Tag Archive for: law enforcement

Can ICE Legally Raid Your House? Understanding the Immigration Agency’s Warrants

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President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda relies heavily on successfully deporting millions of illegal immigrants. While many on the political Right have warned for decades of the existential threat posed by mass immigration, some “constitutional conservatives” are now reacting with alarm to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memo permitting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to enter the houses of illegal immigrants without a judicial warrant. Could such a directive possibly be legal?

What’s in a Warrant?

The vast majority of ICE’s operations — namely, the arrest, detention, and deportation of illegal immigrants — make use of internal administrative warrants, rather than judicial warrants signed by a judge. The most commonly-used of these warrants is Form I-205, formally known as a “Warrant of Removal.” The authority for creating and executing these warrants is rooted in the Immigration National Act (INA), namely Title Eight of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Section 241.2. A warrant of removal can only be issued against an individual who has a final order of removal, which means that an immigration judge has verified that the immigrant to be removed does, in fact, have no legal basis for remaining in the U.S. and has exhausted or waived all available avenues of appeal. Once a final order of removal has been issued, ICE can generate a warrant of removal.

The warrant of removal (Form I-205) is distinct from Form I-200, formally the “Warrant for Arrest of Alien.” Form I-200 authorizes ICE to make an arrest on suspicion of a subject being in the U.S. illegally. In other words, the warrant of removal (Form I-205) authorizes ICE to arrest known illegal immigrants who have been issued a final order of removal after having exhausted all avenues of appeals in immigration court, while the warrant for arrest of alien (Form I-200) cites “probable cause” for believing that a subject is present in the U.S. illegally.

This process differs from the one by which police obtain arrest or search warrants. In those cases, law enforcement officials petition a judge to approve a warrant, citing probable cause. The issuing of such warrants is rooted in the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Criminal warrants are specific in nature, enumerating “the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The Memo

Late last month, two “whistleblowers” leaked a DHS memo from May 12, which noted that ICE has historically relied on judicial criminal warrants, in addition to administrative ICE warrants, for authority to arrest illegal immigrants in their places of residence. However, “the DHS Office of General Counsel has recently determined that the U.S. … Constitution, the immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose,” specifying the Form I-205 warrant of removal, not the Form I-200 warrant for arrest of alien. “In light of this legal determination, ICE immigration officers may arrest and detain aliens subject to a final order of removal issued by an immigration judge, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), or a U.S. district court judge or magistrate judge in their place of residence.”

Before entering a place of residence, ICE agents are required to “knock and announce,” stating their identity and purpose in entering the residence, the memo clarified. “Following announcement, officers and agents must allow those inside the residence a reasonable chance to act lawfully,” the memo further stipulated. “Should the alien refuse admittance, ICE officers and agents should use only a necessary and reasonable amount of force to enter the alien’s residence, following proper notification of the officer’s or agent’s authority and intent to enter.” Additionally, the memo only allows ICE agents to make an administrative warrant arrest in the illegal immigrant’s place of residence, requiring “consent, exigency, or a judicial warrant” to enter or make an arrest in a third party’s place of residence.

The whistleblowers characterized the memo as establishing an “unconstitutional mandate” and alleged that DHS and ICE personnel who supposedly expressed concerns over the directive “faced retaliation,” namely being transferred to a different department or division.

An Unlawful Order?

Once the memo was leaked, a number of voices on both the Left and the Right raised concerns over whether or not the directive was constitutional. Appearing on “Washington Watch” last week, National Review Institute Senior Fellow and former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy suggested that the directive may not stand up to judicial review when inevitably challenged in court. “The bottom line answer is what they’re saying they can do, probably they can’t do,” he quipped. However, he noted that the U.S. Supreme Court “has never exactly weighed in on this.” McCarthy noted that standard arrest warrants are issued by the judicial branch of the government, authorizing the arrest of an individual on suspicion of a criminal action, while ICE’s administrative warrants are issued by the executive branch of the government.

“What the Trump administration is trying to say is they should have the same ability with respect to an administrative warrant that’s issued by the executive branch in connection with immigration proceedings,” McCarthy surmised. “I don’t think it’s a frivolous argument, because what they’re talking about is a warrant of removal, and you can’t get a warrant of removal unless you go through a very elaborate legal process, which entails, at the end, an appeal to a judicial court,” he continued. “So it’s not like the judicial courts don’t have anything to do with it at all. But the Supreme Court has never said that such an administrative warrant is the functional equivalent of a judicial warrant, and that’s what the confusion is.”

Andrew R. Arthur, resident fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies and a former immigration judge, pointed out that the key difference between judicial criminal warrants and administrative ICE warrants is that judicial criminal warrants are issued by Article III courts to address criminal activity, while administrative ICE warrants are issued to address what is technically a civil infraction: entering the U.S. illegally. “Most immigration enforcement is civil in nature, not criminal, and consequently most ICE and CBP arrests end in detention and removal from the United States, which are not punitive in the immigration context because, unlike criminal cases, they do not result in conviction and incarceration,” Arthur explained in comments shared with The Washington Stand. “The problem, as I have explained repeatedly in the past, is that there is no mechanism to obtain a warrant from an Article III federal judge to arrest an alien for a civil immigration violation.”

“If you think the federal judiciary has issues now, imagine if ICE started swamping U.S. courts with warrant applications for millions of illegal migrants,” Arthur quipped. Turning to criminal warrants rooted in the Fourth Amendment, he continued, “The warrant rule is generally interpreted, however, in the criminal context, raising the question of whether the same rule applies in the administrative context (such as in immigration enforcement). Curiously, the answer isn’t as clear as most advocates of judicial warrants in immigration enforcement might think.”

Arthur cited two prior court decisions dealing with administrative warrants. First, in United States v. Lucas (2007), the director of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services issued an administrative arrest warrant — not a judicial arrest warrant — for Tylan Lucas, a convict who absconded while on work release. After being arrested at his girlfriend’s apartment, where police also found drugs and guns hidden, Lucas moved to suppress the evidence of the drugs and guns found at the apartment, claiming that the evidence was obtained illegally since the police did not have a judicial warrant, just an administrative warrant. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ultimately ruled that the difference between an administrative and a judicial warrant in this instance did not matter, because “[t]he standard for issuance of a valid administrative warrant under the Fourth Amendment is different from the probable cause showing necessary for a warrant to arrest someone suspected of a crime.”

The appellate court’s majority in Lucas cited a 1960 U.S. Supreme Court holding in Abel v. United States. “The Supreme Court has upheld administrative warrants and has never held that administrative warrants must be issued by a neutral and detached magistrate,” the Eighth Circuit majority wrote. “An administrative arrest warrant issued by a district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service pursuant to a deportation statute led to a valid arrest in Abel v. United States.”

In Abel, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) suspected English-born Rudolph Abel of being a Soviet Spy and notified the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS, the precursor to ICE) that Abel was living in the U.S. illegally. INS, then an organ of the Department of Justice (DOJ), moved to arrest Abel on an administrative warrant, but allowed FBI agents to question him first. On appeal before the Supreme Court, Abel advanced the argument that his arrest was invalid because an administrative INS warrant did not qualify as a valid arrest warrant under the Fourth Amendment, since it was not signed by a judge. The Supreme Court ultimately rejected the argument, since Abel had not entered such a theory in any of the lower courts, but did write:

“Statutes authorizing administrative arrest to achieve detention pending deportation proceedings have the sanction of time. It would emphasize the disregard for the presumptive respect the Court owes to the validity of Acts of Congress, especially when confirmed by uncontested historical legitimacy, to bring into question for the first time such a long-sanctioned practice of government at the behest of a party who not only did not challenge the exercise of authority below, but expressly acknowledged its validity. … The constitutional validity of this longstanding administrative arrest procedure in deportation cases has never been directly challenged in reported litigation. … This Court seems never expressly to have directed its attention to the particular question of the constitutional validity of administrative deportation warrants. It has frequently, however, upheld administrative deportation proceedings shown by the Court’s opinion to have been begun by arrests pursuant to such warrants. … In the presence of this impressive historical evidence of acceptance of the validity of statutes providing for administrative deportation arrest from almost the beginning of the Nation, petitioner’s disavowal of the issue below calls for no further consideration.”

Arthur commented, “Whether that analysis is ‘dicta’ (i.e., a comment made by the court ‘that is not necessary to resolve the case, and as such … not legally binding on other courts’) or not depends on how you read it, but it certainly supports the proposition that an administrative immigration warrant is a sufficient substitute for a judicial one when it comes to the Fourth Amendment, particularly in the Eighth Circuit.”

“When most ‘experts’ … complain about ICE administrative arrest warrants, the document they usually mean is the Form I-200, ‘Warrant for Arrest of Alien,’” Arthur observed. “A Form I-205, ‘Warrant of Removal/Deportation,’ on the other hand, is only issued after an immigration judge, the Board of Immigration Appeals, a U.S. District Court judge or magistrate court judge, or other ‘designated official’ has issued a final order of removal or deportation in the named alien’s case.” The immigration law expert noted that ICE agents are legally required to make arrests in the cases of Form I-205 warrants and that it is a felony — elevated from a civil infraction for first-time illegal entry — for illegal immigrants under final orders of removal not to depart from the U.S. within 90 days of the order being issued.

“Thus, the Form I-205 is akin to the administrative arrest warrant in Lucas … with the only difference being that the latter relates to a convicted criminal on the lam and the former to aliens who received their full due process rights and were ordered removed, but have failed to depart,” Arthur suggested. “Consequently, Fourth Amendment ‘probable cause’ likely isn’t an issue in the I-205 context except with respect to the identity of the alien and the place where the alien is likely to be found.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Anti-ICE Protesters Want Agents to Wear Body Cameras, But Their Demand May Backfire

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Mainstream Media Refuse to Report the Full Facts on ICE Protests, so Americans Must Rely on X Indies

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Want to view one of the many resistance training videos being used by protest organizers in Minneapolis? You won’t find it on The New York Times or The Washington Post. Forget USA Today. And don’t even bother searching for it on NBC, MSNOW, CBS, ABC, or CNN. The mainstream media isn’t interested in reporting that side of the biggest domestic protests since the George Floyd riots of 2020.

But independent journalist Cam Higby has not only made public “Documenting and Responding to ICE,” a training video hosted by a Chicago political activist, Jill Garvey, he also infiltrated the Signal organization that is coordinating, supplying, and directing the chaos on Minneapolis streets.

Higby has posted names of the members of the eight sub-groups within Signal, extensively quoted the group’s internal communications, and documented in detail how members track ICE movements then direct protestors to specific locations where ICE law enforcement officials most likely are trying to remove an illegal immigrant who could be a hardened, violent criminal from the streets.

To appreciate how deeply Higby has infiltrated and documented Signal, check out his X home, then search on “MINNEAPOLIS SIGNAL INFILTRATED.” There you will find multiple posts like this one that documents how the protestors relay tag and other information on an ICE vehicle located in one of the protest areas. Higby’s infiltration has been so effective that Signal’s operators were forced to take counter-measures that temporarily limited their ability to continue operations. Unfortunately for them, those counter-measures came after Higby exposed the most relevant facts about their structure and operations.

To appreciate the logistical depth and detail of the organization behind the Minneapolis chaos, check out this “pop-up Leftist supply depot” videoed and reported by Gunther Eagleman, AKA David Freeman. You want milk, here it is. You need hand warmers, gotcha covered. How about some hot coffee? Or donuts? Crackers? Water? It’s all there and somebody is paying for it.

This is the kind of organized, equipped and strategically directed opposition to federal law enforcement that George Wallace, standing in the “school house door” at the University of Alabama in 1963, could only dream of having at his disposal. Ditto another avowed hard-core segregationist determined to stop federal law enforcement, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, when 101st Airborne troops escorted nine young black students into Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957. And imagine the death and destruction former Confederate Calvary General Nathan Bedford Forrest could have wreaked across the Reconstruction period had he access to Signal-level insurrection sophistication and funding?

In fact, Signal is not something new. To the contrary, Signal duplicates and refines what Eric Schwalm, a former U.S. Special Forces warrant officer, saw happening time and again with highly sophisticated, organized, and funded insurgencies overseas:

“From Anbar to Helmand, the pattern is familiar: spotters, cutouts, dead drops (or modern equivalents), disciplined comms, role specialization, and a willingness to absorb casualties while bleeding the stronger force slowly. What’s unfolding in Minneapolis right now isn’t ‘protest.’ It’s low-level insurgency infrastructure, built by people who’ve clearly studied the playbook. … This isn’t spontaneous outrage. This is C2 (command and control) with redundancy, OPSEC hygiene, and task organization that would make a [Special Forces] team sergeant nod in recognition. Replace ‘ICE agents’ with ‘occupying coalition forces’ and the structure maps almost 1:1 to early-stage urban cells we hunted in the mid-2000s.”

And Schwalm is worried because Signal isn’t in Afghanistan or Iraq or Gaza, it’s right here in America:

“The most sobering part? It’s domestic. Funded, trained (somewhere), and directed by people who live in the same country they’re trying to paralyze law enforcement in. When your own citizens build and operate this level of parallel intelligence and rapid-response network against federal officers — complete with doxxing, vehicle pursuits, and harassment that’s already turned lethal — you’re no longer dealing with civil disobedience. You’re facing a distributed resistance that’s learned the lessons of successful insurgencies: stay below the kinetic threshold most of the time, force over-reaction when possible, maintain popular support through narrative, and never present a single center of gravity.”

Whatever you think of the Minneapolis situation, it could only happen in a limited number of locations in America. How many? Well, Kevin Bass analyzed media reports on anti-ICE incidents around the nation for the past year and found nine counties that accounted for two-thirds of all such violent confrontations.

The nine are all connected to deep-blue big cites with far-Left Democratic mayors and with long-standing sanctuary status, including Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, New York, and Newark. Statistically, those nine counties turned out to be 590 times more likely to experience violent anti-ICE confrontations than all of the remaining 3,134 counties in the United States! Coincidence?

Even given all of the preceding facts, however, there is evidence the Signal operation is not perfect, as seen in this video snapshot on X of a “protestor” who, in the midst of a chaotic demonstration, suddenly finds himself able to lift himself out of his wheelchair to pick something up from the street. Either the age of miracles continues or Signal is sending false signals.

AUTHOR

Mark Tapscott

Mark Tapscott is senior congressional analyst at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Godly Justice Establishes Facts First: A Biblical Response to the Minneapolis Shooting

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Unsubstantiated claims abound after Border Patrol agents shot and killed a man during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis on Saturday. Within hours of the incident — and before any investigation was conducted — officials on both sides had already concluded that the shooting was either justified self-defense or an execution, depending on their partisan affiliation. But rendering a verdict before all the facts are known is prejudice, not justice. True justice, as God himself shows in Scripture, establishes the facts first.

Videos circulating on social media show federal officers surrounding Alex Pretti, who had been filming them, after Pretti stepped between an officer and a woman the officer had pushed to the ground. After a brief struggle, an officer yelled “gun!” and shots rang out an instant later. Pretti was legally licensed to carry a firearm, and DHS said they found a semiautomatic 9mm pistol and a second magazine on Pretti’s person, but videos do not show him holding a gun before the altercation.

Less than three hours later, the Department of Homeland Security published an account of the incident to social media, claiming that “an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun, seen here.

The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted.” The statement added that the officer who killed Pretti “fired defensive shots,” and “this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

Administration officials echoed this account. In a Saturday press conference, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described Pretti as “wishing to inflict harm on these officers, coming, brandishing like that.” Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller dismissed the incident curtly, stating that “an assassin tried to murder federal agents.”

However, Democratic politicians were eager to prove that the Trump administration has no monopoly on hyperbole. “This appears to be an execution by immigration enforcement,” claimed Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Saturday. “I am absolutely heartbroken, horrified, and appalled that federal agents murdered another member of our community. … Minnesota was once a place of refuge, and Trump has turned it into a war zone where unchecked federal forces murder our neighbors.” Fellow squad member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) likewise remarked Saturday, “Our Constitution is being shredded and our rights are dissolving. Resist.”

Compared to these equal and opposite conclusions, President Trump sounded an uncharacteristic note of reasonable caution. “In a five-minute telephone interview with The Wall Street Journal on Sunday,” the Journal reported, “Trump didn’t directly answer when asked twice whether the officer who shot Alex Pretti had done the right thing. Pressed further, the president said, ‘We’re looking, we’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination.’”

This preliminary response is far more consistent with the preliminary nature of the investigation. “This is a breaking story, so it would not be surprising if, as more details come in, early reporting proves to be incomplete or inaccurate,” explained former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy. “At this early point, it is not clear from various videos in circulation whether Pretti had the gun in his possession at the time of the altercation, whether he had it but was disarmed by the agents during the struggle, or whether the Border Patrol agent who shot him saw Pretti either in possession of or reaching for a gun.”

Until basic facts like these are not only uncovered but proven, any judgment about the officer-involved shooting is, by definition, premature.

This principle is supported not only by reason and common sense, but also by the testimony of God’s word. Throughout Scripture, we find that God’s perfect justice is demonstrated, among other things, by the fact that he always delivers judgment in accord with all the facts.

Of course, it is not possible for God to judge with incomplete information, because he knows everything. But Scripture takes care to emphasize the factual basis for God’s judgments. In the final judgment before God’s great white throne, John records that “books were opened … and the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done” (Revelation 20:12). The point is that God records every person’s deeds and judges accordingly.

While God’s final judgment tarries, his common grace has established human governments to administer temporal justice (Romans 13:1-4). Because human rulers are creatures, they possess only a subset of the Creator’s knowledge, and their limited knowledge is further impeded by the corrupted state of their reason under sin. Therefore, even though human justice is a good gift from God, it falls far short of God’s perfect justice.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10), so the wiser human governments recognize their penultimate status. The omniscient Creator metes out perfect justice. Fallen, limited creatures fall short of that standard. Since human governments cannot administer justice with perfect knowledge, they ought to be humble about the judgments they render. They should not consider themselves incapable of errors in judgment.

Yet another conclusion follows. If human governments can err in judgment, and if they wish to avoid unjust outcomes, then they should institute safeguards to correct erroneous judgments. These safeguards are called due process, and they form an essential part of the American legal system by ensuring fairness and transparency. These neutral rules exist for the benefit of everyone, so that even neutral observers can affirm the justice of judgments reached through due process. But, as the term itself implies, it takes time to fulfill the requirements of “due process.”

Surprisingly, even the notion of due process finds a basis in God’s conduct in Scripture. As the omniscient Creator and Lord of all, God does not need to conduct an investigation or help his creatures understand his reasoning before he renders judgment. But, as a God who reveals himself to us, Scripture records how God does these very things.

A striking example occurs in Genesis 18-19. “The Lord appeared” (Genesis 18:1) to Abraham when “three men” (Genesis 18:2) arrived at his tent. The Lord stays to reveal his plan to Abraham (Genesis 18:20-33) while “two angels” (Genesis 19:1) then proceed to Sodom. “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave,” God explains, “I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know” (Genesis 18:20-21).

Of course, the “Judge of all the earth” (Genesis 18:25) already knew the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Lord has already claimed exhaustive knowledge of the “iniquity of the Amorites” in the covenant with Abraham, when he said their sins were “not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). The Lord did not need to embark upon this elaborate, physical, and confusing mission to Sodom to ascertain its sinful character.

Instead, the Lord’s mission served to reveal his plan to Abraham, eliciting Abraham’s prophetic intercession and his affirmation of God’s justice (Genesis 18:25). It served to expose the utter depravity of the Sodomites in the most undeniable way (Genesis 19:4-11). And it provided the means for Lot’s deliverance, demonstrating that “the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment” (2 Peter 2:9).

God could have justly obliterated Sodom and Gomorrah with fire from heaven, with no further explanation to mankind. But he chose to act in the way that most clearly demonstrated his justice.

This is a consistent pattern of God’s action across Scripture. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, God knew their guilt immediately, but he did not mention it immediately. Instead, his gentle questioning — “where are you?”; “who told you that you were naked?” — caused them to realize how their own actions exposed their guilt (Genesis 3:9-11). Likewise with Cain, God does not open with an accusation, but with a question, “Where is your brother?” (Genesis 4:9).

This pattern even continues through God’s messengers, the prophets. Nathan’s parable to David induces David to pronounce his own sentence before being confronted with his guilt (2 Samuel 12:5-6). Indeed, all of the prophetic books patiently lay out the argument to prove why God was just to send his people into exile, before the end finally arrives.

Thus, God provides an example of justice that is patient and unhurried. Because God is certain of ultimate victory, he does not immediately vindicate. God’s “due process,” as it were, is simply showing his work, so that outside observers may see and believe that his judgment is the right one.

Human rulers should take note. If the perfect judge can take time to “show his work,” how much more should his fallible creatures? Government officials should investigate the facts before making judgments. And, if they want to be taken seriously, government critics should follow the same policy.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

State, County, and City Officials Nixing ‘Sanctuary’ Policies to Avoid Trump Admin. Ire

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As President Donald Trump and his administration continue enforcing federal immigration law, several “sanctuary” jurisdictions have opted to reverse course and rescind policies barring state and local police from assisting federal agents. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem announced on Monday that Nevada has been removed from the Trump administration’s public list of “sanctuary” jurisdictions after 17 sheriffs, under the leadership of Governor Joe Lombardo (R), recommitted to cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), honoring ICE detainers, and assisting in the arrests of illegal immigrants.

“When others cower, real leaders step up. I applaud the Nevada Sheriffs’ & Chiefs’ Association and Governor [Lombardo] for their commitment to working with [ICE] to protect American citizens from dangerous criminal illegal aliens,” Noem said in a social media post. “Because of their efforts, Nevada has been removed from the Trump Administration’s sanctuary jurisdiction list. I encourage every leader across our nation to follow their example so that all Americans can live in peace and safety.”

In August, the Department of Justice (DOJ) published a list of “sanctuary” jurisdictions, which included Nevada and 11 other states. In a letter to Noem, the sheriffs of Carson City, Las Vegas, and Churchill, Douglas, Elko, Esmerelda, Eureka, Humboldt, Lander, Lincoln, Lyon, Mineral, Nye, Pershing, Storey, Washoe, and White Pine Counties confirmed that their offices will cooperate with ICE in matters of immigration law enforcement. “We are committed to ensuring our jurisdictions are in full compliance with federal and state laws, especially when it comes to immigration enforcement actions in support of the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts,” the sheriffs wrote. “Our commitment is to serve and protect the communities of Nevada, prioritizing public safety and professionalism. Sheriffs of NV and NV Sheriffs’ and Chiefs’ Association shares federal law enforcement’s zero tolerance policy for criminals endangering Nevada communities.”

Baltimore County in Maryland also rescinded “sanctuary” policies in an effort to be removed from the DOJ’s list. County officials signed a memorandum of understanding late last month pledging to cooperate with ICE, although state leadership still largely opposes the president’s immigration agenda. “Despite restrictions from state leadership, Baltimore County has shown a willingness to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a statement. “This is a small step toward restoring public safety and we appreciate the county’s commitment to updating its policies.”

Since signing the memorandum, Baltimore County has been removed from the DOJ’s list. According to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), Maryland released nearly 400 illegal immigrants from jails and prisons between October 1 of 2022 and February 6 of 2025, including at least one illegal immigrant released from the Baltimore County Detention Center despite having a homicide conviction or charge. Maryland’s Gaithersburg Police Department and Howard County Detention Center also both released illegal immigrants who had either homicide convictions or homicide charges.

Earlier this year, Mayor Craig Greenberg (D) of Louisville, Kentucky, also rescinded “sanctuary” policies, in the face of action from the federal government. Although Greenberg insisted that the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department (LMPD) is “not involved in enforcing federal immigration policy,” the mayor did agree to honor ICE detainers, when ICE asks state or local police to keep an illegal immigrant already jailed for committing a crime jailed for an extended period so that ICE can safely take custody of the illegal immigrant in a law enforcement facility. “The federal government’s 48-hour detainer is standard practice for the State of Kentucky’s Department of Corrections today. It was also standard practice for Louisville Metro Corrections until 2017. We are currently the only city in Kentucky that doesn’t follow this practice,” Greenberg confessed. “Metro Corrections will begin honoring 48-hour federal detainers as soon as practical because the stakes are too high. In turn, Louisville will no longer be considered a ‘sanctuary city’ by the federal government.”

Greenberg also noted that his administration decided to comply with federal law in order to avoid federal lawsuits and targeted action by ICE. “Cities on the sanctuary city list right now are experiencing a terrifying increase in raids by ICE, including mass raids,” the mayor said. “From the data I’ve reviewed, we’re talking about under 100 inmates at our jail each year who are charged with crimes and affected by detainers. We have tens of thousands of immigrant families in Louisville. We do not want to see highly coordinated and often violent federal enforcement action here…”

In comments to The Washington Stand, Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, suggested, “The simplest thing states and localities can do to avoid preventable crimes is to allow ICE into their prisons to pick up known criminal aliens who are about to be released following their criminal detention.” She explained, “Border Czar Tom Homan has said countless times that if sanctuary jurisdictions refuse to allow ICE into their prisons, ICE must go into the community in which the sanctuary jurisdiction released the criminal alien to take custody. This requires more planning, more agents, and resources.” Ries added, “It also endangers the agents, the alien, and community members if the alien, community members, and/or protestors refuse to cooperate with ICE or interfere with the agents.”

“The federal government should withhold federal funds from states and localities that hinder federal agents from carrying out federal laws. The Justice Department has placed several jurisdictions on notice that they may lose federal funds if they do not change their sanctuary policies,” Ries observed. “These three jurisdictions have realized the seriousness of the consequences and are course correcting to do the bare minimum — hold a criminal alien for up to an additional 48 hours for ICE to pick them up,” she continued. “It’s time for all named jurisdictions on the DOJ sanctuary list to do the same to protect their own citizens and uphold the rule of law.”

Jessica Vaughan, director of Policy Studies for CIS, told TWS, “Sanctuary policies are a serious public safety problem, and especially concerning because they are adopted for purely political reasons.” She explained, “The biggest problem is that they inevitably result in the release of criminal aliens who were arrested for local crimes and otherwise would be taken straight into ICE custody if not for the policies forced on the law enforcement agencies. We know from ICE records that a significant number (about 1/4) will commit another crime in the first few months after release (‘Rejecting Detainers, Endangering Communities’). More will re-offend if they are allowed to remain on the streets here.”

Vaughan continued, “In addition, sanctuary policies force ICE officers to do their work on the streets instead of in a secure location like a jail. This results in the kind of chaotic and dangerous situations we’re now seeing in Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, and other places.”

“While many local governments see the light after tragedies happen, like the Laken Riley case, it’s clear that the diehard sanctuaries like Chicago and Boston will never abandon their policies on their own,” Vaughan observed. “That’s why it’s important for the federal government to impose consequences. Louisville and Baltimore County and a number of other jurisdictions have done the right thing, and hopefully others will follow suit.”

The DOJ’s “sanctuary” jurisdiction list currently includes California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, the District of Columbia, Cook County (Ill.), San Diego County (Calif.), San Francisco County (Calif.), Albuquerque, Berkeley (Calif.), Boston, Chicago, Denver, East Lansing (Mich.), Hoboken (N.J.), Jersey City (N.J.), Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, Newark (N.J.), Paterson (N.J.), Philadelphia, Portland, Rochester (N.Y.), Seattle, and San Francisco City.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Feds Open Fire On Armed Suspect In Chicago After Drivers Allegedly Ram, Box Them In

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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a Saturday incident in Chicago involving border patrol agents who were “attacked and rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars” and “forced” to open fire on an armed woman.

No law enforcement officers were seriously harmed during the incident, according to authorities. The FBI is on the scene of what is described as an “evolving situation” which followed a week of the suspects doxing federal officers online, according to DHS. The agency condemned the apparent use of vehicles against law enforcement on Thursday after DHS said “illegal aliens” targeted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers with cars during two separate incidents in Chicago.

“While conducting routine patrolling in the greater Broadview area, near the same area of Chicago that law enforcement was assaulted yesterday, our brave law enforcement officers were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars this morning,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a Saturday statement. “Agents were unable to move their vehicle and exited the car. One of the drivers who rammed the law enforcement vehicle was armed with a semi-automatic weapon. Law enforcement was forced to deploy their weapons and fired defensive shots at an armed U.S. citizen who drove herself to the hospital to get care for wounds.”

ICE launched “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago and across Illinois on Sept. 8 to target illegal migrants who “flocked” to the region due to its sanctuary laws, according to DHS. Local politicians, including Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, have railed against the Trump administration for these efforts. In addition, many riots have broken out across the region.

DHS arrested more than 800 illegal migrants throughout the operation, “including [the] worst of the worst criminals,” the agency announced on Wednesday.

The agency repeatedly noted ICE agents are being targeted around the U.S. as they continue to carry out President Donald Trump’s promise to deport illegal migrants. By comparison, illegal migration hit record highs under the Biden administration.

“Comparing ICE day-in and day-out to the Nazi Gestapo, the Secret Police, and slave patrols has consequences. The men and women of ICE and CBP are fathers and mothers, sons and daughters,” McLaughlin continued. “They get up every morning to try and make our communities safer. Like everyone else, they just want to go home to their families at night.”

AUTHOR

Audrey Streb

DCNF Energy Reporter

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All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Trump Admin. Sends Federal Troops, Anti-Terrorism Units to Protect ICE against Antifa Violence

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After weeks of violence against conservatives and federal law enforcement, President Donald Trump is deploying the military to protect federal agents carrying out his immigration agenda. In response to riots outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Portland, the president announced Saturday that he is deploying soldiers to deal with what he characterized as the Antifa mob.

“At the request of Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post. “I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary,” he added. Trump formally declared Antifa a domestic terrorist organization earlier this year.

Earlier this summer, left-wing activists began demonstrating outside an ICE detention center in Portland’s South Waterfront district. The demonstrations quickly became violent, escalating into open conflicts against law enforcement earlier this month, fueled by armed Antifa activists. Rioters burned American flags and even erected guillotines and threatened to kill ICE agents and police officers protecting them. On September 24, Portland officials claimed that ICE agents violated zoning codes with their operation of the detention facility; the very next day, a sniper opened fire on an ICE detention center in Dallas. On Sunday, federal agents began making arrests, carrying Antifa activists off the streets and incarcerating them in the ICE detention center.

Democrats in Oregon, however, have pledged to resist the president’s law enforcement efforts and maintain Portland’s status as a “sanctuary city.” Governor Tina Kotek, Attorney General Dan Rayfield, and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson filed a lawsuit in federal court, attempting to block the president from mobilizing an estimated 200 National Guardsmen in the city. “Oregon communities are stable, and our local officials have been clear: we have the capacity to manage public safety without federal interference,” Rayfield said in a statement, after roughly two months of rioting in his city.

The lawsuit comes just weeks after Judge Charles Breyer of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California determined that the president’s mobilization of California’s National Guard earlier this year in response to violent anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles was likely unconstitutional. The Trump administration has appealed Breyer’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In addition to the president’s deployment of federal troops to Portland, Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller announced Saturday that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) would also be mobilizing its Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), led by the FBI, to counter Antifa forces and protect ICE agents and operations across the country. “We are witnessing domestic terrorist sedition against the federal government,” Miller clarified. “All necessary resources will be utilized.”

“I have witnessed the continued onslaught of violence perpetrated against ICE officers across our country. The Department of Justice will not stand idly by in the face of such lawlessness,” Bondi stated in a social media announcement. “I am also instructing the Joint Terrorism Task Forces across the country to disrupt and investigate all entities and individuals engaged in acts of domestic terrorism, including the repeated acts of violence and obstruction against federal agents,” she continued. “The Department of Justice will seek the most serious available charges against all participants in these criminal mobs, including conspiracy offenses, assault offenses, civil disorder offenses, and terrorism offenses.”

“These are not peaceful protests. These are coordinated attacks by radical extremists, and they end now,” the attorney general declared in a separate video posted to social media. “Anyone who threatens or assaults our federal officers will be arrested and charged federally, not in some liberal state court. The same goes for anyone who is funding and aiding these extremists. You will be dismantled brick by brick.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, recounted, “Portland saw nightly violence in 2020 as Antifa and affinity groups attacked federal agents and property. Any arrests by law enforcement were followed by pro-crime prosecutors, and judges, supported by political leaders, quickly releasing the rioters in time for them to return the next night to commit more violence.” She observed, “Antifa has been committing more nightly violence in Portland throughout this year too, but the media has not covered it.”

“Mere words calling for an end to inciting rhetoric and violence will not work to stop Antifa riots. Rather, the violence has escalated,” Ries pointed out. “Only federal arrests, federal prosecutions, convictions, and severe sentences will stop the immediate violent rioting. But to prevent the next cohort of rioters, the Trump administration will need to identify the funders and organizers, freeze their funds, prosecute them, and pursue severe sentences. In a word, consequences.”

Rioters have also been targeting ICE agents, facilities, and operations in the Chicago suburb of Broadview. The Washington Stand previously reported that left-wing activists have barricaded entrances and exits to the Broadview ICE center, attacked federal vehicles, and called for the killing of ICE agents. Starting Saturday evening, U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino led USBP agents in forcibly dispersing rioters. Bovino ordered rioters to leave the streets outside the Broadview ICE facility; those who didn’t were shot with pepper ball projectiles, and stragglers were arrested. Later in the evening, pepper spray and tear gas were used against rioters who refused to disperse. According to footage from Border Hawk News, the mob was “crushed” and “sent running for the hills” Saturday night.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

What Is the ‘Root Cause’ of Crime?

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As President Donald Trump seeks to bolster law enforcement in America’s most crime-ridden cities, a shocking public transit murder caught on camera threatens to steer the conversation sideways. On August 22, a young Ukrainian refugee, Iryna Zarutska, was minding her own business on a Charlotte commuter train, when a hooded man, who happened to be black — a complete stranger with a history of mental illness and a long rap sheet — stole up behind her and stabbed her to death. The coldblooded killing kickstarted a conflagration of commentary about not only the solution to crime, but also its root causes.

“We will never arrest our way out [of] issues such [as] homelessness and mental health,” insisted Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles (D). So, instead of “villainizing those who struggle with their mental health or those who are unhoused,” she declared, Zarutska’s murder “should force us to look at what we are doing across our community to address root causes.”

These comments naturally produced fierce criticism from conservatives. By framing the issue as one of homelessness and mental health instead of crime, Lyles cast the true problem as an unavoidable side-effect of other social ills, refused to do anything about it, and vilified all homeless and mentally ill people in the process. “If, instead of being out on the streets, he had been in prison, this would not have happened,” argued National Review’s Charlie Cooke, in an exemplary critique. “Or, to put it another way: If the authorities had done their jobs, they could absolutely have ‘arrested their way out of’ this murder.”

Readers can find many such critiques online; this article proposes to engage with Lyles’ deeper allusion to the “root causes” of social ills. She deserves credit for raising the deeper question, even if it was only a political expedient, and even if diving deeper soon led her beyond her depth.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Apostle James, writing by the Holy Spirit, asked and answered a substantively similar question, in Tuesday’s reading of the Stand on the Word Bible reading plan. “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?” (James 4:1).

Adherents of expressive individualism — the dominant cultural philosophy in the contemporary West — believe all meaning is derived with reference to the internal self (and particularly one’s internal feelings). Here is the rare opportunity where that instinct is correct. The search for a “root cause” to human strife and misery leads inevitably back to the sinful passions of the human heart.

A skeptic may wonder whether “passions at war within” a person can really provide a sufficient explanation for a senseless murder. In fact, that’s the first example James employs, “You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel” (James 4:2).

It’s unlikely that James intends to state that members of Christian audience have committed literal murder. Instead, this is likely one of many allusions in James’s short letter to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus teaches that anger is the heart equivalent of murder (Matthew 5:22). The apostle John also echoed the Master’s teaching when he stated, “everyone who hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15).

In other words, it doesn’t take an involved study of homelessness or mental illness to locate the “root causes” for crimes such as murder. Wherever anger and hatred are present — as in every human heart — then the key ingredients are already detectable.

The question is, how will people respond when stimulated to anger or hatred? Will they lash out violently? Or will they war against these passions of their flesh? The progressive solution erases human responsibility, while this question accentuates it.

These themes — sinful desire, hatred, and individual responsibility — were all present in the very first murder. No sooner had creation fallen under the curse than Adam and Eve’s firstborn son laid violent hands upon his brother. Cain was angry because he desired what Abel received — God’s favor (Genesis 4:5). The Lord warned Cain that “sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, and you must rule over it” (Genesis 4:7). In other words, sin would try to control Cain, but he must not let it control him. Alas, Cain ignored God’s warning and received God’s curse (Genesis 4:8, 11).

There is nowhere further to go in exploring the “root causes” of crimes such as murder. Though created good, mankind has fallen into a wretched, sinful state. The question then becomes what, if anything, government can do about it.

Given the Bible’s teaching that evil deeds flow out of sinful human hearts, a human government can do little to correct the problem. Human magistrates have neither authority nor power over the soul. The best they can do is “bear the sword” as “an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4). Thus, magistrates can deter and prevent crime by arresting and punishing criminals. But they cannot resolve the “root cause” of crime, which is the sinful nature of post-Fall mankind.

However, this is one point where the gulf between and biblical worldview and progressivism (and liberalism) is at its widest. The materialist, secular philosophy dominant in American culture today holds that people are basically good. According to worldview researcher George Barna, “only half of American adults believe that everyone has sinned,” he said on “Washington Watch.”

A corollary to this belief is that humans only turn to crime when their nature is warped by external factors such as homelessness or mental illness (as Lyles expressed above). In other words, crime is not the criminal’s fault. While this claim may consistently apply secularism’s unprovable claims about human nature, it fails to persuade because it fails to adequately explain the observable fallenness of creation.

Nevertheless, some progressive ideologues are persuaded by this incomplete view of human nature, and they are applying their worldview to criminal justice practices in America’s largest cities. Unsurprisingly, the result of not holding criminals responsible for their crime has been an increase in crime. “We have to begin to restore the fundamental value of law enforcement, actually support them in the court systems, [and] quit making them the enemy,” pleaded security expert Tim Miller on “Washington Watch.”

Miller warned that the ultimate alternative to public order enforced by cops is not a cop-free anarchy, but a totalitarian crackdown welcomed by beleaguered citizens desperate to see safety restored. “We do not want the U.S. military or the National Guard to be the foundation for peace and security in our country,” he said.

In terms of Trump’s urban cleanup initiatives, this means that “the National Guard is like a strong antibiotic that’s dealing with an infection, or at least the symptoms of that infection,” said FRC President Tony Perkins. “It’s not a long term solution, but to come in and get things cleaned up to a point where it’s safer — I would take it in a heartbeat,” argued Kyle Campbell, single mother to two young daughters on “Washington Watch.” “We don’t understand why this political leadership is failing to keep its residents and citizens safe. They seem to really be adamant about not doing that.”

But “the true underlying issue is the spiritual decay in our country, and that can’t be addressed by the government,” Perkins added. “It’s going to be incumbent upon the church and Christians to really deal with the spiritual malaise in this country if we want to address the law-and-order issue.”

“The bottom line is, without repentance and revival, our country is doomed,” Miller agreed. “We have to have a restoration that values human life — all human life — and protects them.”

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

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The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Trump to Deploy Federal Agents to D.C. amid Crime Spike

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The nation’s capital city has become a hotbed for violent crime in recent years. Although city and federal officials have moved to curb the rise in murders, assaults, carjackings, and other offenses over the past two years, President Trump is taking more decisive and immediate action. According to multiple reports, the president has authorized federal law enforcement to patrol the streets of Washington, D.C. and may even send in the National Guard.

“Washington, D.C. is an amazing city, but it has sadly been plagued by violent crime for far too long. President Trump has directed an increased presence of federal law enforcement to protect innocent citizens,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement shared with media outlets. As of Thursday night, she said, “[T]here will be no safe harbor for violent criminals in D.C.”

U.S. Park Police will lead the federal policing initiative, assisted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA); Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF); and even Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. National Guard units have also been seen increasing in number around the D.C. Armory, according to several reports. The federal crackdown is expected to last a week.

Earlier this week, the president threatened to take federal control of D.C. in response to violent crime. The announcement came after 19-year-old U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee Edward Coristine was viciously beaten by at least eight individuals who were attempting to carjack a woman when he intervened to defend her. “If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they’re not going to get away with it anymore,” Trump warned. Multiple reports have stated that Coristine’s attackers were all or mostly minors, with some as young as 14 years old. The president said that minors involved in crime know “that they will be almost immediately released. They are not afraid of Law Enforcement because they know nothing ever happens to them…” He called on lawmakers to change the law in order “to prosecute these ‘minors’ as adults, and lock them up for a long time, starting at age 14.”

The new U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who also functions as Washington’s prosecutor, former New York judge Jeanine Pirro, said in a Wednesday night interview that the age of responsibility in D.C. needs to be lowered to 14 so that minors can be prosecuted as adults for committing violent crimes. “If you’re 14, 15, 16, or 17 years old, you get coddled, as you do in most American Democrat cities,” Pirro said. She noted, “None of them come to my office … because they’re not considered criminals. They go to family court, where the effort is rehabilitation.” Referring to the D.C. City Council, Pirro emphasized, “The president is right; they’ve got to stop their coddling. Number one, we’ve got to lower the age of responsibility to 14. I’m tired of having these kids commit crimes in their crews and gangs in D.C.”

“The council has this Youth Incarceration Act where we had a guy who shot a kid on a bus, not justified, with an illegal gun. You know what the sentence was? Probation. The judge said, ‘Go to college,’” Pirro recounted. She continued, “He took an illegal gun — he should be jailed for the illegal gun. Forget about the shooting — you put that on top of the gun. Then what we’ve got are kids who are out there, who are making fun of all of this, doing carjackings, and I can’t touch them because they want to protect that.” The prosecutor further noted that adult gang members will often recruit minors into their gangs in order to carry out the gang’s “dirty work” without facing serious penalties.

“Youth violence is on the rise, not just in D.C., but across the country,” Pirro pointed out. “And if you think that these kids need to be coddled and they need to be hugged — they need to have consequences,” she stressed. She continued, “They need to understand that enough is enough, that we’re going to put them in jail or some kind of youth rehabilitation detention facility and not allow the D.C. Council … to take cover for these kids. It’s time to end it.” Pirro added, “That’s what the president wants. That’s what we’re going to do.”

According to statistics compiled by D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), nearly 60% of carjackings in the nation’s capital are committed by minors. Since August of 2023, 56% of the over 330 individuals arrested for carjackings have been under the age of 18, most of them aged 15 or 16. Some were as young as 12. Carjackings have increased by 72% during the same period, while the rate of theft of unmanned vehicles has remained practically unchanged.

Violent crime reached a two-decade high in 2023 under Matthew Graves, then-President Joe Biden’s U.S. Attorney for D.C., who let nearly 70% of crimes go unprosecuted. In response to public backlash, Graves increased the number of prosecutions, and MPD data suggested that 2024 saw crime in the capital fall to a 30-year-low. In May, however, MPD Commander Michael Pulliam was placed on administrative leave after being accused of manipulating statistics to make the crime rate appear lower than it actually is. According to the D.C. Police Union, MPD leadership more broadly have been classifying violent crimes as less violent offenses to ensure that the violent crimes are not reported in either the MPD’s or the FBI’s statistics, artificially lowering the reported violent crime rate for the nation’s capital.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Violent Crime Spurs Calls for Trump to Federalize D.C.

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As violent crime surges in the nation’s capital, President Donald Trump is threatening to federalize Washington, D.C. if city authorities fail to control the streets. In a Truth Social post Tuesday night, the president declared violent crime in Washington to be “totally out of control.”

He explained, “Local ‘youths’ and gang members, some only 14, 15, and 16-years-old, are randomly attacking, mugging, maiming, and shooting innocent Citizens, at the same time knowing that they will be almost immediately released.” He added, “They are not afraid of Law Enforcement because they know nothing ever happens to them, but it’s going to happen now!” The president called on lawmakers to change the law in order “to prosecute these ‘minors’ as adults, and lock them up for a long time, starting at age 14.”

The president shared a photo of a young man sitting on the ground covered in blood, who Trump identified as D.C.’s “most recent victim” who “was beaten mercilessly by local thugs.” Staffers at the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) identified the pictured victim as Edward Coristine, a DOGE engineer. Fellow DOGE employee Marko Elez, who took the photo, reported that Coristine was beaten after he “protected a young woman from an attempted carjacking by 8 thugs near Dupont Circle.” Elez commented, “Violence like this in the heart of DC is completely unacceptable.”

“If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they’re not going to get away with it anymore,” the president threatened. Referring to Coristine, he continued, “Perhaps it should have been done a long time ago, then this incredible young man, and so many others, would not have had to go through the horrors of Violent Crime.” Trump added, “If this continues, I am going to exert my powers, and FEDERALIZE this City.”

Violent crime has been on the rise in D.C. for years, spiking to a 20-year-high in 2023 and earning D.C. the fifth-highest murder rate out of the country’s largest cities. The previous U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves, who functions as the city’s prosecutor, had refused to prosecute the majority (nearly 70%) of crimes in D.C. in 2022. Although Graves, in response to vocal criticism and backlash, did begin prosecuting more crimes, he still left nearly 60% of crimes unprosecuted.

In comments to The Washington Stand, Zack Smith, a senior legal fellow and criminal justice expert at the Heritage Foundation, said, “Congress currently has plenary authority over the District of Columbia but has delegated most of that authority to local officials via the Home Rule Act. Unfortunately, local officials have used that delegated authority to push radical policies, especially in the area of criminal justice.” He noted that D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) “is currently facing a historic staffing crisis.”

While there have been calls for Congress to revoke Home Rule, Smith observed that “the president can unilaterally take certain actions. For example, he has appointed a new U.S. Attorney for D.C.,” former New York Judge Jeanine Pirro. He continued, “The president has also instructed federal law enforcement in the District to vigorously enforce the law. And in limited circumstances, the president can directly place MPD under federal control.”

Smith continued, “Congress, though, should step in and make it easier for the U.S. Attorney to charge certain juvenile offenders as adults in certain circumstances.” He explained, “Right now, the locally-elected D.C. Attorney General has primary authority for prosecuting juveniles, and he has said that he will never prosecute a juvenile as an adult. This has led to perversive incentives with gangs recruiting young kids to commit very violent crimes — knowing the juveniles will receive only a slap on the wrist.”

Rafael Mangual, a Manhattan Institute fellow and a member of the Council on Criminal Justice, told TWS that D.C. “needs to address its police officer shortage without lowering standards. The city has already tried to close this gap by offering large bonuses, but more needs to be done to make the job more attractive.” He explained, “For that, everything needs to be on the table — including even higher pay, larger bonuses, and specialized tracks that make officers eligible for faster promotional tracks and higher pay scales (akin to what the military does through OCS) to entice highly qualified applicants to raise their hands.”

“Once the under-policing has been addressed, the city can follow the model of jurisdictions that have made significant progress on the crime control front by ensuring that police resources are intelligently deployed in response to granular, thoroughly analyzed data about where crime is concentrated,” Mangual suggested. He continued, “Good policing will require backup from local prosecutors who should be taking a data-driven approach to how it deploys prosecutorial resources.” He added, “Finally, the city needs to ensure it has the carceral capacity to incapacitate the high-rate, high-risk offenders the police are able to arrest.”

Despite a very public spat with the president just months ago, tech billionaire and former DOGE advisor Elon Musk openly sided with Trump on the issue of federalizing D.C. “A few days ago, a gang of about a dozen young men tried to assault a woman in her car at night in DC. A [DOGE] team member saw what was happening, ran to defend her and was severely beaten to the point of concussion, but he saved her,” Musk said in a social media post, referring to Coristine being beaten. He added, “It is time to federalize DC.”

Appearing on Wednesday night’s episode of “Washington Watch,” Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) said, “I’m incredibly disappointed, as is the president, and as, literally, I think every person in our nation should be disappointed by what we’re seeing in our capital city.” He continued, “The crime that is currently happening in our city is totally out of control. And we have seen it get worse and worse under the Democrats’ administration. You know, the city has been 95% Democrat for a very long time, and we have seen the results of it. We’ve seen a massive increase in crime, we’ve seen homelessness.”

“This city, it’s a disgrace — literally, to be the shining city on a hill, of liberty to the entire world — the way it’s run. And I think it’s time that Congress take it back,” Clyde emphasized. The congressman noted that although the president has some strong executive authorities over the capital city, only Congress can actually federalize D.C. “Congress should be the one approving every law, and if Congress doesn’t approve it, then it should be null and void,” Clyde stipulated. He continued, “But that’s not the way the Home Rule statute in 1973 was written. And so I think that’s a huge mistake, and I think we need a legislative fix to that.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Florida’s Crackdown on Child Predators Arrests Nearly 50 Pedophiles in Undercover Operation

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Florida and federal authorities have delivered a powerful blow against child predators, arresting nearly 50 pedophiles in a six-day undercover operation targeting online exploitation. Seven of those arrested are under Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainment, paving the way for federal custody and potential deportation proceedings.

The operation, described in a press release as yielding the “highest number of arrests ever made during this annual joint effort,” underscores what Florida officials call their unwavering commitment to protecting children from abuse. Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) emphasized the state’s resolve, stating, “I know the state attorney here is going to be doing the Lord’s work to make sure that these people go away for absolutely as long as possible.” Concerning “those that shouldn’t have even been in this country,” he added, “they’ll go back where they came from after they’ve served their time.” The seven on hold reportedly “traveled from Jamaica, El Salvador, Dubai, and India to the state of Florida with the intention to prey on children.”

The sting resulted in 153 charges, including 34 for “Traveling to Meet a Minor for Illegal Sexual Conduct,” five for “Human Trafficking,” 48 for “Using a Computer to Solicit a Child for Sexual Conduct,” and 14 for “Transmitting Material Harmful to a Minor,” among others. Uthmeier was unequivocal in his stance: “To go after young kids, there is no defense, there is no justification, there is no excuse.” He reaffirmed the operation’s ongoing nature, declaring, “It will not happen. It cannot happen in Florida, and we will work every day to make sure that we are getting every single one of these guys off the streets. When I took the oath of office six months ago, I told my team [that] going after child predators is priority one. We’ve got about 1,000 priorities, but it’s priority one.”

A significant focus of the operation was the social media platform Snapchat, where predators used various online chat and gaming platforms to target minors — who were, in this case, undercover officers. The press release highlighted the attorney general office’s lawsuit against Snapchat, filed in April, for “knowingly and willingly violating” Florida law, including protections under HB3 and the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. The lawsuit accuses Snapchat of misleading parents about the platform’s risks to children.

Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods praised the operation’s success while sounding a sobering note. “My office routinely conducts these types of operations. With each operation, we catch more and more. The number of offenders only goes up.” He urged parents to monitor their children’s online activity, adding, “Parents, we will never arrest every single one of them. You have to know what your child is doing online, and children have to know what dangers are lurking online. As a Sheriff and as a father, I understand the anger and disgust a parent has towards these types of individuals. I assure you that we will continue to attack this plague head on.”

State Attorney for the Fifth Judicial Circuit Bill Gladson lauded the operation’s impact, stating, “I had the privilege of being able to see this operation firsthand, and it was nothing short of remarkable. Sheriff Woods and his deputies did an outstanding job catching and removing 40 predators from the Central Florida community. A special thank you to Attorney General James Uthmeier and the Office of Statewide Prosecution for their commitment to keeping our community safe.”

Joseph Backholm, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement, commended the successful operation in a comment to The Washington Stand. “It’s wonderful that Florida and other law enforcement agencies around the country are dealing with this seriously,” he said. However, Backholm used this as an opportunity to explain how, “if we really want it to stop it, we have to be honest about where it’s coming from.”

As he explained, “The problem of human trafficking begins where all sin begins, with pride. Once you decide you are more important than others, it’s not hard to decide that other people should serve your needs. Human trafficking and sexual exploitation are the worst examples of this, but far from the only examples.” Backholm emphasized, “We either want virtue, or we don’t.”

Ultimately, he continued, “We live in a confused moment where we celebrate sexual liberty and decry the results of sexual liberty. People are told to do what ‘makes you happy,’ and then they’re told to stop doing what makes them happy. The right answer, of course, is to do what you were created for, and you will find happiness along the way.” And yet, Backholm argued that “most of the time, doing what you were created for requires not doing the thing that offers immediate pleasure.”

“[W]e want to arrest predators,” Backholm concluded, “but we’re going to continue create more predators if we don’t rethink the path to happiness and stop pretending that evil,” in any form, “is good.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washigton Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Tolerating Riots Hurts Cops, Leads to Lawlessness

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An inability to squelch riots is a feature of a failing, or at least a flailing, nation. The U.S. has been struggling with this problem for a decade now, and police and urban-dwelling Americans are paying the highest price.

I covered the Baltimore riots in April of 2015, which erupted after Freddie Gray died in police custody, and left a smoldering CVS pharmacy, a few other battered buildings, and a general sense that masked men can get away with a lot more than we once thought. We later learned the city leaders purposefully allowed the rioting. They told police to stand down. As many of these cases are, this one was marked by ambiguity and missing details around the death, lots of anger, and the aforementioned riots that burned down parts of the city and left several injured — including me.

But this story is not about me or my black eye 10 years ago. It is about the trend, from Baltimore and Ferguson to the 2020 BLM riots that swept the nation with little to no consequences, to the anti-ICE riots that sprang up in Los Angeles and elsewhere and persist in Portland, where several were arrested earlier this week. ICE agents now face gunfire, rocks, and public condemnation from Democrats.

After the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, there were reports of nationwide police discouragement and a spike in violent crime in many places. This phenomenon occurred again in the aftermath of the 2020 riots. Police turnover increased as cops were maligned as racist. Meanwhile, violent crime spiked. Over the last decade, anecdotal evidence suggests police officers pulled back from high-crime neighborhoods, many fearful of becoming the next scapegoat for perceived institutional racism.

I discussed this topic and more on the “Outstanding” podcast with Jason Johnson, a former cop who now serves as president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund. Sam McCarthy, a writer for the Washington Stand who covers these topics, also joined us on the podcast.

“It devastated police morale,” Johnson said of the 2020 riots, “pretty much everywhere, to the point where there’s the immediate impact of surging crime. Crime surged in 2020 … [and] homicide numbers went up in 2020 pretty much everywhere — some places significantly, 70% in a one-year increase.” He continued, “We actually published a study on this very recently where we retrospectively looked at this data. We looked at the crime numbers, and then we looked at measures of police productivity. So when you think about hardworking police officer,” he prompted, “what do you think about them doing? You think about them making arrests, right? If you’re out there looking for criminals, you’re probably going to find them and you’re probably going to make an arrest or at least stop a stop, a traffic stop or a stop of a suspicious person. Traditionally, that’s how we kind of measured how productive our law enforcement officers are and how much work they’re doing,” Johnson explained. “And what we found was those numbers move in opposite directions. So the measures of police productivity in 2020 went down very sharply … [because] police are on the defensive.”

So, how should we think about this as Christians?

A few years ago, in a moment of uncharacteristic diligence, I memorized Romans 13. Take a look at this section:

“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing” (Romans 13:1-6).

A few key takeaways: First, God considers government officials ministers of his wrath. Ministers. Extensions of his will. Second, God accepts punishing wrongdoers as a key and godly function of otherwise pagan governments.

Presumably, ungodly governments are at the very least expected to maintain the rule of law so that society can function and the gospel can be preached until Jesus returns and permanently manifests his more perfect governance. Inherent in this text is the idea that God supports police and doesn’t want to defund them, though reform is always an option. On top of that, God is angry at criminals and sees them as worthy of wrath — not simply victims of society and merely in need of rehabilitation. Lastly, government officials who deal with criminals, including police, are worthy of a certain amount of respect as ministers of God’s will, even if they don’t acknowledge God or walk in His ways. The Romans at the time of Paul’s writing certainly didn’t.

Of course, police must act justly. There are plenty of admonitions in Scripture about treating people, and particularly the downtrodden, with justice. But in the nation’s zeal for justice, many have forgotten the God-designed and vital role of police and the respect they deserve as a result.

“As long as you as long as you earn the respect, you will be respected,” Johnson said of these officers. “All that was taken away, and they said, ‘No, don’t respect these authority figures. They’re not good. And that that is the message that has been pumped out through popular media and throughout social media that so many young people are influenced by.”

Johnson said that because of the media narrative against police, becoming an officer “just didn’t have the same luster it had.”

“That That’s the reason that I was attracted to law enforcement. It seems like a way to do good in so many different ways. And they took that away.

Johnson made the point that young people are not as attracted to becoming officers because of the cultural narrative.

“It’s very simple. … [T]he people who have influence in our culture have to speak out about the positives of law enforcement and as a career as a profession, that it really is a good thing. It’s a good thing to do if you want to create a positive force in your community. And so, I think it’s as simple as that.”

AUTHOR

Casey Harper

Casey Harper is managing editor for broadcast for The Washington Stand and host of the Outstanding podcast.

RELATED ARTICLE: Anti-ICE Violence Escalates to Doxing, Threatening Officers at Home

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Active Shooter Reportedly Ambushes Border Patrol Agents

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An active shooter with a rifle and tactical gear reportedly shot at Border Patrol agents arriving at an annex facility in Texas on Monday, injuring one local police officer, according to multiple reports.

Police and border agents shot and killed the gunman, who has not been identified, at a McAllen Texas Border Patrol building, Fox News and CNN reported, citing law enforcement sources. Authorities believe the shooting was an intentional attack on border officials.

No border agents were harmed in the shooting, but a McAllen police officer was reportedly wounded and is in stable condition.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

This is a breaking story and will be updated. 

AUTHOR

Hudson Crozier

DCNF Crime and Extremism Reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Historic U.S. Child Rescue: 60 Missing, Trafficked Children Saved in Florida Operation

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Florida’s “Operation Dragon Eye” was successful in rescuing 60 children who were missing, endangered, or victims of human trafficking, state officials announced Monday.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) said in a press briefing: “We are here to announce the most successful completion of the largest child rescue operation, not just in Florida history, but in the United States history.” As he went on to say, “Protecting our kids and keeping Florida the safest state to raise a family is our number one priority. Today is a result of the hard work to deliver on that promise.”

For two intense weeks, the U.S. Marshals Service, in collaboration with Florida state and local authorities, conducted a sweeping operation across Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco counties in the Tampa Bay area. This coordinated effort united 20 federal, state, and local agencies, mobilizing over 100 law enforcement officers, investigators, and support personnel. The children, ranging in age from 9 to 17, were found in a variety of dire circumstances, including situations involving human trafficking, abduction, and endangerment. Upon rescue, each child received immediate medical evaluations and psychological support to address the physical and emotional trauma they had endured.

U.S. Marshal William Berger revealed the operation’s dual mission: to locate and rescue vulnerable children while targeting the criminal networks responsible for their exploitation. “[E]xperience tells us,” he noted, “if the offenders are not apprehended, they will reconnect with these children.” The team arrested eight predators, charging them with heinous crimes including human trafficking, child endangerment, and drug trafficking. Bonds for these offenders ranged from no bond to a staggering $250 million.

Fox News reported that “The operation uncovered the gut-wrenching realities of sex trafficking — including several young girls who were pregnant, one of them carrying the child of her trafficker.” According to authorities, the investigation is ongoing “and additional charges may follow.”

In a statement, Uthmeier, speaking as both state attorney general and a father of three, underscored the mission’s heart. “The real heroes behind this operation are the law enforcement who built and executed this mission,” he said. “As your Attorney General and a father of three young kids, protecting children is my top priority. If you victimize children, you’re going to prison, end of story.”

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) Commissioner Mark Glass captured the operation’s profound impact. “Sixty kids saved,” he said. “That number sends the message that Florida will never be a safe place for traffickers. At FDLE, we will continue to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. And to any family still missing their child, we will never stop searching until we make sure they are brought home safely.”

Berger’s final words echoed the operation’s unprecedented scale: “[T]he successful recovery of 60 missing children, complemented with the arrest of eight individuals, including child predators, signifies the most successful missing child recovery effort in the history of the United States Marshals Service; or to my knowledge, any other similar operation held in the United States.”

According to The Child Crime Prevention and Safety Center, roughly 840,000 U.S. children are reported missing annually. And Florida, with its large population and major transportation hubs, has long been a haven for traffickers seeking to exploit vulnerable populations. As such, while “Operation Dragon Eye” marks a significant triumph, authorities warn that human trafficking remains a pervasive threat. In 2024 alone, Florida received over 1,830 trafficking signals, leading to the identification of 1,874 victims, many of them minors lured through manipulation or online platforms, as reported by Fox.

In response, Florida has intensified its efforts. Governor Ron DeSantis (R) recently allocated $4.9 million to expand emergency shelter beds and staff support for trafficking victims, alongside $900,000 in grant funding for the FDLE. As DeSantis previously affirmed, “Florida is being proactive about stopping human trafficking.”

Mary Szoch, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity, praised the operation’s monumental success in a statement to The Washington Stand. “Attorney General James Uthmeier should be commended for his commitment to upholding the dignity of every human being,” she said. “The rescue of these 60 trafficked children is a huge accomplishment for the state of Florida.”

Szoch concluded with a call to action: “Every single person’s life matters, and no one should be exploited as if he or she was an object. We should all continue to pray for the well-being of these 60 children, and we should thank God for the work they are doing in Florida to uphold the sanctity of life in all of its stages.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

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The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

EXCLUSIVE: Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers Still Awaiting Justice 3 Years After Firebombing, Vandalism Spree

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The FBI has yet to solve at least five cases it opened into arson attacks targeting pro-life pregnancy centers in 2022, according to an investigation by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Biden FBI offered cash rewards in 2022 for information on suspects responsible for firebombings around the country, mainly directed at pro-life facilities, after the preemptive May 2 leak of a Supreme Court ruling that overturned the abortion precedent established by Roe v. Wade. Five local FBI field offices told the DCNF that the bureau is still offering the incentive for cases in Colorado, North Carolina, Washington state, Oregon and New York, indicating suspects were never found or convicted.

The FBI’s Seattle field office told the DCNF that it’s typical for the bureau to update or delete the bulletins asking the public for information if suspects are caught, and if they’re on the website, the FBI is still looking for answers. The FBI’s national press office did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Enforce The Law Equally’

One targeted facility’s CEO, Jim Harden, told the DCNF he got a phone call from an employee around two in the morning on June 7, 2022, that changed his life. The Amherst, New York, building that was home to his organization CompassCare was set ablaze in what was eventually determined to be arson. The FBI released footage showing what it said were two suspects arriving in a car at night and throwing Molotov cocktails at the building.

Harden’s team had been on high alert that summer, having already contacted the FBI over concerns about a heightened risk of violence. Soon after the fire, he moved with his wife and children to flee an onslaught of threats against them as extremists lashed out at CompassCare, a Christian nonprofit providing free medical care to pregnant mothers to steer them away from abortion.

“Our lives are very different now,” he said in an interview with the DCNF. “We had to relocate our family … we had people riding past our house pointing guns at our kids.”

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said in April that there were more than 200 cases of pregnancy resource centers “violently attacked by activists with no action by law enforcement, federal or state” in the past several years. Family Research Council documented almost 50 instances of vandalism and other attacks on pregnancy centers and pro-life organization buildings from May through June 2022.

“I can say we are taking them seriously now and will be for the duration,” Dhillon told the DCNF about such cases. Dillon declined to comment about any specific prosecutions that may be ongoing or forthcoming.

“This Department of Justice is committed to protecting crisis pregnancy centers, pro-life organizations and places of worship from targeted acts of violence and will work to ensure justice is served to criminals who engage in this unlawful behavior,” a DOJ spokesperson said in response to questions about the unsolved cases.

The spree of violence even resulted in arson at a Portland pregnancy center run by a self-professed pro-choice woman in July 2022. As in the five cases involving pro-life groups, the FBI told the DCNF it is still offering a reward for information. The Dobbs opinion leak, which was investigated but never solved, also inspired an assassination attempt on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh near his home.

The Portland facility did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The other pregnancy centers with unsolved cases in Longmont, Colorado and Portland did not respond to multiple requests for comment, while one in Seattle declined to comment.

Harden, the CompassCare CEO, said the pro-abortion Biden administration seemed apathetic about solving the cases, despite the FBI interviewing him about the Amherst bombing. He recalled reaching out and asking urgently for updates, leading to a moment when he said an FBI agent “was screaming” over the phone that the bureau was not required to update him.

“Their job was to enforce the law equally,  and it did not appear as if they were doing so,” Harden said.

‘Mountain Of Evidence’

While announcements about pro-abortion vandalism cases were scarce, the Biden administration boasted in press releases about several prosecutions of pro-life activists under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for protesting at abortion clinics. On his first week in office, President Donald Trump pardoned nearly two dozen pro-lifers accused of federal crimes.

Former Attorney General Merrick Garland explained the discrepancy in March 2023 by telling Congress that “it is quite easy” to identify and charge pro-lifers protesting in daylight.

“Those who are attacking the pregnancy resources centers, which is a hard thing to do, are doing this at night in the dark,” Garland said.

Harden did not — and does not — buy Garland’s explanation whatsoever.

“There’s a mountain of evidence,” Harden said of the vandals, noting that the authorities can search for license plate numbers, body mechanic imagery and cell phone IP addresses. “It’s just not possible they don’t know who they are. The FBI [is] the most technically advanced law enforcement agency on the planet.”

Some attacks on pro-life centers in 2022 were linked to a leftist group called Jane’s Revenge, with activists posting online threats in response to news about the leaked Dobbs decision. The FBI said the CompassCare vandals left the spray-painted message, “Jane was here.”

Harden told the DCNF his Amherst building was repaired at “miraculous” speed in 52 days thanks in part to volunteer workers, but the damage cost millions of dollars.

The attack inspired Harden to become more outspoken about political issues via media interviews. He also launched a campaign on a pro-life platform to fill Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik’s House seat in a New York special election. Stefanik announced she would remain in her role in April after Trump pulled her nomination to represent the U.S. in the United Nations.

‘Heart Problem’

Paula McSwain, executive director of the Crisis Pregnancy Center in Lincolnton, North Carolina, told the DCNF she received a letter from the FBI in August 2024 saying its investigation into arson at her building in June 2022 was closed. Surveillance footage showed someone at nighttime throwing what the FBI said was a Molotov cocktail.

The Lincolnton case is one of several for which the FBI is still offering a reward for information on any suspects, according to the bureau’s Charlotte field office.

McSwain said she was fortunate enough to get the pregnancy center up and running fairly easily.

“If they wanted to destroy the building, they could have done a better job,” McSwain told the DCNF.

The pro-life leader decided to respond to her ordeal by limiting public outcry.

“That’s what they were seeking, was attention,” McSwain said of the vandals.

Harden and McSwain said that if they could give any message to their attackers, it would be one of forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

“If you throw fire at any building, you’ve got a heart problem and there’s something not right with your life … We don’t seek revenge, we just pray for them,” McSwain said.

“The only reason I can forgive you is because forgiveness has been made available to me, and so I would encourage you to come out of the darkness and into the light,” Harden said his words to the criminals would be.

“Nothing is going to go unpunished if it’s sin,” Harden said.

AUTHOR

Hudson Crozier

DCNF Crime and Extremism Reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Legal Group Joining Anti-Tesla Movement Has Violent, Far-Left History

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A legal organization with ties to the far-left Antifa movement has joined forces with anti-Tesla activists angry about CEO Elon Musk’s role in the Trump administration.

The Oregon-based Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC) has been giving virtual training to groups leading anti-Tesla protests. The CLDC is known to help alleged Antifa agitators fight charges in court, adheres to their anti-police ideology and lost one of its volunteer workers in a shootout with law enforcement in 2019.

“It’s time to be strategic and effective, but it’s not time to be afraid or silenced,” CLDC Executive Director Lauren Regan told a virtual audience in a March 19 “Tesla Takedown” video call. She warned that protesters should be aware of their “geography” to avoid getting arrested.

“There are going to be some areas of the country that are very conservative and are going to be hard on dissidents or activists no matter what the timing, and then there are other places that are going to be less so,” Regan said.

The CLDC did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

A post shared by #TeslaTakedown (@tesla.takedown)

The CDLC came under scrutiny in 2019 after its volunteer worker Charlie Landeros was fatally shot by police at his daughter’s middle school.

Landeros had come to the school in a fit of rage over custody decisions related to his daughter and ex-wife and began firing a handgun at an officer who confronted him before another officer killed him, according to a district attorney’s investigation that found no wrongdoing by police. The district attorney also revealed the FBI had received a tip about Landeros allegedly “posting violent anti-government messages on social media” such as, “time to start killing pigs,” referring to police officers.

The CLDC earned criticism from pro-police advocates for claiming Landeros’s death was not investigated thoroughly. The group casted suspicion by emphasizing that “people of color are disproportionately the victims of police violence.”

Among other past clients, the CLDC defended Antifa supporter Alissa Azar after Oregon prosecutors accused her of inciting a protest that devolved into a brawl between leftists and right-wing Proud Boys in 2021. The CLDC lost the case when a jury convicted Azar of felony riot and second-degree disorderly conduct, while deadlocking on a charge of illegal use of mace.

The CLDC later complained about Azar’s “dystopian” sentencing to 14 days in prison, saying she was just a “journalist” who was “truthfully reporting on the growing rise of fascist political violence and hate.”

Regan previously told a local newspaper she got her start in criminal defense work on behalf of environmental protesters who were arrested in 1997 for climbing on trees to stop them from getting cut down. She founded the CLDC under the pretense of keeping government authority in check after 9/11, according to the group’s “about” page.

An Antifa-linked “Stop Cop City” movement behind arson and attacks on police in Georgia in 2023 also drew the sympathy of the CLDC. The group declared in 2024 that “Cop City resisters” had been “labeled as ‘terrorists,’ even though none of them engaged in acts that fall within the federal definition.”

Through virtual video talks, the CLDC recently helped anti-Musk activists prepare for a “Global Day of Action” on March 29 that resulted in protests at Tesla facilities across the country and a few reports of assaults and violent threats from Tesla haters. Online organizers of the event with the “Tesla Takedown” movement said they “oppose violence, vandalism and destruction of property.”

TODAY: Man confronts anti-Tesla protester:

“I’m not voting Democrat again … because of the stuff that I’ve seen and the vandalism and all that stuff … I’d rather not vote than vote Democrat at this point. And I’ve voted Democrat for 25 years! So what does that tell you?” pic.twitter.com/L9L8MEI5S2

— Hudson Crozier 🇺🇸 (@Hudson_Crozier) March 29, 2025

“Tesla Takedown” does not appear to be a formal organization. The DCNF used the website’s contact form and did not receive a response.

The CLDC also reportedly gave a “know your rights training for activists” on March 21 in Eugene, Oregon with Indivisible, a left-wing group that participated in the March “Day of Action.” Indivisible did not respond to a request for comment.

An online warning from CLDC on March 26 gave anti-Musk and anti-Trump protesters instructions on how to deal with getting arrested or questioned by authorities.

“Our communities often cannot rely on or trust police, so we need to think, plan, and practice how we can help each other be safer,” the CLDC declared.

“Political movement participants do not cooperate or snitch to the State – which is often your political adversary,” the group said.

AUTHOR

Hudson Crozier

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.