Illegal immigration

Big, beautiful immigration

By Steve Woodward

You need not be a golf aficionado to appreciate J.J. Spaun’s path to victory in the 125^th U.S. Open on June 15, 2025, Father’s Day.

He made four birdies down the stretch on a brutally unforgiving Oakmont Country Club course and secured his first major championship by rolling a 64-foot putt across a soggy 18^th green into the heart of the cup.

Spaun, 34, has toiled, largely in obscurity, on pro golf tours for more than a decade. His is a familiar story across the generations: an average couple finds themselves raising a child who catches “the bug” and never looks back.

In the Spaun family, J.J. is a fourth generation American with Filipino and Mexican roots. None of the adults in Spaun’s life asked for anything other than opportunities. And they embraced them to build a life near Los Angeles. His mother, Dollie, worked as an office manager. His father, John, was a hospital administrator. Both are recreational golfers. (According to Golf Week magazine, while pregnant with J.J., Dollie continued playing golf through the eighth month).

While this likely will be Spaun’s breakthrough season – he was co-leader of The Players Championship in May before losing to Rory McIlroy in a playoff – he has demonstrated that he is a closer. He won a tournament on the Korne Ferry Tour (golf’s professional minor league) and also scored a win on the PGA Canada Tour. Spaun has recorded 43 top ten finishes (and amassed more than $22 million in career earnings).

Spaun also is a college graduate. He was a four-year member of the golf team at San Diego State University, where he graduated in 2012.

Away from the rigors of pro golf Spaun cherishes fatherhood. He and his wife, Melody, were married in 2019 and are raising two daughters (photo nearby).

One of Spaun’s great grandfathers immigrated (legally) from the Philippines to California, where Spaun’s grandfather was born – a story repeated on countless occasions throughout America’s history. People arrive on our shores from every corner of the world, not to pursue fame and fortune, but to pursue a better life on a foundation of economic stability, accessible healthcare options and educational opportunities.

Occasionally one of these families hits the jackpot. A son becomes a millionaire pro golfer. A daughter finds stardom on the stage or screen. A grandchild launches a small business that becomes an empire.

J.J. Spaun was only one of the weekend’s big stories tied to Los Angeles. It is a distinctly American story. And it is a story in stark contrast to the frenzied, unhinged violence that is decimating the streets of downtown Los Angeles (and other cities).

The media report that L.A. rioters are protesting President Trump’s “immigration crackdown”, as if to infer that a coordinated effort to detain and deport migrants is targeting people like J.J. Spaun’s great grandfather.

To the contrary, millions of undocumented, unprocessed criminals who surged across the U.S.-Mexico border after Joe Biden’s regime seized power by leveraging China’s Covid-19 bioweapon did not enter our homeland to track down the best golf instructors. They’re not being bussed and flown into communities because there are plenty of empty seats in classrooms and beds in emergency rooms. They are not taking online civics courses to begin their journey toward legal American citizenship.

Many of the aliens were criminals in their countries of origin. They are not here to turn the page and leverage second chances. They are here to commit more crimes. Consider a partial roster of illegal migrants detained by a single June 2025 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Los Angeles:

Cuong Chanh Phan, 49, Vietnam (Criminal history: Second-degree murder)

Rolando Veneracion-Enriquez, 55, Philippines. (Criminal history: Burglary in Ontario, Calif.; sexual penetration with a foreign object with force and assault with intent to commit rape in Pomona, Calif., sentenced to 37 years in prison)

Armando Ordaz, 44, Mexico. (Criminal history: Sexual battery in Los Angeles; receiving known or stolen property in Norwalk, Calif.; petty theft in Los Angeles)

Victor Mendoza-Aguilar (photo nearby), 32, Mexico. (Criminal history: Possessing unlawful paraphernalia in Pasadena, Calif.: possessing controlled substances in Pasadena; assault with a deadly weapon: not firearm in Pasadena; obstructing a public officer in Pasadena)

Jordan Mauricio Meza-Esquibel, 32, Honduras. (Criminal history: Distribution of heroin and cocaine; domestic violence)

It strains every thread of logic we can muster to comprehend how anyone opposes detainment and deportation of thugs such as these. And yet the riots rage on in Los Angeles.

We began with a sports reference. Here is another. Los Angeles is scheduled to host eight soccer matches during the 2026 World Cup next summer. Los Angeles is the host city of the 2028 Olympic Games. At what point should those designations be reconsidered?

Trump did it

The Left has furiously managed the decline of our nation, domestically and globally, for the better part of 15 years. The consequences are coming to the fore. In order to distract from the carnage now so visible in the wake of three Obama terms in power, Trump and the Make America Great Again majority must be falsely and persistently accused.

By Steve Woodward

Everything is Donald Trump’s fault. Everything deemed unpleasant, unexpected, uncomfortable and unbearable. Everything.

It’s a demonstrable falsehood, of course. But it is perpetuated by a surging, media-fueled blame culture. It is the Left’s last best hope.

Covid-19. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. January 6. October 7. These are among the large-scale events for which President Trump is to blame. (He was not even in office in some cases).

But there are more. Americans are cancelling summer travel because of Trump’s tariffs, reports The Wall Street Journal (the intent of which are purposely distorted by coordinated media talking points). A high death toll after recent Kentucky tornados? That’s on Trump, squeals The Washington Post. Even pop culture is in decline, concludes The Atlantic magazine. It interviewed art critic Dean Kissick, who scolds that we’re living in “the long 2017”, which an Atlantic writer describes as “a period in which anxieties related to Donald Trump and Brexit (Brexit?) have smothered culture with moralism, navel gazing, and conformity.” (Why is it that “critics” always try to get away with making statements devoid of substance or meaning? Morals are evil?)

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is Trump’s “modern day Gestapo,” says Minnesota Marxist and Gov. Tim Walz, thus Trump and Trump alone must be blamed if even one potentially lethal illegal alien is temporarily jailed with a hoard of really lethal guys after their deportation to El Salvador. The “Maryland man”, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, became collateral damage in America’s long overdue war on mass illegal immigration, a war fought on two fronts — at the U.S.-Mexico border and through active arrests and deportations. Collateral damage is the price of war.

In the Left’s war on American sovereignty under the Obama/Biden regime of 2021-24, we witnessed repeated collateral damage — raped and murdered innocent citizens such as Laken Riley, Rachel Morin and Kaitlyn Weaver. Weaver was killed in July 2024, the victim of a high-speed auto collision. The driver of the speeding car was an illegal immigrant minor, 15, who just last week was sentenced to probation (emphasis added) and community service by a Trump hating Colorado judge.

No one on the Left, not presidents, not governors, not judges, is to blame in the aftermath of these one-off tragedies. The blame culture is real enough, and the media corrupt and pervasive enough, that any assignment of blame directed at Trump/MAGA can be justified, even legitimized.

They’ll probably get around to pinning Joe Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis on Trump’s mean “Sleepy Joe” comments.

As obviously absurd as that would be, look more closely at the “doomed summer travel narrative”.

A couple told the Journal they are cancelling a bucket-list trip to France owed to Trump’s tariff re-balancing strategy. (The Left calls it a trade war, which is accurate if the context is that war is what other countries have waged against the United States for decades).

“We’ve been talking about Paris as long as we’ve been together, which is 54 years,” said Don Pratt, 75.

The Journal reports, “The couple sketched out a two-week itinerary that included England and Scotland, where his ancestors lived centuries ago. ‘Then the tariffs sort of got everybody around the world mad at us’,” Pratt said. “He worried about a chilly greeting if he showed up hoping to meet long-lost relatives. So instead, they recently booked a trip to take their adult son and his family to Walt Disney World … ”

This is a truly sorry side effect of Trump Derangement Syndrome. These mentally warped seniors traded reunions with relatives, memories of fabulous landmarks, and world-class cheese and wine for woke Disney drag queens and long lines of poorly dressed Americans swilling 32-ounce sodas. Are they devoid of any hint of national pride that once was presumed to be wired into the DNA of American citizens? Apparently, yes. They’re fine with high tariffs imposed by the French on products inbound from the U.S. and never contemplate why, for example, you’ll rarely see a Chevrolet Suburban navigating Parisian thoroughfare, or an award-winning Napa Cabernet Sauvignon on a Lyon wine list. The trip to visit the relatives would have been worth it just to explain how fair trade actually works.

Meanwhile, it’s tornado and hurricane season, and while many Americans delight at tracking and “modeling” potentially deadly systems and where they might be headed, media fear mongers are salivating, anxious to fire up the climate change narrative machine. Naturally, Trump’s fingerprints will be everywhere in the aftermath of high winds and surging water. (In stark contrast, the Left’s media slaves never raised similar concerns about Biden or North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper when thousands of the state’s citizens were abandoned after Hurricane Helene last September, and the devastation continues to roll off the back of Josh Stein, North Carolina’s latest Democrat governor.)

Severe tornadoes hammered parts of Kentucky on May 16, 2025. The Washington Post breathlessly reported that “Jackson, Kentucky, is four meteorologists short of what agency officials have deemed ideal staffing” and blamed that on sweeping, (overdue) audits of federal agency staffing and payrolls. Kentucky’s Lexington Herald Leader ran with an ominous headline — “Did staffing cuts at weather service affect Kentucky’s tornado response?” — but its reporter couldn’t find anyone on the scene who answered in the affirmative.

“As planned in advance, neighboring offices provided staffing support to the office in Jackson,” a spokesperson said. Read that closely. Resources, in this case human resources, were coordinated as needed under extreme circumstances. Is that not what taxpayers should expect from federally funded agencies and their field offices?

During his recent unhinged rants while “performing” in the United Kingdom, cranky, old Bruce Springsteen took blaming Trump to new depths, in once case decrying “residents” being taken “off American streets” and sent to “foreign detention centers”. These of course are dangerous illegals being returned to their countries of origin. In other words, definitely not “born in the USA”.

Springsteen finally calmed down and attempted poignancy, quoting writer James Baldwin, who observed, “In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.”

Is there enough? Where is the humanity in a nation overrun by illegal immigrants, mostly gang trained males, killing our citizens? Where is the humanity in gutting American manufacturing jobs in favor of cheap foreign labor? (Springsteen’s contemporary Billy Joel lyricized about “closing all the factories down [in Allentown]”, remember?) And where is the humanity in covering up Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis until even compliant media no longer could sustain the lie that he was mentally competent as a sitting President?

MAGA 2.0

By Steve Woodward

Corrupt media, fellow deranged Leftists (do not ever again call them Liberals, an extinct ideological species since the Age of Obama) and fake Republicans are getting off to a rough start. They were deflecting suicidal tendencies on January 6, 2025, by revisiting the “horror” and “devastation” of January 6, 2021.

In 2025, Donald Trump’s election has been certified. The margin of victory was too big to rig. Thus, Vice President Kamala Harris was obligated to stand in the chamber of the U.S. Senate and read aloud the verdict of November 5, 2024, and the symbolism was beautiful. Harris might as well have been standing in the gallows. Her political future is best symbolized by a lifeless corpse adorned in a pant suit, dangling from a rope.

Conversely, I have vivid memories of the 6 January 2021, and cherish all of them except for the bone numbing winds that gusted across the Capitol Mall that day. I was physically in Washington on 6 January 2021. (Come and get me). But patriots show up when duty calls. Always. Our nation would not exist if brave soldiers had surrendered to severe weather across the brutal years of the Revolutionary War. Yet, today, snowflake Leftists literally hide when forecasters predict … snowflakes.

Exhibit A. Here is how Josh Stein is demonstrating leadership amid the opening days of his rein as Governor of North Carolina:

“We regret to inform you that the inaugural ceremony, block party, and Executive Mansion open house originally scheduled for this Saturday and Sunday, January 11 and 12th, will be cancelled due to inclement weather and approaching winter storms across the state.

“Governor Stein and the Committee thank you for your interest in attending the events, and they were looking forward to celebrating this weekend with you all. But as with any storm, safety has to be paramount. (Emphasis added)

Democrats, as usual, have no sense of irony. They are bailing out amid a tepid forecast that might suggest wearing an overcoat even after these many months during which they’ve asked citizens of western North Carolina to be patient after incomprehensible surges of water transformed their communities into uninhabitable swamps.

Let this sink in: Newly elected Democrats Josh Stein, Rachel Hunt (Lt. Governor), and Jeff Jackson (Attorney General) are afraid to assemble in Raleigh this Saturday to join other newly elected Council of State officers (including Republicans Dave Boliek and Luke Farley) because someone might fail to navigate a small patch of ice. But they have yet to grasp, or respond to, what life is like when your home and much of the infrastructure that supports its has been decimated by a real weather event — the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in late September 2024 that will linger well into 2025 and beyond.

The ascendency of MAGA in 2025 is not only about the return of Donald Trump to the White House and his coming role as the 47th President of the United States. It is the beginning of an era of reckoning that will demand accountability among Republicans at every level of government, from the halls of power to grass roots assemblies.

Thus, as we go forth, not only will our movement inflict pain and scrutiny on Stein and his Democrat snowflakes. This also marks the beginning of a time of reckoning for our elected Republicans, and to be clear, here is the roll call that your author will ruthlessly hold to account: RINO Sen. Thom Tillis (photo nearby). Sen. Ted Budd. Rep. Richard Hudson. NC Sen. Tom McInnis. NC Rep. Neal Jackson. The North Carolina Republican Party, specifically chair Jason Simmons. The North Carolina Supreme Court. The Moore County Board of Commissioners. The Moore County Board of Education, specifically chair Robin Calcutt and vice chair Shannon Davis. The Moore County Republican Party, specifically its divisive chair and vice chair, Tom Beddow and Bill Demastus, who have alienated untold numbers of donors and volunteers across the past four years, and who soon will be unseated.

Steve Bannon said it best. No longer is it Republicans versus Democrats. It is the Global elitist Left and compliant establishment Republicans against whom we will and must wage war on behalf of MAGA populist-nationalists.

Winter is coming for those committed to transforming the United States into a Marxist empire and, also, for weak Republicans who have merely pretended to support the overdue upheaval that ensues on January 20, 2025, at one minute after 12 noon. Enjoy shivering in the icy shadows of irrelevance.

The toll

By Steve Woodward

Disengaged and distracted, many Americans lament the deep division that defines the era in which we live. Yet, demonstrably, the 21st century Marxist Left that consumes the Democrat party stands for dead babies, dead Israelis and, thanks to undeterred waves of murderous illegal immigrants, dead and maimed American citizens.

Objectively, divisions have widened since the ascension of Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency in 2009. Two Obama terms and the establishment of Obama 3.0 under the guise of a Joe Biden administration have driven establishment Democrats violently further Left, and taken many young, college educated citizens with them.

This is starkly reflected by American policy regarding and attitudes toward Israel. An April 2024 Pew Research Center survey asked respondents to prioritize the importance of America’s support for its longtime ally. The resulting data delivered a 31-point gap, with 39 percent of Republicans (and those who are Republican-leaning) replying that Israel should be a top, long-range U.S. foreign policy priority compared to eight percent of Democrats (and those who are Democrat-leaning). In fact, on no other foreign policy issue were the D/leanD respondents more tepid. They even prioritize at 29 percent “limiting the power and influence of Iran” (the catalyst behind Israel’s perilous state).

Among 19 questions on U.S. foreign policy priorities, no other topic elicited a gap above 30 points with the exception of the one question that absolutely should not have been included in the foreign policy survey in the first place — “dealing with global climate change”. That delivered a 55-point gap. As expected from supporters of a Democrat party in which climate change is religion not mere policy, 70 percent of D/lean D say its the nation’s top foreign policy priority compared to 15 percent of R/lean R.

Democrats clamoring for a Kamala Harris policy speech on U.S.-Israel relations amid Israel’s war on Hamas terrorists (and by extension Iran, which funds Hamas) should expect to be disappointed. In reality, Democrats clamoring for any Harris clarity on policy are limited to a few think tank wonks, and obviously not the glassy eyed pro-abortion brigades that swarmed Chicago during the recent Democrat convention.

Policy that addresses human tolls does not align with a “joy and hope” narrative (smoke screen) that the media has assigned to Harris-Walz 2024. But human tolls are precisely what are exacted when the United States betrays its allies. Rather than supporting Israel’s destruction of Hamas, the U.S., along with the U.K., have pushed for measured responses to the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 innocents.

And rather than urging the United Nations and other U.S. allies to join us in pooling our intelligence resources to free more than 100 Hamas-held hostages, they languish in tunnels beneath Gaza. As of September 1, six fewer are languishing because they are dead — four men and two women, ages 23-40, brutally murdered. Point blank gun shots ended their innocent lives.

The Harris-Biden regime keeps pressure on Israel to call a cease fire to negotiate the release of the hostages, as if Hamas would never think of killing again during a lull in combat. As this is written, the U.S. Department of Justice is announcing charges involving a criminal complaint against Hamas related to October 7. How were these charges not filed on October 8, 2023? Why now? To absolve Democrats from pretending October 7 never happened? Just in case. Elections, and such.

“The terrorists murder six Israel hostages, including one dual-citizen American, and Israel is suddenly under pressure to make concessions — to Hamas,” observes a September 3, 2024, Wall Street Journal editorial. Over the months of war, writes the Journal, “Israel is offering unprecedented strategic concessions and risking its soldiers’ lives to free hostages.”

We are reminded weekly of the human toll exacted because the hapless Harris-Biden (or is it willfully negligent?) regime refuses to take stringent actions to close the U.S.-Mexico border. After allowing at least 10 million-plus to flood into the homeland since 2021, the Left is expecting an election year bump because it finally cut a deal with Mexico to keep immigrants from surging. (Imagine the human toll as they are herded like animals around northern Mexico or, worse, sent into the sex trafficking pipeline).

This temporary border control “solution” is not stopping the carnage across the United States. The high profile murders of children and women at the hands of young male illegals are nonetheless glaringly absent from the radar of these supposed legions of newly inspired Harris voters. They likely never will hear about — or choose to ignore — the 14-year-old girl in Indiana stabbed August 31, 2024, by Dimas Gabriel Yanez, 26, while she watched her brother play baseball. Indiana law enforcement reports that Yanez was deported to Honduras in 2018. But, along with millions, he returned to roam cities and towns, undetected and undocumented.

When will the trauma of being attacked in small town Lowell, Indiana, with a butcher knife subside for the Honduran’s teen victim?

When will the human tolls ever matter? When will Americans with the privilege and power of casting a vote wake up to the realization that they can stop the carnage? Or will the gutless Left, intent on breeding baby murdering pro-abortionists, and virulent anti-Semites, and deranged climate warriors, even notice the consequences of any of it?

Sadly, they almost certainly will not. At least not until they are added to the toll.

Illegals among us?

By Steve Woodward

A nondescript building along Highway 1 near Southern Pines, N.C., that is home to Sandhills Assembly Church is also the operational headquarters of a little known entity, Immigration Hope Sandhills.

While it is aligned with a recognized protestant religious organization, Immigration Hope Sandhills (IHS) is a nonprofit outreach seeking to assist people who reside in the United States illegally. According to its web site, IHS offers illegal aliens advice on paths to U.S. citizenship, English language and citizenship courses, and mental health counseling. Through a program coordinated by the U.S. Department of Justice, IHS trains volunteers who do not hold law degrees to provide low-cost legal advice and services toward navigation of the U.S. immigration process.

Under executive director Sarah J. Cortesio, IHS has operated under the radar since 2018 during a time when Americans have grown increasingly weary of illegal invaders. Undocumented and unscreened, they are overwhelming hospitals and emergency rooms, and arriving with children who generally do not speak English, vying for seats in already crowded public school classrooms. Americans are leery of the threat to public safety posed by adult illegal migrants. In a February poll by Monmouth University, 61% of those surveyed describe illegal immigration as “a very serious problem”.

IHS is one of 11 immigration service centers operated by the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) nationwide, and one of the few located in a rural location. Immigration Hope, according to its web site, has locations in Atlanta; Bloomington, Minn. (a Minneapolis suburb); Brooklyn, N.Y., where IHS launched in 2011; Gainesville, Fla.; and Santa Barbara, Calif.

The founding organization, EFCA, came into existence in 1950 after a merger of two U.S.-based EFC denominations with Swedish and Norwegian origins. As has been the case across numerous long standing religious denominations, EFCA has moved gradually down a path toward “woke” relativism and a so-called social justice gospel.

A professor on the faculty of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Jarvis Williams, attracted the attention of Baptist pastor Seth Brickley, who was raised and baptized in the Evangelical Free Church. Knowing that Williams has emerged in recent years as a social justice evangelist (some say he actually is part of a post-evangelical movement), Brickley was surprised when EFCA invited Williams to speak at a leadership conference. At the same conference, a member of the EFCA board of directors “encouraged pastors to promote political diversity, giving legitimacy to the harmful agenda of the Left,” wrote Brickley in a June 2023 article for TruthScript.com. The piece by Brickley, who left EFCA to pastor a traditional Baptist church seven years ago, was entitled, “Injustice In The Evangelical Free Church of America”.

A founder of the EFCA’s first Immigrant Hope ministry center, Roy Larsen, in a piece posted on an EFCA web site in 2011, did not attempt to veil its intent: “to give all immigrants among us — including the undocumented — the hope of the gospel, (and) help in finding a pathway to legal residency if possible (emphasis added).” In 2011, few Americans could have imagined that a sitting U.S. President and Democrat surrogates would willfully oversee an open border policy and permit the illegal crossing of tens of thousands per day, some encountered by border patrol, others not.

Even fewer could have foreseen the emergence of organizations deliberately setting up their own migrant processing centers near prime border entry points.

“Many of the country’s best-known (taxpayer funded) nonprofits, including Catholic Charities (photo nearby), the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the Red Cross, and United Way … and scores of lesser-known charities have instead worked to increase the number of illegal border-crossers dramatically,” wrote Lewis M. Andrews for The American Conservative on April 28, 2024.

“There is no special exemption (in U.S. law) which allows an employee of an American tax-exempt organization willfully to ignore his own country’s laws, as increasing numbers have been doing since Biden’s election. This is true no matter how well-intentioned that nonprofit staffer might imagine himself to be.”

The New York Post reported as long ago as 2022 that the federal government launders money through contracts with nonprofit charities to keep the illegal immigration pipeline flowing.

“Even before crossing the border, migrants still in Mexico are being handed debit cards loaded with $800 a month to enable them to pay for necessities,” reported former New York Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey in a July 2022 op-ed in the Post. “The gift cards are distributed by the non-profit Organization for Migration, thanks to money provided by the U.S. State Department.

“CARECEN, a far left group funded almost entirely by government contracts, and Catholic Charities … (provides) gift cards and food packages, direct migrants to shelters or hotel rooms, or helps them buy (air) tickets to other destinations. Who pays for all this? FEMA — the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a government agency that funnels money through the nonprofits.”

Immigration Hope Sandhills poses a threat to the security of Moore County by attracting migrants who will take all of the help they can get but typically have no inclination to assimilate or seek legal citizenship. A recent, tragic example is provided by the murder on June 17, 2024, of a Houston girl, age 12, who was strangled by two Venezuelan adult males who entered the U.S. through Eagle Pass near El Paso, Texas, earlier this year. After kidnapping Jocelyn Nungaray (photo nearby) in a convenience store, the men murdered her and hurled her body into a creek.