Free Republic

In September, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson announced plans to lower Sweden's age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 13 for the most serious crimes, including murder and aggravated bombing. The reform is a response to a surge in deadly gang violence. Police say criminal networks increasingly recruit children to carry out shootings and deliver weapons, as minors under 15 cannot be prosecuted. The government in Stockholm had previously announced the creation of special detention units for 15- to 17-year-olds in Swedish prisons. Under the new proposal, the plan is being expanded to include youth-prison units for 13- to 14-year-olds, too....

Federal officials have charged a Chicago woman with laundering large volumes of suspected narcotics proceeds after a months-long investigation linked her to cash exchanges tied to Mexican drug cartels and Chinese cryptocurrency networks, according to a recently unsealed federal complaint. Homeland Security Investigations arrested Xiao Mei of Canaryville on allegations that she coordinated a series of large cash exchanges in Chinatown and River North between February and July 2024. Prosecutors said Mei, described as a Chicago-based broker for a Chinese money-laundering network, regularly used WeChat to arrange pickups of bulk U.S. currency from associates of drug traffickers and transferred equivalent...

FBI/Patel's war on big drug dealers continues.

The Israeli army believes that Hamas has reestablished its hold over Gaza's governing institutions since the cease-fire went into effect on October 10. Despite the population's dire situation and destruction from two years of war, the Israel Defense Forces have seen no significant opposition emerging or anti-Hamas protests. Army sources said local gangs that Israel backed during the last phases of the war, in the hopes they could challenge Hamas rule, have disbanded and/or their members have been eliminated or removed from the scene. Many Hamas operatives have been seen shooting anyone who is seen as opposing the organization or...

Federal prosecutors say a Latin King gang leader offered a $10,000 bounty for the killing of a senior immigration enforcement officer after an ICE agent shot a woman in Chicago this weekend. A source familiar with the investigation identified the intended target as Commander Gregory Bovino, who has been leading the Border Patrol’s high-profile “Midway Blitz” operation in the city. Juan Espinoza Martinez, 37, known by the street name “Monkey,” is accused of offering $10,000 reward for Bovino’s murder and $2,000 for information about Bovino’s location. Investigators linked Martinez to the communications through subscriber records and a phone number tied...

Two men who killed a 60-year-old man in an expressway shooting nearly four years ago while they were both on pretrial release for felony gun cases have pleaded guilty. Joshua Concepcion, 22, and Alexis Perez, 20, were sentenced to 15 years and 12 years, respectively, according to court records. Around 4:19 a.m. on November 18, 2021, Federico Bautista was driving to work in McKinley Park when Perez, driving a stolen Jeep in the opposite direction on Damen Avenue, saw him and popped a U-turn, prosecutors said. Perez allegedly followed Bautista onto the Stevenson Expressway and pulled up alongside Bautista’s car...

An immigration judge on Wednesday denied a motion filed by Kilmar Abrego Garcia's attorneys to reopen his immigration case, according to a copy of the decision obtained by ABC News. In the emergency motion filed in August to reopen the case, attorneys for the wrongly deported Abrego Garcia argued that because he was deported to El Salvador and then brought back to the United States, he is now eligible to apply for asylum within one year of his last entry into the U.S. But in the order filed on Wednesday, Regional Deputy Chief Immigration Judge Philip Taylor said that Abrego...

When federal agents led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided a South Shore residential building early yesterday, it understandably raised eyebrows. So what was that all about? And why was that particular building targeted? On Tuesday night, Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th) claimed on Twitter that the Venezuela-based street gang Tren de Aragua was behind it. “TdA’s took over the building,” Lopez wrote, adding, “they will not be missed — except by @ChicagosMayor & the Leftinos!” In fact, CWBChicago has learned the building raided by the feds was the site of a murder where a migrant was shot dead while...

Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker was seen posing with a man who worked as a 'Peacekeeper' in the state, less than a week before he was arrested for allegedly killing a father while fleeing a robbery at a Louis Vuitton store. Keller McMillan, 35, was one of seven men charged with murder, burglary, and retail theft after they robbed a luxury retail store and allegedly killed a father who was driving to work. It has now been revealed that McMillan was working as a 'Peacekeeper,' a trained community member who is sent to violent hotspots to de-escalate conflicts.

Less than a week before a crash-and-grab burglary crew killed an innocent man on the Magnificent Mile last Thursday, one of the men now charged with that murder donned a “peacekeeper” uniform and posed for a one-on-one picture with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. While that’s troubling, some law enforcement experts are more concerned that the accused man was able to stand directly next to the state’s most powerful executive despite having outstanding warrants in four states. Just before 5 a.m. on September 11, a group of burglars backed a pickup truck into a display window at the Louis Vuitton store...

The biggest cohort involved in gang activity in the United States is youths 13 to 16 years old, the FBI revealed as part of the agency’s Gang Activity, 2021–2024 special report published on Sept. 8.The Federal Bureau of Investigation building in Washington on Aug. 7, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch TimesThere were 79,507 offenders engaged in gang activities during the four years, and of these, 19,163 were aged 13 to 16—the highest among all age groups.This was followed by 17- to 19-year-olds with 13,563 offenders, and those 20 to 24 with 11,452 offenders.“Over one-third (33.8 percent) of offenders were juveniles under...

With tears steaming down her face, a Paterson woman who police say was kept by her boyfriend in a padlocked bedroom for the better part of two years showed up in court Tuesday and defended her alleged captor as a “loving, good man.” “I want this all to stop!” a sobbing Nancy Rodriguez told reporters in the hallway of Superior Court in Paterson, moments before her boyfriend, Michael Mendez, was led before a judge to answer charges of kidnapping, criminal restraint and drug distribution. Rodriguez disputed the state’s contention that Mendez, a reputed drug dealer and member of the Latin...

Homeland ministers from Britain, the United States and the other "Five Eyes" alliance will announce new measures this week to increase border security and target people smugglers, British interior minister Shabana Mahmood said on Sunday. The ministers from the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network - the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - will meet in London on Monday and Tuesday, Britain's Home Office said, with measures to "smash criminal smuggling gangs" the focus of the talks.

The mission continues at Alligator Alcatraz. The media was wrong. The leftist judge has been overturned. Florida will keep leading the way.

The FBI has determined that in the next six to 18 months, the Venezuelan government will try to use the members of TdA in the US to threaten, kidnap, and kill US-based Venezuelans critical of the Maduro regime. The FBI has said that Venezuelan officials are "likely using" members of the Tren de Aragua gang in order to destabilize the United States as well as other countries, according to a new report from Fox News. This comes after President Donald Trump has said that the government of Venezuela has purposefully been sending the terrorist gang members into the US. According...

Leftists have long held no qualms about assassination against their rivals, and in Colombia, where narcoterrorism is also a problem and left-narco alliances are common, it has started up again.. But at least we have a secretary of state who is wise to what's going on. This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a high-level delegation to Bogota after a leading Colombian presidential candidate, conservative Sen. Miguel Uribe, died of his wounds in a June shooting by a criminal known as a 'sicario' or hitman who obviously had a sponsor. Rubio seems to know who that might be, though,...

Honduras still has a long way to go to dismantle the “narco-state” that grew under ex-president Juan Orlando Hernandez, jailed this week for smuggling a deluge of cocaine into the United States, experts said. Hernandez, 55, spent years in positions of power cozying up to kingpins from some of Latin America’s most notorious cartels, which placed proxies in state institutions while he pocketed millions of dollars in drug money. Extradited to the United States upon leaving office in 2022, Hernandez was sentenced this week to 45 years in jail for his crimes after prosecutors said he had turned his country...

Judge Boasberg blocks Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Tren de Aragua, despite intelligence linking the gang to Venezuela’s government and acts of sabotage in the U.S. As President Trump fulfills his campaign promise to deport criminal illegal aliens, a blatantly corrupt judge is trying to stop him. Judge James Boasberg, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, has abandoned all pretense to fairness. I will leave it to others to focus on his conflicts of interest (the FISA Court, his wife, his daughter) and his double standard of justice. This article...

Like his sugardaddy, Vladimir Putin, Venezuela's dictator, Nicolas Maduro, likes to take American hostages for use as bargaining chips. He's got a lot of them in his many dungeons. So surprise, surprise, he's traded a lot of them: According to ABC News:The more than 200 Venezuelan migrants who were deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador's mega-prison in March have left El Salvador to be sent to Venezuela as part of a prisoner swap that included Americans being held in Venezuela, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced on X. The deal included the release of 10 Americans held in...

Police provided the public with details on Tuesday at a press conference, where they said that the rifle that was used was legally purchased. Robert Crimo III, 21, allegedly opened fire from a rooftop during the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, and evaded arrest for hours. Police said that Primo wore women's clothing in an attempt to conceal himself, specifically to help cover up his face tattoos. He may have worn a wig during the shooting.