The writer of this outstanding article provides a worthy history lesson and sets the confusion right.

 

Mexico Has No Right to U.S. Territory

By John M. Contino www.americanthinker.com

James K. Polk was our most underrated president. A protégé of Andrew Jackson, Polk, a Democrat, won an improbable victory when he beat the Whig candidate Henry Clay in the 1844 presidential election. During his single, tumultuous term, he expanded U.S. territory across vast expanses of the West and Southwest, from the Rio Grande to the Pacific Coast up to the 49th parallel. He lowered the heavy tariffs supported by the industrial north, stripped public tax funds from unaccountable private banks and created an independent Treasury that survived for more than 60 years. By the time he left office in March 1849, he was played out physically and politically. He would be dead within four months, at the age of 53.

Robert W. Merry wrote a masterful biography of James Polk titled A Country of Vast Designs, wherein he lays out the nuanced and complex history of this era. For example:

Mexico established its independence from Spain in 1821 and set about to address a problem that had plagued the Spanish overlords for generations -- the dearth of settlement in Texas and California and a consequent inability to establish dominion over those lands. Unlike the robust Anglo-Saxon migrations to the New World, the Spanish influx had not encompassed large numbers of families seeking land for cultivation and settlement. The Spanish migrants had been more bent on establishing themselves as a societal elite superimposed over the established Indian societies. This worked in the New Spain heartland, where the populous Indians had established a high degree of civilization. But in areas such as Texas, where the landscape was forbidding and Apache and Comanche Indians posed a brutal threat, it faltered. To address this problem, Spain had granted large tracts of Texas land to an American group headed by Moses Austin.

In 1821 Austin’s son Stephen began selling land to American settlers “willing to brave the hardship and Indian attack.” By 1835 they numbered almost 40,000, and ten years later almost 150,000. In 1830, Mexico tried but failed to outlaw this wave of immigration. Inevitably, the Texas migrants, rejecting fealty to Mexico, declared their independence in March 1836 and “repulsed efforts by Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna to bring them to heel.”

Mexico never accepted Texas’ independence. For most of the next decade, an official state of war existed between Mexico and Texas, but with no actual fighting. Meanwhile, Britain was trying to establish a political and military alliance with financially strapped Texas in order to undermine U.S. supremacy over the Gulf of Mexico, including New Orleans and the Mississippi delta. (Britain and the U.S. had both occupied the Oregon Territory since an 1818 treaty. With masterful diplomacy amidst political infighting, Polk managed to wrest that territory away from Britain without firing a shot with the Oregon Treaty of 1846.)

If the U.S. acquired Texas, not just to keep Britain at bay, but to pursue the sea to shining sea ambitions of Manifest Destiny, then the U.S. would also acquire its war with Mexico, which is exactly what happened. Long story short, a two-year war ensued and effectively ended when U.S. forces captured Mexico City in September, 1847. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo formally concluded hostilities in February, 1848. By the terms of that treaty, Mexico ceded Texas, plus all the territory currently comprising Utah, Nevada, California, most of New Mexico and Arizona, and parts of Oklahoma, Colorado, and Wyoming. Although Mexico lost almost half of its territory, that accounted for only about 1% of the country’s population. The U.S. paid Mexico $15 million and assumed $3.25 million in claims held by U.S. citizens against Mexico. Mexicans who were now living in an expanded United States could return to Mexico or become U.S. citizens, with a guarantee that they would retain their property rights.

Recently Gerardo Fernández Noroña, president of the Mexican Senate, related how he met with President-elect Trump a couple weeks before his inauguration in 2017. Mr. Noroña said “Yes, we’ll build the wall, yes, we’ll pay for it, but we’ll do it according to the map of Mexico from 1830.” He then held up such a map, when Mexico controlled what is now California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and parts of Colorado. Noroña admits that “of course” this land is part of the U.S., but he and many Mexicans and Mexican Americans harbor a seething resentment that we stole that land from them. As Pat Buchanan has said, “demographics is destiny,” and the flying of Mexican flags at anti-ICE demonstrations in California reflects a belief that mass migration from Mexico to the U.S. is how that “destiny” of repatriation can be realized.

In “California Was Never the ‘Homeland’ of Mexican Invaders” Hayden Daniel writes:

In the 1820s, the non-Indian population of Alta California, which included California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and parts of New Mexico, stood at barely 3,000 people. Similarly, only about 5,000 Mexicans lived in Texas in 1830. For comparison, Mexico as a whole had a population of somewhere between 6 and 8 million people in 1830. A tiny fraction of the total population living in an area does not denote a “homeland” by any stretch of the term.

No country over the past hundred years has flung open its borders as did the Biden administration. An unknowable number of unvetted people entered the U.S., often assisted with U.S. tax money by the UN and NGOs in the Panamanian Darién Gap and southern border towns. Those cynical, destructive border policies created an understandable but misplaced sense of suffered injustice by many of the people who are now being forced to leave, after feeling as though they had been invited in through a giant, mostly open door. 

President Trump recently directed DHS to concentrate on deporting criminals, and to stop deporting illegal immigrants working in farms, hotels, and meat packing plants. ICE isn’t storming public schools and rounding up children for deportation, but many who came here illegally must be sent back to their home countries. 

Millions of Mexicans have emigrated here over the years, worked hard and assimilated into American culture. But it’s pointless and counterproductive for Mexicans to believe they have a right to reclaim land “stolen” from them by the United States.

 

The Democrat Party has become the party of negativism and hypocricy.

 

Democrats (Heart) Illegal Alien Criminals

Michael Swartz patriotpost.us 6-28-25

It should be a telltale sign when Democrats fight and defend illegal alien criminals, yet couldn’t care less about their constituents who are citizens of this country.

The headline is provocative, but how else can you explain Democrats’ recent actions? While MAGA backers would love to see every criminal illegal alien deported by Donald Trump’s administration, Democrats want to bog down the system with the “due process” on the way out that was mostly skipped on the way in.

Let’s take, for example, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the “Maryland Man” who was sent back to El Salvador because he was allegedly a member of MS-13. His return to the States “was cause for celebration among the Trump-hating Democrats,” noted our Douglas Andrews, “including Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, who’d famously flown down to El Salvador at taxpayer expense to sip margaritas with Abrego Garcia while petitioning for his return to the country he’d unlawfully entered.” As it turned out, Abrego Garcia indeed got his desire to return to America, but it was to face charges of human trafficking stemming from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee.

To no one’s surprise, a magistrate judge appointed by Barack Obama allowed Abrego Garcia to post bail. “In a bail hearing,” as former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy explains, “to succeed on a motion for pretrial detention, the government has to show that the defendant is either a serious flight risk or a danger to the community, or both. In principle, I think illegal aliens should be detained as flight risks since they have ties overseas. But here, Abrego Garcia has been fighting deportation, and there is a DOJ immigration court ruling (which the Trump DOJ did not appeal in 2019) that he fears persecution in El Salvador, the foreign country to which he has ties. It is thus tough to win the flight risk claim in a criminal justice system in which bail is the rule and detention is the exception.”

However, the only change in Abrego Garcia’s status is that he’ll be held by ICE as opposed to the criminal justice system, at least until they can find some Democrat judge to spring him loose from there as well, and back into the shadows he’ll go until ICE can find him … again.

That seems to be the case for another recent Democrat celebrity, green card and former student visa holder Mahmoud Kahlil. The Columbia University “student” became a Democrat darling by leading anti-Israel protests, a stance that led Secretary of State Marco Rubio to cite a section of immigration law that declares, “In general, an alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.” Kahlil was whisked off to Louisiana to await deportation, as our Emmy Griffin explained back in March, but got his release last week, this time from a Biden-appointed judge. Almost immediately, he was back at Columbia leading another protest and playing the victim.

“The wave of repression that the Trump administration initiated with my detention was intended to silence the movement for Palestinian liberation,” Kahlil opined. “It was intended to scare people into silence. It was intended to distract us from the fact that the U.S. government is a killing machine in Palestine and across the world. But they completely failed,” he boasted. “Millions of people spoke up even louder, that it is our responsibility to end this genocide, no matter the personal cost, no matter the personal cost. And that’s exactly what I will continue trying to do as long, so long as I’m able, so long as I am breathing.”

Columbia isn’t alone in Ivy League rot. Harvard has been fighting government attempts to restrict foreign student enrollment, as 27% of the student body has been a significant source of revenue for the school. Whenever the government tries to enforce the law, Harvard runs to an Obama appointee, who grants their every wish. On that front, though, there is talk of a deal between the administration and Harvard — at least as President Trump exclaims in his inimitable fashion: “If a Settlement is made on the basis that is currently being discussed, it will be ‘mindbogglingly’ HISTORIC, and very good for our Country. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

At Hot Air, John Sexton wonders, “I honestly have no idea what the historic settlement could be that would please the administration this much. Will Havard agree to expel a bunch of students who broke the rules over the past year? Will it put an end to DEI on campus? Clearly they’ve offered something that Trump liked. I’m sort of eager to find out what it is. I’m also curious how furious the backlash will be if an agreement is reached.”

That backlash may be like a recent incident that made the pixels of Not the Bee, in which ICE agents were on the verge of detaining a convicted child rapist until an activist group ratted them out and allowed the culprit to escape. “They’re helping child rapists now! You seriously cannot make this stuff up!” they shouted. And thanks to a group calling itself “Colorado Rapid Response,” the rapist, Jose Reyes Leon-Duras, is still at large.

That rapid response may be a sample of the backlash we can expect from Democrats and their lawless allies if Harvard rolls over and Trump begins winning in court.

 

Legislate E-Verify nationwide and watch illegal aliens self deport.

 

Fighting illegal immigration with your wallet

By Charles Sullivan www.americanthinker.com

Say that you’re in the market to buy a Ford F-150 pickup truck, and you live in a part of the country where there are several or multiple Ford dealerships competing against one another. You’ve narrowed your decision down to two dealerships which have made competing offers. What if you learned that one of the dealerships E-Verifies its employees and one does not? Would that fact affect your decision? It might.

The feds' voluntary E-Verify program provides the ability to search for the names of employers who E-Verify at E-Verify Employer Search.

Here’s an example of the simple search I did to find auto dealers in New Mexico.

Business name	blank
Account status	open
Opted into E-Verify	yes
State/territory	NM
Industry type	retail trade
Date enrolled	Last 31 years

I suspect that if enough car salesmen lose enough sales because their employer does not E-Verify, that the number of car dealerships that E-Verify would likely increase. That’s a good thing.

This example is just the tip of the search iceberg. There are 20 different industry categories. By way of example, when I searched under the category of “public administration” I discovered that only 10 of NM’s 33 counties are listed as using E-Verify. Of NM’s five most populated counties (Bernalillo, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Chaves, and Doña Ana), only Chaves and Doña Ana are listed.

Under the same “public administration” category, only 12 NM cities are listed. Among NM’s five largest cities (Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, Santa Fe, Las Cruces, and Roswell), only Las Cruces and Roswell are listed.

Under the category of “educational services” only six of NM’s 89 school districts are listed.

I think it would be entertaining to confront public officials in various parts of the country and listen to them explain why their organizations don’t E-Verify.

 

Thank Heaven the SCOTUS Ruled against universal injunctions by numerous leftist Judges!

 

Trump’s Big Win Against Universal Injunctions

Nate Jackson @NatriotJackson patriotpost.us 6-27-25

The Supreme Court ruled, “When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”

 “Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts,” the Supreme Court ruled today in a big win for the Trump administration and a rebuke for power-hungry lower-court judges. “The Court grants the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”

The 6-3 Trump v. Casa opinion, written by the lately beleaguered Justice Amy Coney Barrett, concluded, “The issuance of a universal injunction can be justified only as an exercise of equitable authority, yet Congress has granted federal courts no such power.” Furthermore, “When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”

Lower courts must now reconsider numerous cases filed by litigious activists against everything Trump has done.

Now, the background: On President Donald Trump’s first day back in office, he issued an executive order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” It laid out what we’ve been arguing for 15 years is the correct interpretation of the 14th Amendment: Birthright citizenship does not apply to babies born to illegal aliens, and the framers of the amendment would be appalled to see how it’s being abused today.

You can read our more recent analysis about that debate here and here.

Naturally, more than one district judge immediately swatted down Trump’s EO with a nationwide injunction. I argued in April that the Supreme Court can and should rein in what has become a gross abuse of power by district judges. As I said then, what President Thomas Jefferson once called the “despotic branch” has become a real problem for Trump. The three branches are supposed to be coequal, but district judges on a power trip seem bent on blocking the chief executive from even running his own branch.

When the Supreme Court took up a case involving Trump’s birthright EO, the focus was not on the question of constitutional interpretation but whether a district judge is more powerful than a president. A single Supreme Court justice can’t block a president. Why can a district judge?

Barrett and five of her fellow justices determined that a district judge is not, in fact, more powerful than a president.

During arguments in the case, left-wing Joe Biden appointee Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson complained that the Trump administration’s argument amounted to a “catch me if you can” justice system. “Your argument says ‘we get to keep on doing it until everyone who is potentially harmed by it figures out how to file a lawsuit, hire a lawyer, etc,’” Jackson said. “I don’t understand how that is remotely consistent with the rule of law.”

Jackson read her hyperbolic dissent from the bench, departing from the customary pleasantries by saying, “With deep disillusionment, I dissent.” She harrumphed that “this Court’s complicity in the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts, their rulings, and the law (as they interpret it) will surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor likewise read a lengthy dissent from the bench, saying the decision gives the president “the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate.”

In Barrett’s majority opinion, she dropped a 30,000-pound MOP on Jackson’s assessment: “We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

She added, “It is unecessary [sic] to consider whether Congress has constrained the Judiciary; what matters is how the Judiciary may constrain the Executive. Justice Jackson would do well to heed her own admonition: ‘[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.’ That goes for judges too.”

No one ever accused left-wing judges of consistency, though. In remarks in 2022, Justice Elena Kagan opined, “It can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal process.”

When given the chance to rein in that practice during a Trump presidency, however, she dissented. As constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley observed, “Notably, Justice Kagan who condemned these universal injunctions during the Obama Administration has found a comfort level with those injunctions during the Trump Administration.”

This is a big win for Trump, but there’s a caveat, and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito warned of it in their concurring opinion. As political analyst Sean Davis summed it up, “The Supreme Court completely punted on the issue of third-party class certifications, which will be the gimmick now used to get around the universal injunction ban.” In short, state-plaintiffs can still lobby for a universal injunction as the only method of complete relief.

Justice Thomas rarely speaks during arguments, but when he does, it’s worth listening. He pointedly noted, “We survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions.”

I believe the Republic will not only survive but also benefit from limiting the power of district judges. That does not and should not give a president carte blanche, but neither should a president who won 77 million votes by promising to do certain things be stymied by an unelected judge from The Swamp.