anti-ice-protests – Martin Simpson

The Godfather, Vigilantism, & anti-ICE Protests, Part 2

In the last column I discussed the opening scene of The Godfather, and how leftist protesters wrongly see themselves as the good kind of vigilantes when they are quite the opposite. But I left two groups out of that category. Because it’s not just the protesters, but elected politicians and many judges who are also acting as vigilantes, IMO.

Which seems counter-intuitive, to say the least. How can elected leaders – Mayor Small Frey and Governor Jazz Hands – become vigilantes who rebel against the government when they run the government? And how can judges – Boasberg and the hundreds of Boasberg clones throughout the nationwide district and (sometimes) appellate courts – be circumventing the laws when they are in charge of upholding the laws?

The answer is simple: the politicians and judges are local officials who are opposed to the federal laws of the land – embodied in our Constitution, our immigration laws, and the sections of the U.S. Code that deal with interfering with federal officers in the performance of their duties, etc.

So yes, elected officials and local judges can be insurrectionist vigilantes in 2026, just as their Democrat forebearers were in the Southern slave states in 1861.

Having said that, I’d like to turn to the potential for right-wing vigilantism, if the current administration isn’t able to stop the lawless anti-ICE protests occurring in various blue states and sanctuary cites around the country. I hope it doesn’t come to that, because vigilantism is always fraught with dangers for a society.

But as I discussed in the last column, it can also sometimes be a proper course of action.

Let’s briefly revisit the Godfather. The mortician comes to Vito as a patriotic American citizen. “I believe in America,” he says, in the words that open the movie. “America’s made my fortune. And I raised my daughter in the American fashion.”

He is, in other words, the kind of legal immigrant we would like to see. He appreciates the country and the blessings it’s given him, and he has assimilated. When his daughter is attacked, he goes through the proper, legal channels (the cops and the courts).

But it’s significant that his name is “Amerigo Bonasera,” meaning “America, good night.” Because the American government betrayed him in his hour of need. So now, the proper (though morally problematic) course of action is to go to the Godfather for the justice that the justice system did not provide.

Vito knows that, even though his initial words demonstrate why mob justice (in this case, literally “mob” as in Mafia) was his preferred first choice: “Why did you go to the police?” he asks. “Why didn’t you come to me first?”

The answer is clear for all of us conservative, law-and-order types: Because we SHOULD go to the police. They’re supposed to protect us from criminals and give us justice. And in a society in which the justice system is functioning properly, all vigilante action would be disordered and wrong.

But when the government has failed (or even intentionally abandoned) its core function of protecting citizens from criminals – I’m looking at you, Democrat party! – many people see vigilante justice as a viable option. During the dark days of the Biden maladministration, as we watched millions of foreigners lawlessly pouring over our border, day after day for years, many of us on the right and center felt a kind of growing desperation and despair.

A few states took small steps toward taking the law into their own hands, Texas being one example. When Governor Abbott pleaded with the feds to enforce the border in his state, he proposed that Texans secure their own border, if the feds wouldn’t. When Biden forbid Texans from protecting themselves – immorally forcing Texan citizens to suffer the ongoing harm from the flood of illegals – Abbott appealed that to higher courts, while in the meantime defiantly maintaining his own barriers at the border.

Fortunately, there is a sane but narrow majority on SCOTUS that allowed Texas to reinforce their border, even if only on a watered-down technicality, i.e. the barriers that Biden started destroying were on municipal or private land, not federal land.

But that was a terrifyingly close-run thing. If Hillary had been able to appoint a couple of SCOTUS judges, or if Trump hadn’t won in 2024, who knows how badly things would be going right now?

This is why I think conservatives are being ever more tempted to explore dramatic alternatives to resist the cascade of illegitimate power grabs by national Democrats, which are still going on. The left has relentlessly attacked the integrity of our democratic republic in multiple and critical ways.

• They’ve illegally declared sanctuary territories, in blatant contravention of the Supremacy Clause and other parts of our Constitution.

• They’ve admitted tens of millions of illegals and tried to give them the vote, and thus an insurmountable lock on all future national elections.

• They’ve resisted all attempts to ensure the integrity of our elections (through no ID requirements, unrestricted mail-in voting, vote harvesting, unvetted vote counting, etc.)

• They’ve pursued widespread judicial insurrection, via partisan local judges who transparently rule based on their political priors instead of our laws.

• They’ve allowed massive fraud networks in their states, which steal from all American citizens, since the lion’s share of the stolen funds come from the federal taxes we all pay.

For these reasons and more, we cannot allow the feds to back down, and allow insurrectionist mobs in Minnesota – or Portland, or LA, or anywhere else – to drive them out and get away with it. That’s what happened when the Democrats started the Civil War. Just like Small Frey saying, “ICE, get the f**k out of Minneapolis,” they said, “Federals, get the f**k out of the South.”

That time, a Republican president marshalled some forces and went down and militarily disabused them of their insurrectionist notions. After some false steps with some 19th century versions of RINOS – I’m looking at you, McClellan! – he got himself a future GOP president in the form of bad-ass Grant, and achieved some good old fashioned “peace through strength” by 1865.

But the Dems didn’t completely get the message. They formed the KKK, and they passed Jim Crow laws, and after some more decades of their insurrectionist schemes, more Dem governors (the Tampon Tims of their day, except without the effeminate Jazz Hands demeanor) once again defied the feds. They stood in the doorway of schools and harassed worshippers at churches, until another GOP president sent the National Guard to kick their arses and restore the law and the constitution.

Now we’re in the same position, and we’ve got to make the dishonest hypocritical Dems eat their own words. For years they’ve demanded that “nobody is above the law” and “insurrection must be punished.” We agree. And now they need to find themselves on the pointy end of those particular sticks.

Otherwise, the eternal call of vigilante justice, as embodied in the Godfather, might one day be listened to by American citizens who are not going to tolerate mobs of violent criminals – foreign AND domestic – taking over their cities with impunity.

Because we don’t want to see Amerigo go silently into that Bonasera.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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The Godfather, Vigilantism & anti-ICE Protests, Part 1 (posted 2/9/26)

Last week I was pleasantly surprised by how many readers were interested enough to follow my 3-column series on the illegalities of the anti-ICE protesters’ tactics. Those pieces were the most widely shared of any of my past columns, so thanks for that.

This week I’ve got another 3-part series, this one discussing the role played by vigilantism in these protests – today on the left, but in the future, potentially, on the right. This idea came to me when I was thinking about the Godfather – which as a straight man over the age of 40, I naturally do at least once a week.

I’m going to assume that all of you have seen the Godfather.

If you haven’t, hang your head in shame, and then immediately remedy that by watching at least the first 10 minutes before you read this column.

Sidebar: “Diversity is our strength” is one of the most wrong-headed ideas in modern life. Cultural unity is our strength, and there is a core list of cultural high points with which all Americans should be familiar, among them the Declaration and Constitution; the King James Bible; the heroism of our military and its history; the music of Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, John Prine and Tom Waits; American football, etc. The Godfather I and II are on that list. On this point I will tolerate no disagreement!

Okay, so the movie opens on Vito Corleone’s daughter’s wedding day, and there is a tradition that people can ask for favors from the Godfather on that day. A nervous Italian undertaker tells Vito how his daughter was assaulted by some American boys, and the courts gave them a slap on the wrist – three years in jail, but with a suspended sentence. “They went free that very day!” the mournful father says. So he says that he has come to the Godfather for justice, and he asks him to have the criminals killed.

Vito says, “Why did you go to the police? Why didn’t you come to me first? Let’s be honest. You never wanted my friendship, and you were afraid to be in my debt.”

The undertaker says, “I didn’t want to get into trouble.”

Vito says, “I understand. You found paradise in America, had a good trade, made a good living. The police protected you, and there were courts of law.” But now, after the justice system failed him, the Godfather offers him a solution grounded in ethnic solidarity and an authentic – though extra-legal – justice. “If you had come to me in friendship, the scum who ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day. And if by chance an honest man like yourself should make enemies, they would become my enemies. And then they would fear you.”

I taught this scene in a course I designed called “Analyzing Propaganda.” I used it to introduce the idea of competing political narratives out of which grows most propaganda, and I prefaced the class discussion with the definition of a typically contentious political term, “vigilante.”

We use the term “vigilante” to mean someone who takes the law into his own hands, usually when he thinks a government’s legal system has failed to deliver justice. The Godfather broadens that idea from a person or small group of people to a network of close relationships grounded in a shared ethnicity or tribal identity.

We usually think of “vigilante” in negative terms, as a stand-in for mob “justice.” But the word comes from the same root as “vigilant,” and vigilantism can take two forms, only one of which is negative. The evil form of vigilantism is when the people are wrongly defying or resisting a legitimate government. The first example that comes to mind is Democrat lynch mobs in the south, killing blacks out of racial animus, regardless of whether they had committed a crime or not.

But when a government or legal system has become corrupt, abusive or lawless, people who want real justice are morally justified in taking action against it, including (in some cases) vigilantism and violence. Examples would be any of the uprisings against communist and other dictatorships, or partisan raids and sabotage against a conquering force.

Even our own revolution could be seen as partaking in vigilantism – e.g. the Boston Tea Party, or various occasions when Scots-Irish proto-Simpsons retreated into the woods with their Kentucky long rifles and started picking off Redcoats – though our brilliant Founders soon transformed and codified a chaotic uprising into a new legal framework, and the best damn country in the whole freaking world. (USA! USA!)

So what does this have to do with the anti-ICE protests/riots in Minnesota and elsewhere?

The leftists clearly believe that they are the good kind of vigilantes, heroically standing up for real justice against a corrupt and evil government. Hence all the references to “Nazis” and “Gestapo” and “fascists.” The protesters see themselves as similar to the partisans who conducted resistance and sabotage missions against the Nazis in occupied Europe.

They also consider themselves the moral equivalent of the civil rights protesters of the 1960s, which gives them that extra intoxicating frisson of irresistible self-righteousness. They’re not just heroes fighting for justice. They’re super-heroes fighting for racial justice! Hence all the talk of the black and brown people being persecuted for their skin color, rather than being legally detained and deported for their criminal acts.

Unfortunately for them, and as with all leftist racial melodramas, the truth stubbornly contradicts their preferred narrative. (Not to mention their entire political worldview.) Their two currently prominent martyrs are Robin Good and Alex Pretti, both of whom were – so inconveniently! – white. I mean, not as white as Grandma Squanto Warren. Because who is? (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

But still: very white.

Even worse, the fascist agents of the ominously Nordic Gestapo (i.e. the Border Patrol and ICE) are disproportionately…I’m not making this up… wait for it… Hispanic! (Cue the sad trombone.)

When I heard that reported, I looked it up. (As opposed to just making things up, like a MSM “journalist.”) I found that at least 24% of ICE agents (the highest numbers I saw were 30% and “approximately 1/3”) are Hispanic, and more than 50% of Border Patrol agents are also Hispanic! Since 20% of Americans are Hispanics, these numbers are both disproportionately high.

It was fun to discover that, because when I confirmed those numbers on several left-leaning, anti-immigration-enforcement websites, their authors scrambled to find any explanations that would confirm their political priors. One typical flop-sweating leftist admitted that Latinos make up more than half of Border Patrol, but quickly insisted that “it’s not self-hatred that drives them to work for agencies that often target their communities.”

Um, what community is that, buddy? The “American citizens of Hispanic descent” community, which the Border Patrol agents belong to? Because spoiler alert, that’s NOT who Border Patrol targets. In fact, they don’t “target” anyone, you bad-faith-arguing dope.

They focus on finding, detaining and deporting people who have broken our immigration laws, be they white, black, Asian, Middle-Eastern, Patagonian, Middle-Earthian, Wakandan, or (yes), Hispanic.

But leave it to Notre Dame political science professor (shame on you, Notre Dame!) David Cortez to put it best. If by “best” you mean, “most dishonestly,” or “most propagandistically.” Or just “worst.”

Because: political science professor.

Saith the miserable, credentialed hack: “How do Latinos do this to their own people? Is it self-hatred? A denial of their ethnic identity? Or… [to strengthen] their own claim to belonging in America – even to whiteness?”

Ugh.

Hey Davy, I’ve got one more possible reason why Hispanics might join law enforcement that’s beyond your ability to imagine: Because they are law-abiding Americans who don’t like watching people of any ethnicity breaking our laws and then falsely crying ‘racism’ when they are caught and are held accountable for their own criminal behavior?

But nope. Davy knows the truth: “For Latino agents, it’s primarily about the money.”

Like all damnable lies, this has one tiny bit of truth in it. Because of course, everybody who works does so partly for money. For example, even political science professors who know better will still shamelessly prostitute themselves (via dishonest “research”) to their political co-religionists in return for cash and a generous benefits package.

Right, Professor Dave?

But Cortez’s creepy conclusion is even creepier if he actually believes the racist politics he espouses. He claims that Hispanic LEOs have chosen their profession for a reason that he thinks exonerates them for their otherwise unacceptable (to him) choices, i.e. they do it for the money that will allow them to support themselves and their families.

But his claim actually damns them even more. If true, it would make them cowardly, treacherous collaborators, betraying their brethren in the service of a corrupt and evil Vichy puppet state for cash. That would make them even more despicable political wh*res than David Cortez himself!

So while the leftist protesters have been envisioning themselves as the moral kind of vigilantes, fighting for a good cause against a bad government, they are actually the bad guys in this scenario.

You’d think that they’d have realized that when they found themselves aligned with Somali fraudsters, tattooed antifa thugs calling for murder in the streets, and arrogant creeps who burst into church services to scream at the meek (as in, “blessed are the…”) and terrify children. Or when they discovered that they’ve been defending people who turn out to be gang bangers, human smugglers, and woman-beaters. (Or in the case of “Maryland dad” Kilmar Garcia, all three!)

But contemplative self-reflection has never been their strong suit, has it?

Tomorrow: the potential for future vigilantism on the right, if the left stays on their current, radical path.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Part 3: What Laws Have the Anti-ICE Protesters Been Breaking? (posted 2/6/26)

This is the last of three columns of legal analysis of the anti-ICE protests. I had feared that these would be too dry for most people, but more people have read these than my typical columns… so that’s good, right?

Some of the following info I first came across when I was teaching a Writing for Pre-Law course. I looked back through my notes to refresh my memory, and then looked at a bunch of legal websites to reinforce and update my knowledge. There might still be some errors here, and as always, I would appreciate corrections or fuller explanations from any lawyers in the audience.

My goal today is to look at the most common actions of the protesters, and explore what laws they might be violating.

As we know, the First Amendment protects the right to protest, though only peacefully. To the extent that at least some of the protesters are exercising their free speech rights – castigating ICE officers without interfering with their actions – they’re good.

However, it’s become very clear that most of the protesters have been interfering with ICE officers, so that’s the best place to start. The most commonly committed infractions would be covered by 18 U.S.C 1501 and 18 U.S.C. 111, which are parts of the US legal code addressing “the crime of interfering with federal officers while they are performing their duties.” The key language describes action that “obstructs, resists or opposes” officers in that context.

The code “covers both direct physical acts and indirect methods of obstruction.” Examples of physical acts would include blocking officers’ movements, making physical contact with or using any physical force on them. The code also mentions “standing in front of an officer to prevent an arrest or shielding another person from apprehension.”

The above actions probably make up at least half of what happens at many anti-ICE protests. Protesters routinely surround cops, blocking them in on foot or in vehicles; they also try to get between officers and illegals to prevent their arrest.

This statute also forbids “threatening behavior,” which doesn’t have to be explicitly violent. The test is whether the behaviors “create a reasonable fear of harm or intimidation,” and the code also mentions “verbal statements, gestures or electronic messages implying danger.”

Good lord! Wouldn’t that encompass about 90% of the rioters on video in Minneapolis? If everybody who posted threatening emails to ICE officials, or threatened to dox, injure or kill them were arrested, there’d be more un-F-able jailed leftists in Minnesota than there are fraudulent Somali Learing Centers!

If those weren’t enough, the code also makes clear that interference doesn’t always require direct threats or physical contact. Activities like creating a diversion, refusing lawful orders and providing false information are also illegal. Some of those would be charged under other codes.

For example, lying to federal law enforcement during an investigation falls under 19 U.S.C. 1001, and creating a distraction to aid an illegal falls under 1501.

As a broad group, these offenses can be misdemeanors or felonies, depending on context. Misdemeanors can be penalized by a year in federal prison and a fine up to $100K; felonies can draw long prison sentences (up to decades) and higher fines.

More serious actions like use of a deadly or dangerous weapon (not just a gun, but also bricks or other thrown objects, fireworks, or striking with sticks or bats, etc.) or force that results in bodily injury are covered in Section 111. Those are felonies, and could draw up to 20 years in prison.

My general sense is that misdemeanors get escalated to felonies when they happen in conjunction with other illegal acts, or are repeated. (For example, just entering the country illegally is a misdemeanor, but re-entry after being previously deported is a felony.) But some charges can be surprisingly harsh; just intentionally touching an officer can be charged as a felony, with a penalty of up to 8 years in prison. (Though I think that is almost never charged for touching alone.) And spitting on an officer is considered touching/assault, and can be similarly charged.

One legal summary concluded this way: “In protest settings, the moment someone makes physical contact – shoving, grabbing, pulling an officer, yanking a door, striking a hand/arm, trying to “un-cuff” a detainee – can jump to felony territory.”

I looked up the constant, near-deafening blowing of whistles, and found mixed interpretations. In some contexts those can apparently count as permissible (if rowdy) speech, while in others they can constitute harassment/obstruction or even threat of harm (as they can create pain and at least potential longer-term hearing impairment).

I would argue – and I’d like to see this tested in court – that the loud whistling must constitute a form of impeding/obstructing, because its obvious purpose is to harm officers’ ability to carry out their duties. It prevents them from hearing or giving orders or warnings, and agitates and disorients them, degrading their situational awareness. As I wrote in a previous column, I’m almost certain that the whistling contributed to Alex Pretti’s death, because the cop who recovered his gun right before Pretti was shot would have yelled out that he had the weapon, as cops are taught to do in that situation. But the whistling idiots kept that knowledge from the other cops, thus facilitating Pretti’s shooting. (So great job, whistling idiots!)

In addition to all of those infractions, many protests involve a lot of property damage and trespassing, too. Property damage can be a misdemeanor (usually if the damage done is under $500 or $1000) or a felony (for larger amounts).

Trespassing is entering government or private property, and also remaining after being told to leave; the former would include ICE or police facilities and courts, while the latter would include hotels or restaurants (which violent leftist dopes often enter and damage because they think ICE agents are staying there or dining there).

Don Lemon and the Morons (worst cover band ever, by the way) are in deep trouble, because they definitely trespassed in that church. But they’ve been charged with the much more specific and serious FACE act and/or Klan act violations.

Two other crimes are also constantly in play during protests: resisting arrest (for those who are told they are being detained) and disobeying a lawful order (for virtually everyone, when told to get back, or get out of the way, or to stop assaulting our senses with your hideous ugliness). Of the hundreds of protesters whose arrests I’ve seen on video, I can’t remember more than a small handful who didn’t resist arrest. (Usually while screaming “I’m not resisting!” over and over, as they wriggle and struggle and fight with the cops.)

Finally, I researched one legal issue that I haven’t seen discussed much in the media, and that is conspiracy. The current wave of anti-ICE protests – just like the BLM and Antifa mass riots before them – have been characterized by extensive, sophisticated, coordinated planning. Hundreds (maybe thousands?) of people join various ICE watch groups, use Signal chat to collect intelligence about where ICE are staying, or eating, or carrying out raids and arrests, and then relay that information to a network of co-conspirators who show up and commit all of the crimes listed above.

This is a textbook example of a wide-ranging conspiracy, which one of the legal sources summarized this way: “Conspiracy: the multiplier that turns group activity into felony time.”

If only! I’m not sure why Homan or anyone else in the Trump administration has not brought this up, but I hope that they start throwing resources at it, pronto. Because as satisfying and proper as it is to start making mass and individual arrests and prosecutions of the useful idiot foot-soldiers in these protests, the biggest progress will be made when we start hitting the organizers and funders with huge criminal penalties.

Conspiracy violations are covered in a variety of US codes. Section 372 deals with “conspiracy to impede or injure an officer by force, intimidation or threat,” and carries up to 6 years in prison.

Section 371 covers coordinating to obstruct lawful government functions. Examples would include communications such as, “We’re going to meet at X, track vehicles and physically stop transport,” and action such as participating in group chats with coordinated roles, and arranging pre-planned timing and movements.

Section 1071 describes harboring and helping someone evade government officers such as ICE agents (with a possible 1 to 5 years for each act), and Sections 2232 and 1519 deal with destroying property or evidence to prevent seizure, or giving “tip-offs” about ICE activity (up to 5 years) and “destroying/altering records” (up to 20 years).

Though I’ve been following all of these protests (and the antifa and BLM protests) pretty closely, doing this research has opened my eyes on several issues I’d not realized:

1. The vast majority of the anti-ICE protesters and protest organizers have routinely been committing more crimes than I’d thought, both misdemeanors and felonies. (There are probably a handful of protestors who have not been violating at least one of the crimes listed above, but they are the exception to the rule, and I’d be shocked if they were more than 1-2% of the protesters.)

2. Virtually all of the leftist talking points about these protests are false:

The First Amendment does NOT permit protests that are not peaceful, and these aren’t.
The Supremacy Clause dictates that local politicians and citizens CANNOT legally declare their cities sanctuaries and ban ICE (or any federal agency).
Our legitimate, democratically passed immigration laws clearly state that immigrating here illegally is a crime; there’s no such thing as a non-criminal, “undocumented,” “legal” illegal alien, and ALL illegals are subject to deportation.
Very few asylum claims – and none of them that have been pursued outside of legal channels – are valid.
And no American law enforcement agencies or actions are in the same moral universe as the Gestapo, you lying, hypocritical jackasses!

3. I had no idea how many legal weapons there are in our arsenal; we can use any of several dozen laws to charge and convict the protesters and their leaders.

As much as I’d love to see us charge thousands (or tens of thousands?) of protesters with thousands of crimes, and try all of them, that is logistically impractical. It would take many years and tie up half our legal system, and to the extent that we’d need to depend on some local (and left-biased) judges and juries, we’d likely see a wave of destructive jury nullification verdicts.

We’ll be better off focusing on the leaders, and the worst of the bad actors among the protesters – maybe 100-150 of them – and go after them on federal charges, using the same intensity with which the Democrats pursued every Midwestern grannie who walked through the capitol on January 6th, took a selfie, and peacefully left.

The reason the Antifa and BLM protests spread and grew into riots in 2020 – and the anti-ICE agitators have metastasized and escalated over the last year – is that almost nobody has been punished. So we need to send a message, and make an example of these people “pour encourager les autres,” as the French say.

If we can legally and morally put the worst 150 through what the Democrats illegitimately put the peaceful J6ers (not the brawlers) through – harassing them, bankrupting them, and sending them to jail for at least a few years – that would establish a powerful deterrent.

Especially if we focused on the conspiracy angle. These coordinated groups seem to be perfect targets for a RICO approach, and after the first couple of street-level and then coordinator-level creeps went down, we’d probably be able to flip some to use against the commie Colombos who were the bosses. (Boom! Mafia-Leftist alliterative analogies for $1000, Alex.) (We would also have accepted “the bolshevik Bonannos,” or the “leftist Luccheses.”)

The one thing we can’t do is back off and let the insurrectionist protesters think they’ve won something. I don’t think Homan will let that happen, but I’m a little concerned that the draw-down of agents from MN might be premature, especially if Small Frey and Jazz Hands start crowing about it.

I understand political realities, and I know that we can’t just go Roman on the protesters, as would be my own arch-conservative desire.

But if we can’t go Roman, we should still be able to at least go Homan on their arses.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Fatal Empathy (posted 2/2/26)

I talked to an old friend of mine the other day. Regular readers have heard of him, because he’s one of a couple of lefties I’ve been close to for years.

Many readers from the CO site – which I’m still hoping to be able to revive with CO, so please be patient – have commented to the effect of, “How can you be friends with a leftist, after everything they’ve done and everything you’ve said about what they’ve done?”

Which is a rational question to ask. Though an even better question might be how can he be friends with me, after everything he thinks conservatives have done? Especially since lefties are usually pretty quick to cut off and cancel anyone on the other political side, IMHO.

The answer is that even though I think his politics are wildly wrong, and he thinks the same about mine, deep down we both know that there are some things more important than politics. I’ve known him for 40 years, and he’s got a good heart. I was godfather to one of his kids, and he introduced me to my smokeshow wife, and for that I will forever be in his debt.

I love him like a brother. A lovable but addled and confused brother. 😊

The reason I mention all that is that since our conversation, I’ve been thinking about the chaos in Minneapolis, and I’ve come to the conclusion that good lefties are wrong about immigration and ICE for two main reasons: they’ve misunderstood the law, and they’ve misunderstood and/or misapplied empathy.

Empathy first. The first time I heard the term “toxic empathy” was not very long ago, but it has become a hotly debated topic since then. At first glance, the concept would appear to be oxymoronic – how could “empathy” ever be “toxic?” But you don’t have to think very long to come up with tons of examples to prove that it often is.

Anyone who has been in or observed human relationships – watching one spouse enable another by making excuses for abuse; loaning money to somebody with a gambling problem; giving $20 to a homeless guy who uses it to buy the fentanyl that kills him; parents spoiling a child until he’s a 30-something basement-dweller – recognizes that reality.

The same negative results ensue on a political level, when government programs that are meant to help people actually incentivize bad behaviors that gravely damage the recipients. Giving women welfare benefits only if there is no man in the house produces sky-high fatherlessness, and traps them in dysfunctional dependence, which is an unmitigated disaster. Guaranteeing college loans to people to get worthless grievance studies degrees produces bitter 30-somethings with $200K in debt and a minimum wage job. Etc.

But aside from the toxicity issue, empathy is very often only selective, on both the right and the left. Some on our side empathized with the nonviolent people among the J6 protestors way more than we empathize with the non-violent among leftist protestors, because we basically agree with the former and disagree with the latter.

But the lefties in Minneapolis and around the country have taken that to an extreme, IMHO. I haven’t heard any lefties express empathy for Jocelyn Nungaray, Laken Riley, or any of the thousands of Americans who did nothing wrong, but were attacked or murdered by unvetted illegals. But they have been gnashing their teeth and rending their garments over illegals who broke our laws (including wife-beating human smuggler Kilmar), and legal immigrant citizens who were briefly detained to confirm their legal status before being released.

The elite leftists have used a cloak of lies to try to turn the five-year-old boy with the cute backpack into a tiny, photogenic victim of cruel ICE, claiming that ICE “arrested” him. The truth, of course is that ICE took care of the kid after they tried to take his criminal dad into custody, and the creepy POS fled, leaving the boy behind in freezing weather.

Yet the leftists condemn the ICE agents who cared for him, rather than the criminal dad who abandoned him. Unexpectedly!

Speaking of kids, it’s been widely reported that around 300,000 illegal children have been snuck in and given into the custody of others – some probably relatives or friends of their parents, but many fraudsters posing as their parents to improve their chances of getting in, and many others either cartel-associated or cartel-coerced people who facilitate the sexual and other abuse of those children.

Anyone who actually cares about kids has to be horrified by the prospect of a third of a million small, powerless victims of the left’s pitiless policy of opening the border to unvetted waves of uncontrolled immigration and human smuggling. And yet the elite left has been utterly silent about this massive crime.

And when Homan announced last week that this administration has located and rescued around 145,000 of those victimized kids, the silence of those who can’t stop virtue signaling about, “Won’t somebody please think of the children?!” has been deafening.

Not one word of celebration or relief. Not even a grudging “good job” from the armies of those who claim to be the champions of “undocumented” children.

Compare that to the tsunami of grief for Robin Good and Alex Pretti. I know that many good lefties actually do grieve for those two, just as I and many other conservatives feel some sympathy for the tragic ending that their own disordered ideology led them to. But I also know that many in the leftist elite are more than happy to exploit the deaths of those two for their own propagandistic political gain.

That much is clear from the way they’ve relentlessly lied about both cases. They claim that Robin Good was an innocent mother who stumbled into an ICE action, and died while trying to flee the murderous agents, through no fault of her own. (The truth was that she and her partner had trained at an organized anti-ICE boot camp, went there to illegally interfere with agents, and was killed in the process of committing multiple crimes, including driving her car toward an agent who had already been hit and dragged by one of her political co-religionists previously.)

They claim that Alex Pretti was a noble nurse, murdered by ICE agents for the “crime” of trying to help a woman they were victimizing. (The truth was that he was a repeated assaulter of ICE agents who went there to attack and interfere with their legal actions in a chaotic situation, and died in the process of committing multiple crimes.)

Ironically, misplaced and toxic empathy played significant roles in both of their deaths. Because one of the best examples of toxic empathy in government is the policy of going soft on crime, which both of the dead protestors had learned to expect.

Nationwide anti-ICE protests routinely violate a great many of our laws, and yet almost none of those in the mobs of protestors/agitators/rioters ever face legal consequences for their actions. They aren’t arrested, or if they are, they are quickly released with all charges either dropped, or reduced to the equivalent of a traffic ticket. (And that amounts to an actual reward, since they gain admiration and praise from their disordered companions for heroically “standing up to the fascists.”)

Thus the protestors – exhilarated by an intoxicating mix of political hatred and a sense of their own moral superiority and the righteousness of their cause – see some of their companions screaming at the LEOs, and throwing the first objects or fireworks at them. And nothing happens to them. So they join in, and things accelerate.

And soon, they end up believing that their opponents are basically powerless against them, and they will never face any consequences for their crimes, which they don’t even recognize or acknowledge ARE crimes.

That process ends with Robin Good dead, and her partner wailing, “Why are they using real bullets?!” (Anyone not drunk on an ideological fervor involving delusions of invulnerability can clearly see the obvious answer: When you attack armed LEOs and try to run over them with a real car, you can expect to catch a lot of real bullets.)

That process also ends with Alex Pretti’s death. If law enforcement had arrested him shortly before, when he committed multiple crimes at a previous protest (interfering with an arrest, spitting at cops and damaging one of their vehicles, then fighting with one of them), he would still be alive today.

But because he didn’t face an arrest 10 days earlier, he was emboldened to escalate his criminal behavior until he faced the end of his life 10 days later.

And ironically, the actions of his comrades also played a huge role in his death. One of their tactics has been to constantly blow whistles at an ear-splitting volume, which is obviously disorienting and extremely aggravating and even painful to the LEOs carrying out their legal tasks, as it is intended to be.

Because Pretti was carrying a gun – which he could legally do – to a legitimate law enforcement action where he intended to commit crimes – which he could NOT legally do – he had already put his life at great risk. In the ensuing confusion, when one of the cops saw his weapon and called out, “Gun!” things instantly escalated, as they must.

Tragically, one cop had already gotten Pretti’s gun away from him when other cops – because he was struggling with them (which one cannot legally do), and because they were almost certainly not aware that he no longer had his gun on him – shot him.

Typically, in that situation a cop will let the other cops know when he has removed and secured the weapon from the criminal. And it is very likely –to say the least – that the cop in this case tried to do that.

But because a mob of insurrectionist a-holes surrounded the cops and Pretti, blowing their deafening whistles, no one could have heard the information that would almost certainly have saved Pretti’s life.

And so Alex Pretti – just like Robin Good, and (as sad as this is to say) Ashli Babbitt – died, almost entirely because of his own reckless actions.

Next up: I’ve researched and will try to summarize the main legal issues underlying the anti-ICE and pro-illegal immigration wave that is sweeping the country.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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