ICE Arrest in Boise

It is fashionable to imagine that ICE is engaged in random arrests of people who it thinks are illegals. 3/3/26 KTVB:

BOISE, Idaho — Nearly a month after a father was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) near a Boise daycare, the agency is responding publicly for the first time, saying the arrest was targeted and tied to a prior conviction.

In a statement to KTVB, ICE said the man has a 2024 conviction in Boise for “theft by alteration.”

The agency described the arrest as “targeted” and said officers were never at a preschool, adding that the man was detained about 200 yards away.

The man’s family has asked that his name not be released at this time for privacy reasons.

Attorney J.J. Despain said theft by alteration typically involves switching price tags in a store to pay a lower price, rather than removing merchandise without paying.

Despain said even relatively minor offenses can draw renewed attention from immigration authorities.

“It could be,  I haven’t seen this happen so much in Idaho, but in other places in the country, they really are just looking up old cases because they want to boost their numbers,” Despain said.

Or enforce the law. If you are here unlawfully, you get immediate deportation. Even if you do not break any other laws, you are here illegally and are subject to immediate deportation. 

 

Dreamers

 2/25/26 CBS News:

ICE arrested 261 DACA recipients over 10 months last year, document shows

Deeper in, for those who read beyond the headline:

The statistics indicate the vast majority of DACA recipients taken into federal immigration custody during that period had criminal records. 

Remember When Bodycams Needed to be Mandatory for Police?

 2/7/26 Politico:

A push to put body cameras on all ICE agents has Democrats running headlong into a new problem: fear that the technology will provide another avenue for mass surveillance of protesters.

Congressional Democratic leaders have made universal use of body cameras one of their prime demands for imposing accountability on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, especially after federal agents fatally shot two American citizens in Minneapolis. But after an outcry from privacy advocates that surveillance tools will allow ICE agents to identify and track protesters, Democrats are also calling for restrictions on how the body cameras can be used.

Lawmakers and legal observers have accused ICE of leveraging a variety of cameras to surveil protesters, feeding pictures into license plate readers and facial recognition systems. Democrats now worry that the body cameras they’re demanding could be used for similar purposes.

It could not be because bodycams have repeatedly showed police responding appropriately to really messed up people, could it? 

Main Character Syndrome Out of Control

Meet Melinda, a healthcare worker at @VCUHealth. She posted a series of videos encouraging people to inject ICE agents with succinylocholine, a temporary paralysis drug, and spray poison on them. She also encourages woman to go on dates with agents and drug their food.

Any… pic.twitter.com/CMJN12GhOc

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 27, 2026

I am not surprised an unhinged leftist would think such things.  But her willingness to record herself saying these dark fantasies (giving her the benefit of the doubt) and in a way that made her, and thus her employer, identifiable is just bizarre.

I will not call this Toxic Femininity.  Toxic Masculinity is a dangerously exaggerated set of traits that are at least stereotypically masculine.  These dark thoughts do not exaggerate caring for others to the point of regarding convicted child rapists as victims in need of protection from a cruel and uncaring system.  That might qualify as Toxic Femininity.  This is just brainwashing to the point of real evil.

It just occurred to me as I was vacuuming: if a peace officer (or anyone else) saw someone brandishing a syringe in a hostile setting, assuming poison would be reasonable. Deadly force is now justified.

This Does Not Look Good

 1/24/26 New York Post coverage indicates that Pretti was shot multiple times after he was disarmed.  Yes, if Minnesota did what they should and turned over convicted felon illegal aliens when released, this would not have happened.  Yes, coming to a protest armed, even lawfully armed, is a bad idea.  It is just barely possible that officers who shot Pretti saw the gun and opened fire not realizing it was another officer who had the gun.  It still is pretty tragic. 

Of course, that was the goal of these interferences with ICE: provoke violence and death so we stop asking about the $9 billion welfare fraud.

ICE Behavior

 1/22/26 New York Post article by my friend John Lott:

Countless news stories have amplified fears that under Trump, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are wildly violating basic rights.

NPR, to cite just one example, recently claimed that “many” American citizens “have been mistaken” for illegal immigrants, and that there’s “a long history of immigration agencies not having a good track record.”

But the numbers tell a very different story about how ICE is doing under Trump.

Let’s set the baseline: Between the president’s Jan. 20, 2025, inauguration and the end of November, Trump’s administration arrested an extraordinary total of 595,000 illegal aliens and deported 605,000.

The 170 ICE-detained US citizens cited in Stanage’s diatribe included about 130 arrested for interfering with or assaulting officers, according to the left-leaning ProPublica — justifiable under any reading of the law.

Only about 40 or so of those who were detained claimed to be US citizens accidentally or erroneously arrested by ICE, and just half of those people were held for more than a day; most were released in a few hours.

Any error is serious, but 40 mistakes out of 595,000 arrests amounts to an error rate of just 0.0067% — roughly one wrongful detention for every 14,925 arrests.

Compare that with the final two years of President Barack Obama’s administration.

In fiscal years 2015 and 2016, ICE recorded 263 mistaken arrests, 54 mistaken detentions (book-ins), and four mistaken removals.

During those two years, ICE made a mere 239,645 arrests, meaning the 54 mistaken detentions alone produced an Obama error rate of 0.0225% — about one mistake for every 4,444 arrests.

Overall, the error rate under Obama was 3.36 times higher than under Trump.

Unfortunately, there’s no comparable public data for other past administrations, or the rest of the Obama years.

As further evidence of ICE’s irresponsibility, Stanage charged that “32 people died in ICE custody last year.”

That claim, however, misleads without context; the numbers only make sense when compared across administrations.

During the course of Obama’s two terms, from 2009 to 2017, 56 individuals died in ICE custody.

That administration didn’t publish clear detention totals, but the closest available figures show about 498,646 detentions and deportations over five fiscal years, an average of roughly 99,729 per year.

If that annual rate held throughout the entire administration, ICE processed about 797,834 individuals.

Under that estimate, 56 deaths translates into a rate of 0.007% — roughly one death for every 14,314 detainees.

By comparison, the rate last year under Trump was slightly lower: 0.0054%, or one death for every 18,594 detainees.

Both those figures are substantially below the average death rate for the detainee age group.

Stanage’s rant omitted one key data point: the number of Americans accidentally deported.

The reason for him not doing so is straightforward — none occurred.

That’s right, for all the tumult and fury, ICE under Trump made no erroneous deportations through November.

By contrast, ICE under Obama deported two US citizens in fiscal year 2015, and two more in fiscal year 2016.

Why Are Democrats So Intent on Stopping Deportations?

6/1/25 FoxNews:

"An Egyptian national who came into the country two years ago and overstayed his visa has been charged in the gruesome terror attack that left six people injured in Boulder, Colorado, Saturday, authorities said.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, was arrested at the scene, after he allegedly set his victims on fire as they peacefully rallied on behalf of Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza. Soliman was heard yelling "Free Palestine" and other anti-Israel slogans during the attack on victims ranging in age from 67 to 88.

"The shocking violence unfolded at 1:26 p.m. local time, when Boulder police were called to the county courthouse on Pearl Street for reports of a man who had a weapon and was setting people on fire, according to Boulder Police Chief Steve Redfearn."

I will be curious to watch how Democrats defend why this guy was not deported years ago.

It is beginning to feel like the mass deportations that Democrats fear need to happen pronto.