who has been convicted of false imprisonment and felony possession of a firearm in Los Angeles, an illegal migrant from the Dominican Republic who has been convicted of fourth-degree sexual assault and risk of injury to a child in Connecticut, and an illegal migrant from Venezuela who has been convicted of assault, battery, and strangulation in Virginia. 

ICE officers also arrested an illegal migrant from the Bahamas who was convicted of malicious wounding in West Virginia, and an illegal migrant from Cuba who was convicted of alien smuggling and illegal entry into the United States in Texas.

A full list of illegal migrants who have been detained by ICE can be viewed here.