Party’s Over for Foreigners at College

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

New rules announced by the Trump Administration are addressing the flood of foreign students at American universities. Half a million of them are illegal aliens, while more than a million additional college students are here from foreign countries on student visas.

Until recently many states, including Republican-controlled Texas, have allowed illegal aliens to benefit from low in-state tuition rates while Americans from out of state were forced to pay much higher rates. The unfair difference over four years can exceed $100,000 per student.

In July 2023 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled against a challenge to how a public Texas university charged only in-state tuition to illegal aliens, while charging much higher out-of-state tuition to American citizens. But this month the same court upheld by a 2-1 vote a settlement with the Trump Administration whereby Texas agreed to stop enrolling illegal aliens at preferential tuition rates.

More than a million students in American universities are foreigners here on visa programs, almost entirely from non-Western countries having political systems unlike or opposed to ours. Texas has brought in many non-Christians as collegians and is reacting now against communities they’re forming.

Many of the international graduate students are receiving salaries or other compensation from American taxpayers, in the form of direct government subsidies at public universities and federal grants at private ones. Trump unsuccessfully attempted to cut off the flow of billions of dollars from the federal government to Harvard University.

For half a century foreigners could enter graduate programs and take many years, far more than 4, to complete their PhD programs while remaining in the U.S. without any deadline to leave. The F-1 visa program has been allowing foreigners to remain on visas here for the “duration of their status” at their university, with no time limit.

Trump has just ended this racket. Under a new rule issued by Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, most new F-1 students will receive visas that expire after a fixed period of time, usually four years.

This puts healthy pressure on universities and students to reach the finish line as scheduled, rather than dawdle indefinitely in the academic cocoon. The average length of time in graduate studies has ballooned to more than 7 years for a PhD, which harmfully causes students to delay having families and finding employment.

Trump is also cutting back on the period in which foreigners may linger in the U.S. after completing their programs, reducing it from 60 to 30 days. International students who line up jobs here can seek other visa programs, but most should be returning to their homelands.

Trump’s regulatory changes also restrict transfers by foreigners from one university to another, while here. Restrictions are being imposed on foreigners switching academic programs within their schools, too.

Graduate programs are generally funded by universities and government grants, so it is fair to question why there are any foreigners in these positions. Academic teaching positions are particularly scarce, such that in STEM fields there are academic jobs available for fewer than 10% of those who obtain PhDs.

Only 4.2% of applicants to Harvard College were admitted in its Class of 2029, which is the most recent data available. Every admission of a foreigner takes a spot away from an American applicant.

The blockbuster summer movie is The Odyssey, based on the ancient Greek classic that became a foundation of Western Civilization. Its concepts like the “Trojan horse” have become staples of our culture, and the Texas State Board of Education recently included this book in its new reading list of great texts including the Bible.

For decades movies have been shifting away from live-action films into animation. The popularity of The Odyssey as a live-action movie, along with the acclaim it has received from movie critics, demonstrates that the traditions of Western Civilization remain relevant and inspiring.

Yet most international students in our universities are from non-Western countries whose culture and traditions are entirely alien to American history, culture, and way of life. It would take several generations to assimilate the millions of foreigners already here, and a moratorium on new immigration should be seriously considered.

Universities are already complaining about a decline in international students in graduate programs, which they attribute to Trump’s occasional travel bans and freezing of some federal grants. The drop in high-school enrollment (which is mostly due to the declining birth rate) means there will be fewer American students in the pipeline for universities in the future.

But universities have only themselves to blame if there is a shortage of American students. Liberal political ideology dominant at universities leans strongly against child-rearing, and if more students are wanted for the future then there should be more encouragement now by academia for Americans to have and raise their children.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

College Grads Hurt by H-1B Visas

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

There is a grim unemployment crisis for college graduates who majored in STEM – science, technology, engineering or math. An estimated 8% of recent STEM graduates are completely unemployed, which is double the national unemployment rate.

This is amid a high-tech boom producing billionaires nearly as often as coffee cups. Only a few hundred thousand American STEM graduates want a job in their field, and it should not be so difficult to make good jobs available to them.

Foreigners coming in on H-1B visas are being hired rather than Americans for many entry-level STEM jobs. There is supposed to be high growth in AI software development, but Big Tech has filled this field with H-1B foreigners, too.

The National Foundation for American Policy found that more than 80% of new H-1B applications and filings by Amazon, Apple, Facebook (Meta), Google, and Microsoft are for foreign workers to fill American jobs in AI and software development, and data science jobs.

Big Tech prefers H-1B visas because the workers become bound to the employer by the program and can then be paid less while prevented from switching to a competitor. If the visa holders want to quit to work for a rival, then they would typically lose their right to remain in the United States and could be deported.

The net result is that everyone is harmed by the H-1B program except the owners and executives of a few Big Tech companies, and the foreigners who steal the good jobs. American workers lose access to jobs taken by H-1B workers, American consumers are harmed by this interference with better competition that often results from job mobility, and entire communities are taken over by foreigners brought in on visas.

On Monday, federal Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston invalidated Trump’s long overdue reform of the H-1B visa system, by which Trump last year imposed a $100,000 surcharge on new visa applications. Liberals have been filing many of their anti-Trump lawsuits in Boston because that is now the most Democrat-appointed judicial venue in our country, reinforced by the nearly all-Democrat First Circuit Court of Appeals.

Judge Sorokin relied on the Supreme Court decision invalidating many of Trump’s tariffs by viewing them as taxes that needed to be considered first by Congress. “These federal judges are really giving us a hard time,” observed Trump.

“Between 2022 and 2023, the top companies using the H-1B program laid off 85,000 American workers, while simultaneously bringing in over 34,000 guest workers from abroad,” Sen. Bernie Sanders stated in a press release last year. He sought “to substantially increase the guest worker fees large corporations pay,” which Trump did but the federal judge in Sanders’ backyard struck it down.

Sen. Sanders claims that he’s opposed the harmful H-1B visas since his “first days as a U.S. senator,” but Phyllis Schlafly opposed this racket years before that. She wrote against H-1B visas in 2003 because they “allow corporations to displace U.S. citizens with skilled labor imported from foreign countries.”

Phyllis urged congressional Republicans to block renewal of the H-1B visa program back then. But politicians in D.C. caved to the lobbyists and voted to continue this harmful program.

The stunning upset last Tuesday in Iowa should send shock waves through every Establishment politician. Their favored candidate was Randy Feenstra, who did not even bother to participate in the debates with his primary opponents.

But Zach Lahn (pronounced Lane) seemingly came out of nowhere to win with a campaign ad promising to ban state government and universities from employing H-1B visa holders. He vowed to require disclosure in state contracts of how many Iowans would be hired, which he pointed out would “be inversely correlated to how many H-1Bs you have.”

“I reject the idea that our people won’t do these jobs,” Lahn said in criticism of the H-1B program. “We have some of the most hardworking kids in the country. I want to be hiring those Iowans here, that’s why we need to bring our kids back home, and that’s what we’ll be fighting for as governor.”

Texans are in an uproar over the H-1B program, as the fast-growing boomtown of Frisco, an hour’s drive north of Dallas, is being overrun by foreigners, many of whom arrived on worker visa programs. The enrollment by Asians is 44% of the Frisco Independent School District (FISD), and one-fifth of the town is Indian now.

There is a shortage of medical residency spots in the United States such that roughly 8,000 American medical school graduates are unable to find a place in a residency program, which is required to become a practicing physician. Yet 10,000 physicians working in the U.S., including some medical residents, are foreigners here on H-1B visas.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Progress on Returning Refugees

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

A bright spot in immigration policy, the issue on which President Trump polls the best, is the progress being made toward removing unwanted refugees from our country. On Monday Trump won the second of two court victories in March in favor of his policy to roll back Democrat practices to import massive numbers of refugees from the third world.

Ten days after taking office, President Trump ended the misuse of the refugee program by issuing Executive Order No. 14163, “Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program.” Biden had brought in more than 100,000 so-called refugees in fiscal year 2024, which was the highest level in 30 years.

Trump has properly sought to revoke the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of whole communities of Haitians and Syrians who were brought into our country under the fiction that they were being politically persecuted back home. Haitians famously settled mostly in Springfield and Columbus, Ohio, totaling about 350,000 people nationwide, and Trump won the election by campaigning on sending them and other mislabeled refugees back home.

Haiti is a poor country victimized by crime, but has strict gun control that impedes the ability of law-abiding residents to defend themselves, and no death penalty to deter murder. Visitors who have valid U.S. gun permits are not allowed to carry their arms in self-defense in Haiti.

As to Syria, the Biden Administration and liberals supported the toppling of the Syrian regime in December 2024 while Biden was still president. The theory that allowed thousands of Syrians to remain in our country as refugees from the former Assad regime no longer applies, and it’s time for them to go home.

Yet lower federal courts in liberal New York, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., have stymied the Trump Administration’s revocation of the “temporary” status that Biden conferred, in order to prevent Trump from sending refugees back home. Trump’s phenomenal Solicitor General, John Sauer, applied for emergency relief with the U.S. Supreme Court to stay two of these lower court decisions against Trump, and the Ninth Circuit ruled directly for Trump in the third case.

On Monday, the Supreme Court mostly granted Trump’s requested relief, by scheduling oral argument on this issue by late April and thereby signaling that a full decision will be rendered by the end of June. While the Court did not authorize the immediate removal of these refugees, it appears that their return will become possible by summer.

Earlier this month, in Pacito v. Trump, the Ninth Circuit held in favor of Trump’s Executive Order that halted the flow of so-called refugees into our country. That court recognized the nearly unlimited authority granted by Congress to the President to halt this misguided program.

More good news came from the First Circuit concerning the deportation of illegal aliens. Two of the three judges on the panel, including a Republican and a Democrat-appointed judge, ruled that Trump may be allowed to deport an illegal alien to a third country if his homeland refuses to accept him.

As a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) explained in response, “the Biden Administration allowed millions of illegal aliens to flood our country, and the Trump Administration has the authority to remove these criminal illegal aliens and clean up this national security nightmare.”

The DHS spokesman said that if “activist judges had their way, aliens who are so uniquely barbaric that their own countries won’t take them back, including convicted murderers, child rapists and drug traffickers, would walk free on American streets.”

Last year Trump prevailed on this issue in the U.S. Supreme Court, but then the district judge said the facts had changed and continued to block Trump’s deportations to third countries. The district judge wanted a process by which the illegal alien would have a “meaningful opportunity” to object to being deported to another country after his homeland rejects his return.

But the ongoing campaign of deporting illegals has slowed, and there are reports that someone in the White House has told Republicans not to use the phrase “mass deportation.” Other than a few reposts on his X account, White House Border Czar Tom Homan has been quiet for several weeks now.

The self-deportation campaign, by which DHS was paying illegal aliens $2,600 each to voluntarily leave through the use of a government phone app, depends on involuntary deportations to be effective. A total of 2.2 million people had self-deported through January of this year, and Democrats were furious about an ad campaign encouraging more illegal aliens to self-deport.

Democrats view illegal aliens as their future voters, as many Somalis have become in Minnesota after obtaining citizenship. Realistically, this is the last opportunity to deport illegals, while Republicans control all branches of the federal government and public opinion strongly favors border control.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Shooting, Stabbing, and Wrong-Way Trucking

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Within 24 hours of U.S. military action against Iran, a 53-year-old Muslim from Senegal allegedly shot up a bar early Sunday morning in Austin, Texas. Three were killed and more than a dozen were wounded, some critically.

Nearly two-thirds of public shootings are perpetrated by gunmen under the age of 40, so the age and timing of this massacre suggest an uncommon motive. It seems likely that this massacre was in response to developments in the Middle East, but the FBI says that it is embarking on an extensive investigation and refuses to release any information about the shooter’s motive.

The suspected assailant, Ndiaga Diagne, never entered the bar, but instead shot into it from outside. Students from the nearby University of Texas, which is one of the largest colleges in our country, had filled the bar to enjoy some weekend socializing in Austin’s entertainment district.

President Bill Clinton admitted this suspect into our country as a tourist on a B-2 visa in 2000, and then President Obama naturalized him as a citizen despite how he had multiple arrests. The reasons for those arrests remain sealed, but local authorities vow to release details about them later this week.

Ndiaga Diagne continued shooting into the bar until he was gunned down and killed by police, within one minute of their being called. The bloodshed would have been far worse in the absence of the remarkably quick and decisive action taken by the police.

Meanwhile, the State Department urged Americans to immediately leave Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE, the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Yemen, and even Israel. But Obama and Biden had a virtually open-border policy for the U.S. for twelve years, allowing many enemies to enter freely and remain without being deported.

This horrifying shooting in Austin transpired during the final weekend before election day in the Texas primary on Tuesday, with the potential to rattle hotly contested races. Republican candidates were quick to condemn the prior immigration policies of Democrat presidents that have led to this.

Casualties continue to climb from other violent attacks on defenseless American citizens by foreigners here from hostile nations. Abdul Jalloh, a 32-year-old native of Sierra Leone, viciously stabbed Stephanie Minter, 41, to death in her neck as she stood at a bus stop at 7pm in Fairfax County, Virginia, on February 23, 2026.

Jalloh illegally entered the United States in 2012, and had an immigration detainer and a final order of removal pending against him. Because of judicial interference with deportations to Sierra Leona, Jalloh was scheduled to be lawfully deported to another third-world country.

Jalloh had previously been arrested more than 30 times. The murder charge should finally keep him off the streets, but to be sure ICE has called “on Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger and Virginia’s sanctuary politicians to commit to not releasing this murderer and violent career criminal from their jail without notifying ICE.”

Jalloh’s arrest record included being charged with “rape, malicious wounding, assault, drug possession, identity theft, trespassing, larceny, firing a weapon, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and pickpocketing,” reported the New York Post.

Yet despite all this crime, Democrat-controlled Fairfax County failed to detain Jalloh to protect the public. Like other sanctuary jurisdictions, wealthy Fairfax refuses to notify ICE before it releases violent illegal aliens in custody, in order to deliberately prevent ICE from deporting them.

The obituary for the victim Stephanie Minter said that “Stephanie will be sorely and dearly missed, with the world missing out on that beam of light we came to know so well.” She is survived by her son and her mother.

Meanwhile, an 18-wheel tractor-trailer was spotted driving the wrong way on a highway near Troy, Missouri. An alarmed observer, who had to swerve to narrowly avert a head-on collision, then filmed this and contacted police, who arrived and asked the driver some basic questions about English as it appears on road signs.

The wrong-way driver was unable to demonstrate English proficiency to the Missouri officer. Wrong-way driving is inevitable by someone who cannot understand our highway road signs. This driver was Abdiasis Ibrahim Ali from Minnesota, who is thought to be from Somalia.

When Minnesota issues a commercial driver’s license that authorizes the driving of big trucks without understanding English, it jeopardizes the safety of everyone nationwide. Fortunately, the Missouri police did not allow this driver to continue behind the wheel of this truck, but he was not arrested either.

Illinois, another state controlled by Democrats, has illegally issued one out of every five of its commercial driver’s licenses, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. A bill to punish truckers who cannot understand basic road signs, HB 2741, is moving through the Missouri legislature.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

“Show Cause” Tyranny by Anti-Trump Judges

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Liberal judges have found a tool for browbeating Trump’s attorneys at the Department of Justice (DOJ) on the issue of detaining illegal aliens. Akin to an unpleasant toy in the hands of idle children, the legal hammer of a “show cause” order is being overused by judges opposed to Trump’s crackdown on illegal aliens.

In the last six months, “show cause” orders have emanated from dozens of judges unhappy with how the Trump Administration detains illegal aliens without bail. Leftist judges are just fine with denying bail to Trump supporters accused of a crime, as done to hundreds of J6-ers in order to imprison them in the D.C. Gulag without a trial, and yet Democrat-appointed judges object to detaining illegal aliens without bail.

Trump’s policy is a sensible one: anyone who is in the United States unlawfully is not entitled to be released on bail from their detention. Many might “jump bail” never to be caught again, and there is no legitimate defense to being unlawfully in our country.

The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) confirmed the validity of Trump’s policy on Sept. 5, 2025, in the Matter of Jonathan Javier Yajure Hurtado. In rejecting a request for release on bail, the BIA held that under applicable federal law illegal aliens caught in the United States are subject to mandatory detention without bail.

This is not a civil rights issue, any more than removing someone from trespassing on private property would be a civil rights issue. Their very presence in defiant trespass is unlawful and indefensible; releasing them on bail would simply facilitate continuation of the very crime itself.

Yet mostly Democrat-appointed federal district judges are demanding that DOJ attorneys “show cause,” which means explain in sworn statements, why they should not be held in contempt for implementing Trump’s policy. No federal judge can hold President Trump in contempt, so instead they are seeking to make an example of junior attorneys within the DOJ.

Under Supreme Court rulings and federal law, illegal aliens are deemed to be “applicants for admission” to the United States regardless of whether they formally applied to be admitted here. Federal law requires that such aliens “shall be detained,” without any allowance for bail to release them back into the public prior to their deportation.

Despite the clarity of the law and President Trump’s sensible policy against bail for illegal aliens, Biden-appointed Judge Sunshine Sykes in Los Angeles issued on Feb. 18 a one-sided ruling against Trump’s policy. Judge Sykes is the first Navajo Nation citizen to become a federal judge, and she was confirmed by Democrats in a narrow, nearly party-line vote of only 51–45 less than four years ago.

Judge Sykes held in favor of Plaintiff Lazaro Maldonado Bautista, who is not an American citizen and yet has lived in Los Angeles for roughly four years. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Bautista on June 6, 2025, after deciding that he is here illegally, and denied Bautista release on bond.

Bautista was detained by DHS and ICE at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in Adelanto, California. His request for a bond redetermination hearing was denied by an immigration judge.

Judge Sykes complained that Bautista “is but one of hundreds, if not thousands, of noncitizens with no criminal background that have been arrested and detained by the Government for being in the country without admission.” She relied on Justice Kennedy’s 5-3 decision in Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387, 407 (2012) – which should be overturned – that generally “it is not a crime for a removable [illegal alien] to remain present in the United States.”

The orders by this solitary Biden-appointed, Los Angeles-based judge against the Trump Administration are breathtakingly broad and burdensome, and are contrary to the outcome of the last presidential election. This district judge demands that Trump provide a bond hearing to detained illegal aliens who request one, and that Trump post notices in English and Spanish about this on numerous government websites identified by the court.

The Trump Administration has since complied with the court order to post these notices on government websites, but is also appealing this decision to the Ninth Circuit. If necessary, the Trump Administration will surely seek review by the U.S. Supreme Court to confirm that illegal aliens do not have a right to be released on bail.

The American people voted in the last presidential election against allowing illegal aliens to roam freely in our country despite typically having broken the law in coming and staying here. This sweeping ruling by one Biden-appointed judge in Los Angeles, along with similar decisions rendered by dozens of additional Democrat-appointed judges, constitute judicial activism which the Supreme Court should swiftly shut down.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Freezing Deaths, Garbage Piles in Largest Sanctuary City

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The largest sanctuary city that defies federal immigration laws is the Big Apple in New York. Its newly elected socialist Indian-Ugandan mayor, Zohran Mamdani, just issued his 13th Executive Order, which forbids city agencies from sharing information with federal officials including the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), except as may be required by law.

“ICE is more than a rogue agency — it is a manifestation of the abuse of power,” Mamdani pompously declared. New York is currently holding 7,113 criminal illegal aliens for whom detainers have been issued by federal officials to deport them, yet Mamdani is not cooperating to turn these lawbreakers over to ICE.

Mamdani and other big city Democrat mayors are the ones most responsible for the delays in removing the criminals who never should have been here in the first place. Mamdani has prohibited ICE from entering any city property, which includes parking garages, schools, shelters, public spaces, hospitals, and absurdly even vacant lots, unless ICE has a warrant which is difficult to obtain from liberal judges.

The sanctuary policy in New York City is so strict that it prevents the police from sharing information with ICE about illegal aliens who have been arrested. New York City prohibits transferring these criminals into the custody of federal officials.

Last July the Trump Administration sued New York City officials to end their sanctuary city policy, and to enjoin local administrative regulations that interfere with the apprehension and deportation of criminals. But this lawsuit languishes before the Biden-appointed Judge Ramon Reyes in the Eastern District of New York, without a ruling that could then be appealed.

Mamdani is anticipating the arrival of ICE agents similar to the crackdown on illegal aliens that has been occurring in Minneapolis. But rather than cooperate with law enforcement, Mamdani is ramping up his resistance by creating an “Interagency Response Committee” to oppose Trump’s valiant efforts.

This committee will include the city’s chief immigration officer, the first deputy mayor, the city’s chief counsel, and senior operations managers representing all city agencies. Mamdani is commanding several of the agencies, including those overseeing its jails, to conduct an audit of their compliance with the city’s sanctuary policies against cooperating with federal immigration authorities.

“When politicians bar local law enforcement from working with DHS, our law enforcement officers have to have a more visible presence so that we can find and apprehend the criminals let out of jails and back into communities,” DHS stated through a spokesman.

Resisting immigration laws is an odd priority for Mamdani during his first two months in office, when he’s done a terrible job addressing a snowstorm and cold snap. Keeping the streets clean and residents warm should be Mamdani’s focus, rather than obstructing the deportation program on which Trump was elected.

Since January 24, 18 people have been discovered frozen to death outside in New York City. Last December, its former Mayor Eric Adams sharply criticized Mamdani’s plan to be more permissive toward homelessness, and now many homeless people are freezing to death because they are not in shelters.

“They don’t believe there should be any prisons in our city. They don’t believe that you should do encampment enforcement. … They believe in decriminalizing prostitution after all that we’ve done,” Adams said in his rebuke of Mamdani and his agenda.

Mamdani’s plan has been to allow scores of homeless people to camp out on the streets in New York City. “I went and visited those camps — stale food, human waste, drug paraphernalia, schizophrenic behavior,” Adams observed.

Mamdani’s most recent response has been to arrange for heating buses to be placed in various locations in the city, but people are reportedly having a hard time finding them. Often, they are not where people expect them to be.

Meanwhile, huge piles of garbage have been stacking up uncollected for weeks on New York City streets. Television news programs have posted videos of mountains of garbage-filled bags, along with interviews of residents outraged at how the city officials have failed to do their job of removing trash that is blocking sidewalks and attracting rats.

A heating crisis caused a record-breaking 80,000 New Yorkers to place emergency calls to 311 in January due to a lack of residential heat and hot water. As sub-zero temperatures descended on the Big Apple — whatever happened to global warming? — many were nearly frozen in their apartments because of these energy failures.

Across the country in California, there is some good news as a federal judge struck down Gov. Newsom’s law requiring ICE agents to work without masks that protect them against retaliation. The judge pointed out that this law unfairly targeted federal agents, and that it was unconstitutional because it did not also apply to California officials.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Patriots Should Avoid the Anti-ICE Super Bowl

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

NFL leadership has sided against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), by promoting the Puerto Rican rapper who ranted against ICE on national television Sunday. Bad Bunny declared at the Grammy Awards, “Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say ICE OUT.”

The ICE OUT slogan was developed by a coalition of Leftist groups, including the ACLU, to resist the enforcement of federal immigration laws. Nearly every artist at the Grammy ceremony except Trump-supporting Nikki Minaj wore a pin with those words.

The following day Roger Goodell, Commissioner of the taxpayer-subsidized NFL, defended his bad choice by absurdly praising Bad Bunny as “one of the greatest artists in the world.” He’s featuring Bad Bunny at the halftime show during the Super Bowl, and claiming that the offensive performer “will use his platform to unite people.”

It doesn’t “unite people” for the NFL to impose a strident “ICE OUT” advocate on more than 100 million Americans watching the Super Bowl. Trump is one of many who have criticized this selection of a Spanish-speaking, Trump-hating entertainer from Puerto Rico.

The New England Patriots are once again playing in this year’s Super Bowl, but patriotic Americans shouldn’t support the NFL while it features opponents of our own law enforcement agencies. Our economy would save an estimated $5 billion if everyone tuned out, because an estimated 39 million Americans will miss or be late for their jobs the following Monday after watching the annual extravaganza.

Taxpayers are also subsidizing Minnesota schools that are training agitators against ICE, and providing them with anti-ICE resistance manuals. A “De-Arrest Primer” is being distributed to instruct Leftists how to physically interfere with ICE as they try to arrest illegal aliens.

The liberal media have identified two Hispanic men, a Border Patrol agent and an officer of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, as those who fired their guns at Alex Pretti, after he was discovered to be carrying a handgun while scuffling with officers. These officers have many years of law enforcement experience, in doing a dangerous job to protect our country.

Video of the scene shows that an agent found a handgun in Pretti’s possession and alerted others. As the agent took the handgun away from Pretti during a struggle, an initial shot rang out, perhaps from a misfire, and then two agents acted swiftly to protect the lives of their colleagues and bystanders.

A liberal narrative of this law enforcement response to an armed man scuffling with officers has gone unrebutted for too long. If DOJ is doing an investigation, then it needs to exonerate the agents soon before everyone believes propaganda from the Left.

Let’s not forget that it was two heroic Border Patrol agents who risked their lives to confront the shooter at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman had just killed 19 children and two teachers. For 77 minutes no policeman confronted the gunman who had barricaded himself in a classroom, but two off-duty Border Patrol agents arrived and entered the school while risking their own lives.

Gunfire sprayed upon them, with one bullet ripping through the baseball cap on one of the agent’s heads. Undeterred, the Border Patrol agents quickly killed the shooter before he could cause further bloodshed.

Someone who brings a gun to a fight with police is taking a risk of being shot. The gun could misfire, which would trigger gunfire at the suspect, or simply learning of the gun could create a reasonable fear by an officer trained to protect himself and others from the gunman.

With the publicizing of the names of the federal agents by the media, Leftists in charge of Minneapolis may be planning to bring murder charges against them. Such a charge could lead to a conflict between state and federal authority that has not been seen since the Civil War.

Federal courts have the authority to block a state prosecution, but have only done so a handful of times in American history. A federal court can also order the release of someone being held in a state prison while awaiting a trial in state court.

Liberal states are already refusing to extradite criminal defendants accused of providing a telemedicine abortion where it is prohibited by state law. Conservative governors could take a similar path by shielding ICE agents from prosecution by the Leftist mob in Minnesota.

ICE and the Border Patrol cannot do their jobs to protect Americans against illegal aliens if rogue prosecutors in Minnesota are allowed to prosecute federal agents who defend themselves against agitators who harass and impede them. Congress should reaffirm the immunity of federal agents from any state prosecutions based on the use of force to put down the resistance.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Somali Daycare Fraud Uncovered by Citizens

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

It has been ordinary citizens, not billions spent on federal law enforcement, that uncovered the immense daycare fraud committed by Somalis in Minnesota. In one video posted on Facebook, a Minnesota resident explains that he personally visited 40-50 Somali-run daycares in the Minneapolis area and never saw a child at any one of them.

“So one of the things that I’ve noticed is there’s an exceptional number of childcare centers that are set up mostly in Minneapolis, but also in St. Paul. And I said, wow, how many kids are there in the Twin Cities?” the Minnesotan commented to a reporter.

When he inquired at one facility about availability for his grandson, “they said, no, we’re all full, we’re all full. And they had the door open and I looked and there were no kids.”

The Minnesotan noticed this beginning five years ago, and yet the Democrat Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, bragged in his debate last year against JD Vance that Walz had made it easier for folks to run daycare businesses. The fraud is obvious to anyone who visits these centers.

The 23-year-old social media influencer Nick Shirley has aired videos of his own visits to these Minnesota childcare centers; his videos have attracted more than 116 million views on X and 1.6 million additional views on YouTube. With that publicity, there is finally movement in uprooting this fraud and holding the perpetrators legally accountable.

FBI chief Kash Patel threatens to denaturalize and deport Somali refugees responsible for this. These immigrants from a country on the equator were ill-suited to be relocated by Democrat presidents to Minnesota, where they lacked the skills and background needed to thrive in that winter climate.

As a Shirley video demonstrates, calling the phone number for one of these apparently fraudulent daycare centers results in the office of Tim Walz answering the phone, as the Governor of Minnesota. Yet he has refused to resign amid this engulfing scandal, and is running for reelection with the support of the Democrat Party.

In another video Shirley features the “Quality Learing Center” daycare which misspells the word “learning” on its own sign. Someone would have corrected that error if the daycare were really in daily operations serving many families, and the video shows that it appears empty in the middle of a weekday when it should be active.

This fraud in Minnesota could be part of a broader government-funded childcare scandal that extends to many other states. Publicly funded childcare has long been a bad idea as public policy, vulnerable to fraud, and yet even conservative states like Missouri have large programs like this.

The newly elected socialist mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, ran on a campaign of free childcare for everyone, because mothers “are giving up paying jobs to do unpaid childcare.” Zohran vowed to “implement free childcare for every New Yorker aged 6 weeks to 5 years,” and to pay childcare workers the wages of “public school teachers.”

Government-run childcare has never worked. President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971, which would have established universal federally funded daycare nationwide, and he properly called it the “most radical piece of legislation” ever sent to him by Congress.

Democrats in Congress later pushed for the Act for Better Child Care Services of 1989, for federal funding of childcare centers nationwide. President George H.W. Bush successfully opposed it for not sending assistance directly to parents as tax credits, for reducing options available to parents, and for discriminating against two-parent families where one stays at home with the children.

Government-run daycare separates children from their families and marginalizes the essential role of fathers both financially and in the upbringing of children. At the time of Nixon’s veto, the communist Soviet Union was an example of the failed approach of pushing women into the workforce while government controlled the raising of their children.

It is estimated that Mamdani’s plan of universal child care for New York City could cost $6 billion, and such enormous funding is unavailable for this. Quebec tried government-run universal child care beginning in 1997, and it has been a billion-dollar step backward which 30 years later is available to only about half the population there.

Economists at MIT, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Toronto studied Quebec’s program and reported in 2015 that it caused a “sizeable negative shock” to children’s non-cognitive skills, resulting in “worse health, lower life satisfaction, and higher crime rates later in life” among boys.

On November 1, Democrat-controlled New Mexico became the only State providing universal free child care, as funded by its oil and gas revenue. Every other state, including liberal California and Massachusetts, has rejected this costly socialist approach.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Voluntary Deportations Gain Steam

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Monday, the Trump Administration announced it is tripling its bonus to $3,000 for illegal aliens who voluntarily self-deport, along with free travel back to their homeland. Liberals can hardly complain about this Christmas gift to those who crossed our border and remained in our country in violation of our laws.

Many illegal aliens are willing to self-deport. Since Trump became president on January 20, a remarkable 1.9 million illegal aliens have voluntarily returned to their home country according to data released by the Department of Homeland Security, although some dispute this total.

Involuntary deportation costs an estimated $17,000 per individual, so it makes sense to share the savings in a way that everyone comes out ahead. There is room to sweeten this pot further while still trimming the overall expense.

The average lifetime cost of an illegal alien for American taxpayers is $100,000, with some estimates higher than that. The demands placed by these migrants on government entitlement programs, remedial education in schools, law enforcement, and our health care system are far greater than the $3,000 being offered for them to return home.

Self-deportation is the primary method by which President Dwight Eisenhower achieved the largest deportation in American history in 1954. It would have been unthinkable then for liberals to interfere with the president in removing aliens from our country.

CBS News had prepared a smear piece against Trump’s forced deportations, and scheduled it to air on its 60 Minutes show on Sunday evening. But merely two hours before airing, the newly installed CBS editor-in-chief pulled its one-sided story off the air, illustrating that Trump is winning on this issue.

Another victory for Trump came last Thursday, when Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan was convicted of a felony count of obstructing federal agents seeking to arrest an illegal alien who was in her courtroom on battery charges. Dugan sent the federal agents in one direction while leading the illegal alien to exit by a private jury door to evade arrest.

It is safer to arrest a suspect in a courtroom than to try to catch and handcuff him on the street, which was a point emphasized by federal prosecutors during the short trial of Judge Dugan. She has continued to collect her full salary of about $175,000 as a judge despite being a felony defendant, and she vows to appeal her conviction.

Liberals are appalled by the jury verdict, as they are accustomed to juries in D.C. rendering every verdict against Trump and his supporters. D.C. and Virginia grand juries have even refused to indict opponents of Trump, despite how indictments are nearly always automatically rendered as prosecutors request.

But Wisconsin is in middle America, and the 12 mostly rural counties that comprised that jury pool are nothing like D.C. Few if any of those jurors in Wisconsin are federal employees, as D.C. juries predominantly are, and Trump won Wisconsin in the last presidential election.

Conservatives who were once disappointed at Trump for not building a full border wall during his first term in office, because Congress failed to fund it, are seeing that deportations have nearly as strong an impact as a wall would.

There has been a 93% decrease in apprehensions at the southern border near San Diego, a 50-year record low of only 1,793 apprehensions. During the Biden Administration a year ago, there were more than 24,700 apprehensions for the same two-month period.

The termination of the catch-and-release program, whereby the Biden Administration would senselessly release illegal aliens in the United States after capturing them, is cited as one reason for the disappearance of nearly all of the illegal crossings. But surely the high-profile deportation program by the Trump Administration is the single biggest factor.

Still, some say that the deportations need to go faster in order to meet the goals set by Trump. There have not been as many workplace raids of illegal aliens as expected.

Where illegals have been arrested en masse and deported, it appears that Republican areas like Omaha, Nebraska, have been targeted more than Democrat strongholds like Los Angeles and New York. The much-publicized raid on a food plant in June in Omaha was in a swing district that Democrats hope to capture in the midterm elections.

The thousands of Democrat loyalists who staff the Department of Homeland Security still have their jobs, and have not been replaced by conservatives. Those staffers appear to be picking regions for deportation for political reasons, rather than to meet Trump’s goals.

Activist judicial rulings have also hindered deportations from Democrat strongholds. For more than two months the U.S. Supreme Court has failed to resolve an emergency petition on this issue by Trump’s Solicitor General, John Sauer, despite quickly ruling in his favor nearly two dozen times on other issues.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.