Tag Archives: Chicago

News

Are there any consequences to taxpayers who live in “Sanctuary Cities”

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Crime rates in major cities, all Democrat-run
Crime rates in major cities, all run by Democrat mayors

I thought this story from the weekend was very interesting. Chicago is well known as a far left city. They have the toughest restrictions on legal firearm ownership and self-defense. They are extremely soft on criminals. And they are also a “sanctuary city”. That means that they refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement when they are dealing with illegal immigrants with criminal convictions.

Here’s the story from the Daily Wire:

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is on the defensive this weekend after Immigrations and Customs Enforcement announced that a convicted felon, now facing charges of sexually assaulting a toddler in a downtown Chicago McDonalds bathroom, was supposed to have been turned over to ICE and deported — and had been deported before.

“ICE said in a news release Thursday [Christopher] Puente was placed into Chicago police custody in June of 2019 after he was arrested for theft,” according to a Chicago ABC affiliate. “According to ICE, Chicago police were expected to hold Puente until he could be taken into their custody, as Puente was expected to be deported.”

Because Chicago is a so-called “Sanctuary City” and has lenient bail policies, Puente was released back into the community.

Puente is now charged with raping a 3-year-old girl in the bathroom of Chicago’s landmark “Rock & Roll McDonalds,” a major tourist destination just north of the city’s downtown, and just west of its “Magnificent Mile” shopping district. Puente allegedly lured the girl away from her father, who was attending to the girl’s brother inside a bathroom stall. Puente, police say, dragged the girl into his stall, locked the door, molested and assaulted her. The girl’s father, alerted by her screams, rescued her, but could not catch Puente, CPD says, who bolted from the bathroom and out the door of the McDonalds, into the street.

[…]Chicago’s branch of ICE says “Puente had been deported to Mexico in 2014 over a prior burglary conviction, but tried to get back in five days later, claiming to be a citizen, and later skipped out on a hearing before an immigration judge. He was ordered deported again in 2017 in absentia,” according to CBS Chicago.

“Puente has been previously convicted of burglary, forgery, trespassing, domestic battery and related offenses and has a record dating back 20 years,” CBS noted.

This sort of thing happens all the time in sanctuary cities. Here is one from earlier from New York City, another sanctuary city, run by another far-left Democrat mayor.

New York Post reports:

Federal officials on Tuesday blamed Mayor de Blasio for a fatal sex attack on a 92-year-old Queens woman — saying his “sanctuary city” policy kept the accused killer from being held for deportation last year.

“It was a deadly choice to release a man on an active ICE detainer back onto the streets after his first arrest included assault and weapon charges, and he now faces new charges, including murder,” said Thomas Decker, New York field-office director of enforcement and removal operations for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“New York City’s sanctuary policies continue to threaten the safety of all residents of the five boroughs as they repeatedly protect criminal aliens who show little regard for the laws of this nation.”

ICE said it lodged a detainer request with the NYPD for Reeaz Khan, an illegal immigrant from Guyana, on Nov. 27 — the same day he was busted for allegedly attacking his dad during a fight in their South Richmond Hill home.

Now I have a  friend who calls himself a Christian but who votes Demcorat, and he thinks that Democrat policies on immigration are very compassionate and generous. Whenever I ask him about cases like this he says “illegal immigrants are no more violent than natural born Americans”. That’s a false statement, and I’ve blogged about the statistics on that before. But the more important point is this: none of the illegal immigrants should be here to commit these crimes. The crimes committed by people who are here legally cannot be prevented by kicking them out. They belong here. But the crimes committed by illegal immigrants never have to happen in the first place, because they shouldn’t even be here. That’s the important point that the compassion crowd always seems to forget.

Also, where is the compassion of the victims of these criminals from people on the left? Or do law-abiding taxpaying Americans count for less than criminal illegal aliens?

News

Dept. of Education: schools must allow men into women’s bathroom and women’s locker room

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Catherine Lhamon, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights
Catherine Lhamon, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights

Here’s the raw story from the radically leftist New York Times.

Excerpt:

Federal education authorities, staking out their firmest position yet on an increasingly contentious issue, found Monday that an Illinois school district violated anti-discrimination laws when it did not allow a transgender student who identifies as a girl and participates on a girls’ sports team to change and shower in the girls’ locker room without restrictions.

[…]In a letter sent Monday, the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education told the Palatine district that requiring a transgender student to use private changing and showering facilities was a violation of that student’s rights under Title IX, a federal law that bans sex discrimination. The student, who identifies as female but was born male, should be given unfettered access to girls’ facilities, the letter said.

“All students deserve the opportunity to participate equally in school programs and activities — this is a basic civil right,” Catherine Lhamon, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Township High School District 211 is not following the law because the district continues to deny a female student the right to use the girls’ locker room.”

Now remember, even if you pull your kids out of these schools, you are still paying for the public school system, and you are still paying the salaries of these left-wing activists.

Does it really help this young man to go along with his delusion. Shouldn’t we be trying to help him by telling him the truth, and getting him counseling? That seems to me to be more reasonable.

Note that Catherine Lhamon was directing appointed by our far-left President, Barack Obama.

And she was also involved in the false rape charge scandal at the University of Virginia, as the Daily Caller reports:

A top-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has emerged as a potentially key figure in Rolling Stone’s false article, “A Rape on Campus.”

Catherine Lhamon, who heads the Department’s civil rights wing, was identified in a letter sent last month by University of Virginia Dean of Students Allen Groves to Steve Coll and Sheila Coronel, the two Columbia Journalism School deans who conducted a review of the Nov. 19 article, written by disgraced reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

[…]As the Rolling Stone article fell apart, Lhamon’s involvement has gone virtually unmentioned. But a deeper look reveals her ties to Emily Renda, a University of Virginia employee and activist who put Erdely in touch with Jackie, the student whose claim that she was brutally gang-raped by seven members of a fraternity on Sept. 28, 2012, served as the linchpin for the 9,000-word Rolling Stone article.

These are the kinds of people that Obama appoints – radical leftists. They’re using the power of government to push a left-wing agenda, and if they have to hurt a few people along the way, well, they are willing to do that. We need to be more careful about who we vote for.

News

Chicago pastor’s church is broken into by Democrats after he endorses Republican

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From the Chicago Sun-Times.

Excerpt:

Corey Brooks, a South Side pastor featured in an ad endorsing Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner, says he’s moved his family from his home while police investigate an overnight burglary of his church, as well as threatening derogatory phone calls he received which claim he’ll be beaten for being Rauner’s “puppet.”

On Saturday, Brooks rushed to the New Beginnings Church of Chicago after a maintenance employee found the church’s back doors shattered and an estimated $8,000 stolen from a glass charity box, meant to build a community center across from the church.

Nothing surprising about that. To be a Democrat is to take other people’s money. That’s their whole thing.

More:

“The death threats seem to be related to Bruce Rauner,” Brooks said at the church Saturday. “They say his name as well as mine and most of the references were in response to me in support of him. So it’s really derogatory, real racial, a lot of homophobic words. It’s real life threatening.”

Brooks said he received the five phone calls on Friday. He recorded one of them, and provided it to police. In that call, which was played for the Sun-Times, a man’s voice is disguised via a high-pitched filter. He is heard calling Brooks a “token n—–.”

“We on you boy, we on you. And you ain’t got nobody that can stop us, nobody. Who you go [to] the deacons? They can’t stop us. We going to beat your fat a– in front of your mama congregation Sunday. Yeah we going to steal the sheep of the hypocrite. You’s a hypocrite we going to beat your fat a– in front of your own congregation. Who you got that…f— we going to beat their a– too. They can’t protect you. You sell out you Uncle Tom a– n—–. You token. You a puppet for Bruce Rauner you puppet n—– a–. P—- a– n—–,” the voice says on the recording.

Brooks said he believes his family is in danger, which prompted him to move to a temporary home until the threats are investigated.

“It was enough to want to move my family. Any time people threatening your life, and you know if it were just me, I maybe would just say whatever. But when you mention my family, you mention our church. Things like that, I have to take it seriously,” Brooks said.

I also noticed that this video of black conservatives has gone viral:

[Source]

As a non-white conservative, I have had reactions like this before. I remember being sneered at by liberal women in college, and I get dirty looks from them in the gym for watching Fox News, too. They ask me if I am pro-life and then turn up their noses at me when I tell them “yes”. It’s interesting being a colored conservative. People get so angry about it. The best way to defuse that, I’ve found is to just ask them questions, like who the Vice President is, or who the Speaker of the House is. Once you show them that you know more than they do, they leave you alone.