No one is above the law, and that includes our immigration laws We need to go after the people who knowingly employ illegal immigrants.

Thanks to my good friend and occasional blog pinch-hitter William Teach, I found this wonderful story:

Immigration arrests left NC restaurants short-staffed and job sites idle, owners say

By: Ahmed Jallow | Friday, February 20, 2026 | 5:30 PM EST

For two weeks last November, kitchens at David “Woody” Lockwood’s restaurants ran short of dishwashers, prep cooks and servers as workers stayed home, afraid to leave their houses during a federal immigration crackdown that resulted in more than 400 arrests across North Carolina.

“We had a lot of people, mostly in the kitchen, that didn’t feel safe coming to work,” said Lockwood, a co-owner of Trophy Brewing and The Bend. That meant managers working extra shifts, longer waits for customers and paying employees who were not on the job to help them get by.

“We decided, at least for those two weeks, to pay those people for the hours they missed, which is not a sustainable thing,” Lockwood said.

So, Mr Lockwood now knows exactly who among his employees is here and was working illegally. Perhaps he didn’t look at their I-9 documents closely, or perhaps he ignored legal requirements on hiring illegals, but now he knows who was working there illegally, and has absolutely no f(ornicating) excuses: he needs to discharge them all immediately, and inform Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, exactly who they were. If he does not disclose this information to ICE, he needs to be arrested for knowingly harboring illegals, along with the penalties for not insuring that those he hired were legally eligible to work in the United States.

It is possible that a few of his Hispanic-looking employees were in the country and working legally, and should now have their documents in hand to prove that if ICE comes calling, but the odds are that most were not legal.

It’s simple: if the illegals cannot find work in the United States, they’ll go home on their own.

Business owners and educators said the effects of the crackdown extended well beyond those taken into custody, disrupting construction and hospitality – two of the state’s largest industries – and keeping some students home from school.

Mikki Paradis, chief executive of PDI Drywall, said construction sites fell silent for more than a week during the November operations.

“There was not a single person working on those jobs,” said Paradis, who has relied on Hispanic workers throughout her 21-year career. She said these labor shortages would slow housing construction and drive up costs.

Translation: Miss Paradis has been knowingly hiring illegals, and ICE needs to visit her offices and start pulling the company’s I-9 files. If it can be proved that she knowingly hired illegals, she’s in a heap of trouble. Under the Handbook for Employers M-274, Section 11.8, it is specified that:

Unlawful Employment Criminal Penalties
Engaging in a Pattern or Practice of Knowingly Hiring or Continuing to Employ Unauthorized Aliens

If you or your business are convicted of having engaged in a pattern or practice of knowingly hiring unauthorized aliens (or continuing to employ aliens knowing they are or have become unauthorized to work in the United States) after Nov. 6, 1986, you may face fines and/or six months imprisonment.

Six months behind bars ought to teach Miss Paradis and Mr Lockwood the error of their ways, and scare the poop out of the other employers of illegals, scare them enough that they get rid of the illegals right away. If the illegals then self-deport, it just makes everything easier for ICE and law enforcement.

Will it cost Mr Lockwood and Miss Paradis their businesses? Perhaps it will, but if they were knowingly employing illegals, they deserve it. That, too, will get other employers to straighten up and fly right.

No one is above the law our Democratic friends told us when they were trying to get Donald Trump thrown in jail. Well, if no one is above the law, then no one is above our immigration laws as well.

Sometimes deportation is not enough Sometimes you have to lock them up for years, and then kick their sorry asses out!

Thanks to lax border enforcement under Democratic administrations, deportation of illegal aliens simply means that they have to put forth a little more effort to sneak back into the United States. From our nation’s second-oldest continuously published daily newspaper:

Twice-deported DUI driver who got off easy after killing 2 California teens gets sent back to slammer

By Nina Joudeh | Monday, January 26, 2026 | 5:19 PM EST

A twice-deported Mexican national who was let off easy for killing two California teenagers in a drunken crash — sparking widespread outrage — has been sentenced to prison for being in the country illegally.

Oscar Eduardo Ortega-Anguiano walked free last year after serving three-and-a-half years of a 10-year sentence for causing the deaths of Anya Varfolomeev and Nicholay Osokin on Interstate 405 in Seal Beach in November 2021.

He was released in July and immediately taken back into custody by federal officials, according to reports.

On Friday, US District Judge John Holcomb sentenced Ortega-Anguiano to three years and 10 months in federal prison for illegal re-entry into the US. . . . .

Ortega-Anguiano had already been sent back to Mexico twice and returned when, intoxicated and without a valid driver’s license, he collided with the 2000 Honda driven by Varfolomeev and Osokin just before midnight in Orange County on November 13, 2021.

So, Mr Ortega-Anguiano had sneaked in once, gotten caught and deported, then sneaked in again, got caught and deported, and now sneaked in a third time, and only got caught again because he killed two people while driving drunk. Clearly simply being deported had no deterrent impact on him.

There is something that could prove more of a deterrent, from The Mercury News:

In 2022, while Ortega-Anguiano was in state prison for the OC vehicular manslaughter conviction, federal prosecutors during the Biden administration had obtained an indictment charging Ortega-Anguiano with illegally being in the United States after being previously deported.

That indictment remained in effect as he was released from state prison, allowed federal law enforcement to take him into custody and held a maximum potential sentence of 20 years in federal prison.

Mr Ortega-Anguiano had already received a sweetheart deal, pleading guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence instead of second-degree murder. Now he’s got 3½ years in federal prison, where he could have been locked up for two decades. He’ll be deported after his 3½ years, after President Trump has completed his final term, and, if a Democrat is in the White House, he’ll try to sneak back in again.

Although he was born in Mexico and spent the first several years of his life there, Ortega-Anguiano said he was raised in the United States and is “American at heart.”

I would like to say that driving while drunk means that he’s not really an “American at heart,” but we have had too many real Americans do the same thing. But however he feels about it in his heart, we don’t want or need his sorry ass in our country.

We want and need good immigrants, immigrants who will work hard and be a credit to their families and their communities. Mr Ortega-Anguiano certainly doesn’t fit that description.

Deonte Demarcus Carter ain’t in too big a heap o’ trouble

Sadly, my usual title for these articles, “You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!” doesn’t really apply to Deonte Demarcus Carter, because he’s in far less trouble than he should be for killing two men.

Mother says she was failed by KY courts after man gets 10 years in 2 killings

Deonte Demarcus Carter, mugshot via Kentucky Online Offenders Lookup, and is a public record.

By Taylor Six | December 26, 2025 5:00 AMCristina Sandusky feels failed by the Fayette County justice system.

Deonte Demarcus Carter was sentenced this month to 10 years in prison for his role in a pair of fatal Lexington shootings that happened 21 days apart. One of those killed her son.

No, of course what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal didn’t publish the killer’s mugshot, but it was easy enough for me to look it up. While the McClatchy Mugshot Policy describes the non-publication of mugshots as meant to protect those accused but not yet convicted of a crime, something which would not apply to Mr Carter, but also frets about “disproportionately harm(ing) people of color.”

Carter pleaded to lesser charges of manslaughter in both cases, and Judge Julie Muth Goodman sentenced him to a total of 15 years: two 10-year sentences, to be served simultaneously, for the killings, and five years for criminal facilitation to robbery.

The charges were reduced as part of a plea negotiations made with prosecutors, who felt they didn’t have enough evidence to convict Carter of murder.

In a Dec. 9 interview with the Herald-Leader, Sandusky described different parts of her experience with legal officials as “dismissive,” “disheartening” and “disrespectful.”

“They didn’t do anything for my son,” she said of Fayette County prosecutors. “Just got to have a win under their belt.”

Sadly, if Cristina Sandusky feels failed by the justice system, she would feel even more failed if she chose to use the Kentucky Online Offender Lookup system, to see what Mr Carter is facing. According to the system, Mr Carter’s maximum date of release is December 21, 2036, eleven years from now. However, his potential “good behavior” release date is March 21, 2033, 7¼ years from now, and he will be eligible for parole as early as June 21, 2030, in just 4½ years from now, when he will be just 32 or 33.

From the moment Carter’s case was assigned to Judge Goodman, Sandusky said she was told the judge was not friendly to victims’ families.

Goodman has been criticized, including by Kentucky’s attorney general, for previous rulings deemed lenient. But Sandusky maintained faith the judge would do the right thing.

For the mother, that meant sentencing Carter to the maximum sentence of 20 years — 10 years apiece for the killings, plus some additional time for the robbery charge.

But Sandusky instead described Goodman’s comments in the courtroom as “more sympathetic to the defense.”

“She was nasty and dismissive,” Sandusky said. “She didn’t look at me one time.”

I would suspect that Her Honor was at least slightly ashamed of what she was about to do, but to be ashamed requires a sense of shame, and too-lenient judges have none.

Goodman lauded Carter and said the justice system had failed him throughout his youth, Sandusky recalled.

The judge “lauded” Mr Carter, a man who killed two people? “(T)he justice system had failed him throughout his youth”? How does that excuse him murdering two people?

Judge Julie Muth Goodman, from 2022 Kentucky Voter Guide.

So, who is Judge Julie Muth Goodman? The 2022 Kentucky Voter Guide gave the Her Honor the opportunity to post a campaign biography, as well as answer a couple of questions:

What do you see as your primary responsibilities and duties if elected to this office?

My primary responsibilities are to enforce our laws and by doing so make sure our community is the safest and fairest possible.

I will admit to not seeing how a sentence which could have a two-time murderer to possibly be back on the streets in just 4½ years, still at a young age, as “mak(ing) sure our community is the safest and fairest possible.”

What are your views on whether the court, as a whole, deals effectively with racial bias? What could improve that?

Unfortunately I do not believe that the Court system or our community always effectively addresses racial bias. I have effectively worked with the Administrative Office of the Courts to mandate that the county attorney’s diversion program which often denied people of color the opportunity to participate because the office inappropriately used Juvenile records which are adjudications and confidential to deny people of color access to the program and to also require that the program use a sliding scale so that all eligible people can afford to participate. By making these changes more people of color have been given the same access to the program as others.

Translation: she’s going to give defendants “of color” a real break, or at least she certainly did for Mr Carter. Even with the Alford plea, she could have sentenced him to 25 years in the state penitentiary — two consecutive ten-year sentences for manslaughter plus five years for the robbery — but chose to give him an extreme break. It should be noted that both of the men Mr Carter killed were black; do black lives not really matter to Judge Goodman?

Of course, Kobby Martin and Devon Sandusky are both stone-cold graveyard dead, pushing up daisies for four years now, so what’s the point of locking up their killer for 25 years; it won’t bring Messrs Martin and Sandusky back to life, will it? Just because Mr Carter is a ‘persistent felon,’ as described under Kentucky law, but not prosecuted this time as part of the plea deal, doesn’t mean that he won’t straighten up and fly right after this prison term, does it? And if Mr Carter kills someone else after he gets out of prison, whenever that is, it won’t be Judge Goodman’s fault in the slightest, will it?

Poor, poor #Hamas terrorists, trapped in their own tunnels I can't put into words just how sorry I feel for them!

Last Sunday, The First Street Journal reported on the approximately 100 to 200 Hamas terrorists trapped in one of the organization’s tunnels. And, unless there has been a breakthrough too recently to have been reported, they’re still trapped down there. As was said then, these aren’t holdout Japanese troops isolated on some Pacific island, who didn’t know the war was over, and were determined to fight on for their Emperor, but simply trying to stay alive in the jungles. Rather, these are Hamas fanatics, who can, and will, and already have tried to continue the war. From The Jerusalem Post:

Hamas terrorists intentionally stayed in IDF zone, security expert claims

National Security researcher Kobi Michael: ‘Hamas is trying to insert a new deal into an existing deal, and this is something Israel must reject.’

By Giorgia Valente | Friday, November 14, 2025 | 4:26 EST

As negotiators argue over maps and timelines, one of the most sensitive tests of Gaza’s US-brokered ceasefire is unfolding out of sight, deep under Rafah.

Israeli and foreign officials estimate that around 100 to 200 Hamas terrorists are holed up in a tunnel network on the Israeli-controlled side of the so-called “Yellow Line” in southern Gaza, unable to move back into Hamas-run territory without surfacing into areas patrolled by the Israel Defense Forces. For Washington, what happens to those men is more than a tactical problem; for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, it has become a political red line.

At stake is not only the fate of a few hundred fighters but the credibility of a broader ceasefire architecture that is supposed to end large-scale fighting in Gaza and gradually strip Hamas of its weapons, even as violence spirals in the West Bank.

There’s much more at the original.

President Trump has been pushing Israel hard, as have Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt, all the supposed guarantors of the cease-fire agreement, but when last we heard, Hamas have said that the trapped fighters would not surrender, even though their only way out is an entrance that the Israel Defense Force control. We don’t know how much food and water they have down there, but eventually they’ll run out.

The article notes Media Line’s claim that the Hamas fighters intentionally remained in the tunnels in the Israeli controlled areas, ostensibly to be behind IDF lines and able to pop out and fight again. But, if true, it’s like so many Hamas operations, not particularly well thought out. I’m not certain that the fighters get their 72 bacha bazi boys for being martyrs if they die of starvation.

Me? I think back to Judges 1:4-7, somewhere around 1,400-1,200 BC, in which Adoni-Bezek states that he defeated 70 kings, and had their thumbs and big toes cut off — a fate he suffers himself after being defeated — to prevent them from ever acting as warriors again. A lot of Israelis do not want these fighters to ever be released, believing that they were part of the October 7 massacre, but at the very least, they should be rendered unable to fight again.

Hold them accountable! How many officials' inactions and ineptitude contributed to the murder of Kada Scott?

Communications between Philadelphia law enforcement agencies.

Given that warrants and communications between the courts, the District Attorney’s Office, and the Philadelphia Police Department are done via quill pens and parchment paper, and sent between each other by messengers on foot, it is perfectly understandable that sometimes messages just don’t get delivered in a timely manner. And if the days are cloudy, sometimes it’s difficult for the recipients to read their ledger books clearly by just the light of their oil lamps. All of that makes what happened in the Keon King/Kada Scott case completely understandable!

Months before Kada Scott’s killing, Keon King was wanted for kidnapping his ex, but no one arrested him — even in court

by Ellie Rushing | Thursday, October 23, 2025 | 4:35 PM EDT

A month after Keon King was charged with breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s home and attempting to strangle her, police say, his violence escalated: In January, he returned to her home with a gun, then kidnapped and assaulted her.

A warrant for his arrest was issued days later.

In the weeks that followed, King twice appeared in Philadelphia court and stood before a judge in the initial strangulation case. But no one in the courtroom seemed to know he was wanted for kidnapping.

So both times, King walked out.

Clearly, the city was at fault for relying on messengers on foot, rather than providing a horse on which the messengers could get their pieces of parchment to the right people in a timely manner.

In February, despite the warrant for King’s arrest, prosecutors — seemingly unaware that police said he had recently attacked their key witness — withdrew the burglary and strangulation case when the victim failed to appear in court.

Police did not go to either hearing to take him into custody, and do not appear to have alerted the prosecutor about the new arrest warrant.

The messenger on foot must not have made it to the District Attorney’s Office on time.

And King was not formally charged with the kidnapping until April, when, for reasons that are unclear, he turned himself in.

Turned himself in to whom? Normally, a criminal suspect would have turned himself in at a police station, but reporter Ellie Rushing was not specific about that. But, regardless of where he surrendered, he was out on the streets again twenty days ago.

The shortcomings in those earlier cases came into focus this month after police said King abducted Kada Scott from outside her workplace Oct. 4, then killed her and buried her body in a shallow grave behind an East Germantown school. The death of Scott, 23, of Mount Airy, has unnerved a community and drawn national attention.

Naturally, in his attempt to win re-election, the District Attorney tried to shift blame onto someone else:

District Attorney Larry Krasner has said it was a mistake for prosecutors to withdraw the charges in the alleged kidnapping of King’s ex — and his office has since refiled them. He said the decision not to proceed with the case was made by a young assistant district attorney who was new at handling such prosecutions and who saw the victim’s absence as a fatal flaw, even though there was video evidence of the attack.

Can we really say that the distinguished Mr Krasner threw a “young assistant district attorney” under the bus, given that there were no buses during the days of quill pens and inkwells?

Or perhaps it was the Republicans who control the state Senate who are to blame, for not funding SEPTA and its buses adequately?

If this “young assistant district attorney . . . was new at handling such prosecutions,” shouldn’t the District Attorney himself, or at least one of his more senior prosecutors have been supervising the “young assistant district attorney”? Shouldn’t someone more senior in that office been teaching him what he ought to do, for what he ought to check? Shouldn’t someone in the District Attorney’s Office other than the “young assistant district attorney” now squished under the wheels of a SEPTA bus he held accountable for his mistakes? Shouldn’t the DA himself bear the responsibility for the “missteps” which put Mr King out on the streets to (allegedly) have kidnapped and murdered Miss Scott?

Kada Scott, victim, and Keon King, alleged murderer. Photos via WPVI TV, because, naturally, the Inquirer would never publish them.

The rest of Miss Rushing’s article details the missteps and miscommunications between the police and prosecutors, something the District Attorney blamed on “their digital information systems (being) decades old.” Really? Microsoft stopped support for Windows XP a couple of decades ago; is the DAO still using that? I was using dispatching systems in the 1990s, the early 1990s, when our Dispatch office was able to send delivery tickets to satellite plants via modems. That was over thirty years ago.

But it needs to be said: if the accusations against Keon King are accurate, then a lot of other people contributed to Miss Scott being murdered. Under Pennsylvania Title 18 §2504(a), “A person is guilty of involuntary manslaughter when as a direct result of the doing of an unlawful act in a reckless or grossly negligent manner, or the doing of a lawful act in a reckless or grossly negligent manner, he causes the death of another person.” Were the inactions of the District Attorney’s Office, including the District Attorney himself grossly negligent?

I’m dreaming, of course: no judge would allow a charge of involuntary manslaughter against a government official for gross neglect of his duty, because such could be turned around against the judge himself. But it’s clear that somebody, a lot of somebodies, need to lose their jobs over this. Mr Krasner himself doesn’t have enough of a sense of shame to resign over this, but he should be overwhelmingly defeated in the upcoming election. Whoever was supposed to supervise the “young assistant district attorney” needs to resign or be fired. Whoever is responsible for communication between the police and prosecutors, at both ends of that, needs to join the unemployment line. Should the Police Commissioner, Kevin Bethel, resign? And whoever is responsible for informing judges of other judges’ cases and acts needs to start tending bar somewhere on South Street.

At least as of this writing, the Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer have not yet published their endorsement for District Attorney. We can only hope they endorse Pat Dugan and not again support soft-on-crime Larry Krasner.

What could possibly go wrong?

For our good friends on the left, accepting transgenderism seems like almost a requirement. The left have mostly — there have been a few exceptions — decided that, when it comes to anything even remotely related to sex, they must take the furthest left position possible, or they will somehow be legitimizing the positions of us wicked reich-wing conservatives, and, of course, the totally evil Donald Trump. The Nation even called anything less the Rise of a New Confederacy!

From The Washington Post:

Loudoun schools to maintain gender policies despite Education Dept. order

Loudoun County schools voted to maintain their gender policy, allowing transgender students to use facilities matching their identity, despite Education Department demands for change.

Continue reading

Soft-peddling the Gangs of Philadelphia

Ellie Rushing, from her Twitter profile.

If there’s one thing of which no one can accuse Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Ellie Rushing it’s laziness. Her author profile states that her beat is “cover(ing) criminal justice and law enforcement in Philadelphia, including how crime and the court systems impact communities,” and there’s certainly plenty of that in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia.

Miss Rushing gave us a deep look into the West Philly gang Young Bag Chasers, about whom we have nine times previously noted. Despite the fact that we were reliably informed by the newspaper that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, and that we have previously reported that the newspaper really, really, really doesn’t like to refer to gangs as gangs, Miss Rushing, though using other descriptions occasionally for prosaic reasons, does refer to “YBC” as a gang occasionally.

But, sadly enough, in a very in-depth article, one that the research of which must have put the reporter in some physical danger, Miss Rushing gives us far too many excuses as to how and why the gang became a gang and the gang members became gang members. Continue reading

Hold them accountable! When will we hold those who have enabled illegal immigration accountable for the violent crimes some illegals have committed?

Joel Quintana-Dominguez

That thing that never happens happened again! Another poor, hard-working, only-wanted-to-better-himself-and-his-family, illegal immigrant has been charged with serious crimes.

‘Disgusted and sickened’: Man accused of trying to flee country after sexually assaulting child in Shelby Twp.

By Jessica Dupnack | July 30, 2024 | 9:26 AM EDT

SHELBY TOWNSHIP, Mich. (FOX 2) – After allegedly sexually assaulting a family member numerous times, Shelby Township police say the suspect started packing up to flee the country.

Officers began investigating 32-year-old Joel Quintana-Dominguez on July 15 after learning that he may have sexually assaulted a minor who was not even a teenager yet. Continue reading