Watching the news is extremely frustrating right now. There are several things going on designed to stop Trump and Homan from deporting anyone. Foreigners have been found to be voting in our elections, but I believe the problem is much more widespread than has been discovered so far. [DHS, DOGE Work Together To Track Down Election Fraudsters, by M.D. Kittle, The Federalist, May 1, 2025]
I can recall talking with an employee of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. He had been sent down to El Paso to help process and let in illegal aliens during Trump’s first term when Trump had rescinded the Zero Tolerance policy. He told me that he encountered it all the time where a Green Card holder would be trying to adjust their status to become a US citizen.
He would do a background check and find that they were already registered to vote. His supervisors told him there was nothing he could do about it, unless, the alien had been convicted of voter fraud. If he/she hadn’t been convicted of voter fraud, then the paperwork just got passed on with the alien presumably getting citizenship.
Slightly amusingly, Elizabeth Farah in her podcast interview of ICE Special Agent Victor Avila claims that she heard through friends in California that some of the illegal aliens her friend knows actually voted for Donald Trump since things have gotten so bad out there.
In California, a federal Judge (Jennifer Thurston, above) is preventing Border Patrol Agents from making arrests without a warrant, even though the US Code [TITLE 8 / CHAPTER 12 / SUBCHAPTER II / Part IX / § 1357] specifically gives immigration officers the right to make warrantless arrests:
§1357. Powers of immigration officers and employees
(a) Powers without warrant
Any officer or employee of the Service authorized under regulations prescribed by the Attorney General shall have power without warrant-
(1) to interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States;
(2) to arrest any alien who in his presence or view is entering or attempting to enter the United States in violation of any law or regulation made in pursuance of law regulating the admission, exclusion, expulsion, or removal of aliens, or to arrest any alien in the United States, if he has reason to believe that the alien so arrested is in the United States in violation of any such law or regulation and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest, but the alien arrested shall be taken without unnecessary delay for examination before an officer of the Service having authority to examine aliens as to their right to enter or remain in the United States;
(3) within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States, to board and search for aliens any vessel within the territorial waters of the United States and any railway car, aircraft, conveyance, or vehicle, and within a distance of twenty-five miles from any such external boundary to have access to private lands, but not dwellings, for the purpose of patrolling the border to prevent the illegal entry of aliens into the United States;
(4) to make arrests for felonies which have been committed and which are cognizable under any law of the United States regulating the admission, exclusion, expulsion, or removal of aliens, if he has reason to believe that the person so arrested is guilty of such felony and if there is likelihood of the person escaping before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest, but the person arrested shall be taken without unnecessary delay before the nearest available officer empowered to commit persons charged with offenses against the laws of the United States; and
(5) to make arrests-
(A) for any offense against the United States, if the offense is committed in the officer’s or employee’s presence, or
(B) for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States, if the officer or employee has reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such a felony,
if the officer or employee is performing duties relating to the enforcement of the immigration laws at the time of the arrest and if there is a likelihood of the person escaping before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest.
I’m not sure how this is going to work in practice. If an illegal alien runs across the border, is the Border Patrol going to need a warrant to arrest them? If a Border Patrol Agent encounters a van full of illegal aliens at a checkpoint, does he put the vehicle in secondary inspection and then start the paperwork for a warrant? Because the paper work required to process one single alien is already pretty onerous. It used to take over two hours to process one illegal alien for an A-file if the alien was Other Than Mexican (an OTM in common parlance).
Judges and National Populism —The Courts Have Destroyed Democracy
Years back, I do know that up in New York State the NYCLU won a judgement against the Border Patrol that required Agents to fill out paperwork for each and every vehicle stop an Agent made. The Agents in New York had to justify all their reasons for pulling over a vehicle whether or not anything was found. In theory, Agents could still make stops. However, in practice, the supervisors had to sign off on all paperwork and they unofficially put out the word to not make vehicle stops because they didn’t want to get into trouble with their higher ups or the courts. Vehicle stops still happened, but they became rare. It succeeded in intimidating the Agents into not doing their jobs.
Sometimes, an Agent might just not call in a vehicle stop over the radio so the supervisors were blissfully ignorant of what was happening in the field. Of course, this caused an officer safety issue, but a few courageous Agents were willing to risk it.
Contrast that to the Southern Border where I can recall riding with a journeyman Agent patrolling near a checkpoint. I think we made around 15 vehicle stops during the shift. Sometimes, the journeyman was pulling over one vehicle within a minute or two of wrapping up a first vehicle stop. If we had had to cut paperwork on each vehicle, we would have had to stay in the office for several hours at the end of the shift just writing things up. It would definitely have been a deterrent against making vehicle stops, and therefore, arrests.
Still another judge is not only preventing the federal government from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan gang members, he’s opened the door to letting them sue the Trump administration. The press is making a big deal that the judge is a “Trump appointee”, however, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. is…well, he is named Fernando Rodriguez, and was born in Harlingen, TX, 20 minutes from the Mexican Border.
Is it any surprise he’s favoring his fellow Latinos? Hopefully, Trump will have learned something from Judge Merchan and Judge Rodriguez when he makes his future judge picks.
Judges and Immigration—The Courts are Destroying Democracy and Leading to Demographic Ruin
Like I tell people, you might not see race, but race sees you. A white person might feel themselves to be virtuous and colorblind by picking a non-white for a position, but the non-white still sees you as a white guy or gal. They do not have the same standard.
Perhaps, Trump can steal a line from Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was opposed to the Taney decision in the Dred Scott case. Funnily enough, Taney had to administer the oath of office to Lincoln, and then listen to Lincoln berate him in his Inaugural Address.
“The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”
I don’t know if Trump can get away with ignoring a Supreme Court decision, nor even a lower court’s decision, although, I wish he could. The problem is the propaganda machine of the Deep State who is hoping to yell up and down about Trump’s defiance of the court and the end of Democracy.
Unfortunately, it’s all about the spin, and too many Americans still trust the corporate media.