Category: Migration, Refugees, and Asylum

We deported a Babson College student (CNN):

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is still here and still providing full employment for American attorneys (NYT):

How is it possible that nobody wants to change U.S. immigration laws? I could understand a world in which both of these non-citizens were deported. I could also understand a world of open borders in which neither of these non-citizens were deported. Given the above facts, however, I can’t understand how anyone can argue that our current immigration laws are in the U.S. national interest.

Separately, the noble enricher Kilmar has been enriching the United States for 14 years (since 2011) and hasn’t needed to learn English. Thus, someone who doesn’t speak English turns out to be more powerful than the President of the United States and all federal immigration bureaucracy put together. WBAL:

Abrego Garcia on Friday stopped at a news conference outside the building, escorted by a group of supporters chanting “We are all Kilmar!”

“I stand before you a free man and I want you to remember me this way, with my head held up high,” Abrego Garcia said through a translator. “I come here today with so much hope and I thank God who has been with me since the start with my family.”

He urged people to keep fighting.

“I stand here today with my head held high and I will continue to fight and stand firm against all of the injustices this government has done upon me,” Abrego Garcia said. “Regardless of this administration, I believe this is a country of laws and I believe that this injustice will come to an end.”

After Abrego Garcia spoke, he went through security at the field office, escorted by supporters.

The agency freed him just before 5 p.m. on Thursday in response to a ruling from Xinis, who wrote federal authorities detained him after his return to the United States without any legal basis.

“Deported and Desperate to Be Reunited With Their Children” (New York Times, November 25, 2025):

Across the United States, children have been left in the care of relatives and neighbors after deportations. In Venezuela, parents are clamoring for the return of their sons and daughters.

While some families have been deported together, many mothers and fathers have been landing in Venezuela without their children, setting off a diplomatic scramble inside the Venezuelan government to track down and repatriate the children.

Families clamoring for the return of their children have put almost all their hopes in Mr. Maduro. They have readily participated in government-led rallies in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, and recorded heartfelt videos shared on social media. In August, many families signed a letter to Melania Trump, the first lady, asking her “to listen to the cries of families.”

We’re informed that Venezuela (population nearly 30 million) is too dangerous for humans to occupy, which is why Venezuelans were able to claim asylum and Temporary Protected Status during the Biden-Harris administration (extended most recently on January 10, 2025, ten days before Joe and Kamala left office). At the same time, we’re informed that parents who love their children want their children to grow up in this place that is too dangerous for any human to occupy rather than in the cradle-to-grave welfare state of the U.S.

Separately, I still can’t figure out how any of this comports with the Constitution’s guarantee of Equal Protection or basic concepts of fairness and seeking to reduce inequality. In a Righteous American’s ideal world, a Venezuelan who was healthy enough to walk across the U.S. southern border is entitled to four generations of taxpayer-funded housing, health care, food, and smartphone. A Venezuelan who is too old, too sick, or too poor to make the journey is entitled to… nothing.

Donald Trump made the news recently for ending the Temporary Protected Status for Somali migrants who live in Minnesota. USA Today (Reuters):

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Nov. 21 that he was immediately terminating the temporary deportation protections for Somalis living in Minnesota.

Trump’s move to remove protections for Somalis comes after years of targeting Somali immigrants in every campaign cycle in Minnesota since he first ran for president in 2016. The state has become a destination for Somali immigrants in recent decades dating back to the 1990s.

In the decades since the first wave of Somali migrants came to the state, Somalis have established flourishing cultural and business districts, sent their children to its colleges and universities, and elected leaders from their own communities to Minnesota’s city councils, mayorships, legislature and to the U.S. Congress.

(It’s an established journalistic fact that the districts are “flourishing”; household income for a typical Somali family in Minnesota was less than 200% of the poverty line (source), i.e., 2/3rds of Somalis in Minnesota were eligible for SNAP/EBT, Medicaid, public housing, and Obamaphone and, therefore, “flourishing” means “lifestyle funded by taxpayers”)

This will turn out to be just a few hundred enrichers, a fraction of 705 total (see below for nationwide data).

How many Somalis are there without Temporary Protected Status, i.e., Unprotected Somalis? About 20 million (i.e., the U.S. government takes the official position that Somalia is too dangerous for a human to inhabit and, at the same time, Somalia has one of the world’s highest rates of human population growth).

If we’re against inequality, how is it reasonable to anoint 705 Somalis as being worthy of protection and at the same time say that 20 million Somalis are not worthy of protection? If Somalia is too dangerous to inhabit, thus justifying TPS for some, why shouldn’t anyone currently in Somalia have the right to go to Aden Adde International Airport in Mogadishu and get on Turkish Airlines to take up taxpayer-funded residence in the Mamdani Caliphate? Here are some $2,855 flights from Mogadishu to JFK for Christmas Day (economy is available for $1,359, but presumably the U.S. taxpayer can afford to welcome Somalis in comfort and style):

Doesn’t a hatred for inequality require that we treat all Somalis equally, without preference for Somalis who are already here in the U.S.? Same question regarding other countries. Here’s March 31, 2025 data:

What’s special about 140 Lebanese in the U.S. that entitles them to TPS while 6 million Lebanese in Lebanon get nothing? Humans cannot survive in Cameroon, which is why the population has grown from 5 million in the 1960s to 30 million today (6X), so it makes sense that 4,920 Cameroonians are entitled to TPS. But why aren’t the remaining 30 million Cameroonians entitled to move to the US and enjoy TPS?

Suppose that Rahmanullah Lakanwal hadn’t shot and killed National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom nor shot Andrew Wolfe (currently in the hospital), as he recently did. How was admitting him and multiple family members to the U.S. under the Biden-Harris administration and granting him and his family permanent residence (asylum) under the current Trump administration supposed to make the typical American better off? We are informed that immigrants enrich us, but how specifically did Congress and federal bureaucrats envision that Rahmanullah Lakanwal was going to enrich us??

Separately, just a few hours after successful asylum-seeker Rahmanullah Lakanwal waged jihad in Washington, D.C., the United Nations reminded us that “Asylum is Life-Saving”:

The New York Times reminds us that the real victim here was Rahmanullah Lakanwal:

The same story makes it sound as though Rahmanullah Lakanwal loved marijuana and polygamy (“second wife”):

Mr. Lakanwal was part of that program and had resettled with his family in Washington State. … Muhammad, Mr. Lakanwal’s childhood friend, said he has last seen him a few weeks before the Taliban takeover in 2021, when Mr. Lakanwal came to Khost to marry his second wife. He had started smoking weed, Muhammad said, and ended up divorcing his new wife a few days after the wedding. Muhammed recalled that Mr. Lakanwal told him: “When he saw blood, bodies, and the wounded, he could not tolerate it, and it put a lot of pressure on his mind.”

Of course, there are quite a few U.S. states in which one can enjoy (“essential” during coronapanic) marijuana 24/7, but I’m not sure how Rahmanullah Lakanwal was going to earn enough to hang onto two female partners. I can’t find any story describing Rahmanullah Lakanwal as having a job.

Finally, let’s keep in mind that though Rahmanullah Lakanwal might end up with 100 U.S. citizen grandchildren (“with his family” implies that he came here with at least one wife and average total fertility rate in Afghanistan is around 5 (five children in a woman’s lifetime; not too many men become “pregnant people” in Afghanistan)) and Sarah Beckstrom’s genetics died with her, it wouldn’t be accurate to say that Sarah Beckstrom and her hypothetical descendants were “replaced” by Rahmanullah Lakanwal (still alive) and his actual descendants.

Related:

• Grokipedia on Omar Mateen: “Seddique Mateen, Omar Mateen’s father, emigrated from Afghanistan in the 1980s and became a vocal supporter of the Taliban, frequently expressing ideological alignment with the group through his YouTube program “Durand Jirga Show,” where he advocated for Islamist governance in Afghanistan and criticized U.S. interventions”
• How was the immigration of Mohamed Sabry Soliman supposed to benefit Americans?
• How was the immigration of Akayed Ullah supposed to benefit native-born Americans?
• How was the immigration of Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov supposed to benefit native-born Americans?

In case the UN tweet is memory-holed: