Free Republic

How many times have you heard it said that Barack Obama was “deporter in chief”? How many times did Joe Biden brag that he’d deported more illegal immigrants than Donald Trump had in his first term? Turns out, those were wild distortions of the truth bordering – if you will pardon the pun – on outright lies. In late 2024, for example, we saw stories about how deportations that year were the largest in a decade, beating Trump’s record in what would be his first term. As NPR put it, this meant that “the Republican narrative that the Biden...

Not so long ago, Sweden used to be leftists’ favorite example of effective government: It had a generous welfare system, boasted a highly educated population, and just seemed a little classier and cleaner than most parts of the United States. True, it then had a small, homogenous population of law-abiding, productive citizens, but most admirers conveniently ignored this key detail. In more recent years, far fewer people mention Sweden. If anyone mentions the country, it is usually to cite their soaring crime rates and terrorist attacks and the obvious connection with Sweden’s large number of unassimilated migrants from the Third...

Two Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members were shot and wounded by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in Portland, Oregon, Thursday afternoon during a targeted vehicle stop in East Portland. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed the agents involved were Border Patrol personnel conducting operations related to a Venezuelan national involved in a recent shooting in Portland. According to DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin, the driver of the car “weaponized his vehicle and attempted to run over” the agents, prompting one of them to fire defensive shots out of fear for his life. When agents identified themselves to...

Berlin police arrested over 420 people on New Year’s Eve amid widespread violence and attacks on emergency responders. The arrests came after the city deployed 3,200 officers for the New Year’s Eve operation, and police logged 2,340 additional incidents beyond the major “Silvester” deployment, according to a statement from the State Administration for the Interior and Sport. Berlin’s fire brigade responded to 1,830 calls throughout the night. (RELATED: Famous Church Burns As Netherlands Police Face Unprecedented Violence On New Year’s Eve). The chaos in Germany’s capital mirrored scenes across Europe, where attacks on first responders and property damage strained public...

A couple of years ago, in July 2023, I participated in a debate at the Soho Forum on the subject of immigration. The resolution for the debate was: “Resolved: The U.S. should have free immigration except for those who pose a security threat or have a serious contagious disease.” Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute took the affirmative. I took the negative. Nowrasteh, a Senior Vice President for Policy at Cato, is known as a free immigration absolutist. And to his credit he had some good points to make. The most important one was that nothing increases world GDP so...

American cities did not stumble accidentally into mass surveillance. They chose it. Over the past decade, thousands of municipalities quietly installed automated license plate reader systems that record, store, and analyze the daily movements of ordinary people. They did so deliberately, with minimal public debate, and with striking indifference to the constitutional implications. This architecture was celebrated as modern, data driven, and compassionate. It was defended as the price of safety. Privacy objections were waved aside as abstract or paranoid. The public was assured that responsible officials would use the tools wisely. That confidence collapsed the moment enforcement priorities changed....

On his first day in office in his second term, January 20, 2025, President Trump issued a collection of Executive Orders. One of those was number 14160, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” EO 14160 seeks to do away with the long-standing practice of various U.S. agencies of recognizing U.S. citizenship of anyone born in the United States, even if that person’s parents were not legal residents or otherwise legally in the country at the time of the birth. From EO 14160: It is the policy of the United States that no department or agency of the...

Hungarian Justice Minister Bence Tuzson said Budapest “will not allow Brussels to force it to accept migrants.” Hungary has filed a lawsuit against the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over migration-related fines requested by Brussels, Justice Minister Bence Tuzson announced on Monday, December 15th, describing the move as an “unprecedented step in EU history.” According to the minister, Hungary had already amended its rules following a 2020 ECJ ruling on transit zones. Despite these changes, he said, the European Commission continued to push for sanctions in order to force a change in Hungary’s migration policy and took the case back...

Students had protested ICE enforcement against Muslim terrorist supporters. Two questions. 1. Why is a Pakistani Muslim terrorist at the University of Delaware? It’s a losing proposition for America and doesn’t seem to have paid off all that well. 2. How long until officials and the media insist that Luqmaan Khan, like the D.C. National Guard Afghan terrorist, was just ‘sad’ and we need to be understanding of everything he went through… to try and kill us. A University of Delaware student has been charged with felony possession of a machine gun and had plans to attack the campus, police...

“The magnitude of the national security crisis Joe Biden unleashed… cannot be overstated,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. A shocking new case out of Texas has intensified scrutiny of the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome program, after authorities arrested an Afghan national who allegedly posted videos on TikTok claiming he was constructing a homemade bomb and naming the Fort Worth area as his target. Fox’s Kayleigh McEnany broke into programming with the news alert, delivering confirmation from the Department of Homeland Security: BREAKING: An Afghan national was arrested this week after posting a video of himself on TikTok...

The United Kingdom is now in a rolling crisis that its leaders can neither manage nor control. We should pay attention. Hardly a day passes without some news item out of Britain that underscores the depth of the crisis in that country. Over the weekend, it was news that 1,500 migrants had crossed the English Channel illegally from France — in less than 72 hours. During a stretch of good weather, hundreds of people disembarked at migrant processing facilities in Dover on a daily basis, bringing the total number of Channel migrants this year to 38,450, well above the 36,816...

when rome receded, europe saw a long period of people living in the ruins of a more advanced civilization. bridges fell and no one knew how to fix them. stone homes were repaired with thatch. medicine and technology were lost. crop yields fell. sanitation became once more vile. social and cultural cohesion disintegrated. the dark ages decended. "that could never happen again" seems a popular view, but is it true? to be sure, in modern times, outside knowledge like "how to make a cell phone" will be preserved by global communication and markets, but if we're going to be seriously...

Nations that denounce their own cultures, traditions, histories, and religions are not nations for long. A spate of massive anti-illegal-immigration protests has broken out across the United Kingdom. Indeed, one might say that the kingdom is increasingly united about one thing: Britain belongs to the British. Waving Union Jack flags and carrying “Britain First” signs, thousands of protesters walk down city streets sporting patriotic clothing and repeating patriotic cheers. A stranger who knew no better might mistake the mass euphoria for a post-war victory parade celebrating the prospect of peace. Americans have seen these kinds of festive gatherings before. In...

Germany is grappling with a surge in violent crime, particularly group rapes—and it’s not the Germans getting more prone to commit crimes. The rising share of foreign suspects—up from 34% in 2010 to 51% in 2024—highlights the failed integration policies of Germany and the inability of certain migrant groups to coexist in an environment culturally different from their own. According to figures released by the Bundestag, last year saw a record number of 1,011 suspects linked to group rape cases—more than double the number reported in 2013. Fifty-one percent of those suspects were non-German nationals, continuing a trend that has...

The weekend saw big protests. Plus, a bonus observation about what happened to the famous British Bobbies (i.e., police). For the last three decades, and with an explosively accelerating force in the last decade, Britain has opened its doors to the Third World, especially the Muslim Third World. In 1980, 5-6% of the British population was foreign-born. As of 2021, around 16% of the population was foreign-born, with estimates that the percentage may now be as high as 18%. This is a huge increase for a welfare state, especially one that is dedicating its resources to housing, feeding, and providing...

President Donald Trump has told Canada that if it recognizes Palestine as a state, it’s jeopardizing a trade pact with the U.S. The threat is more than leverage for talks. It’s a reminder that the West is giving up on civilization and needs to be rousted from its slumber. “Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine,” Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social. “That will make it very hard for us to make a trade deal with them.” Canada is not the only Western nation that feels the need to recognize the terrorist-controlled Gaza Strip, which, with...

Mass immigration created this nation’s greatest political challenge. Distracted by side issues, conservatives sometimes get frustrated with the White House, but deputy policy chief Stephen Miller explained the need to stay focused on what matters most. He described what major cities might look like if existing federal laws were fully enforced. “You’d be able to see a doctor in the emergency room right away, no wait time, no problem,” Mr. Miller said. “Your kids would go to a public school that had more money than they know what to do with. Classrooms would be half the size. Students who have...

This is about Los Angeles, but it’s not at all about Los Angeles. This will make sense in a minute. So see if this sounds familiar: MacArthur Park was controlled by gangs and drug dealers, full of open drug use and prostitution, filthy and unsafe for families. The disorder in the park bled into the surrounding neighborhood. [McArthur Park Cam-1 Video at link] MS-13 controlled the park, but other gangs fought for space to sell drugs in the area, which led to violence: "One year, we had almost 106 homicides in eight square miles," an LAPD captain said. Through the...

Sometimes, certain countries are so destructive to civilization that they must be brought to heel. The First Punic War began in 264 BC, lasted 25 years, and was fought between the Romans and the Carthaginians, a civilization in what is today modern Tunisia. The Carthaginians were the most powerful and prosperous force in the Western Mediterranean and North Africa, while the Romans were a growing power on the Italian peninsula. After two decades, with both sides financially and demographically exhausted, Rome prevailed. Carthage ceded Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, and paid substantial reparations. ............................SNIP Today, across the West, there is a...

Things are not happy in Monterey County. The California county, which Kamala won by 63%, is considered a ‘sanctuary’ for illegal aliens by the Department of Homeland Security. But that sanctuary status was recently violated and local officials are outraged. So is the Solidarity Network: a pro-illegal alien group that ‘monitors’ immigration enforcement arrests. Monterey County Board of Supervisors Chair Chris Lopez responded by announcing that a maternal health walk was cancelled. “Monterey County deeply values the contributions of our immigrant workers and families that strengthen our local communities and economy,” Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo posted. The Monterey Solidarity...