Category: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Vance crushes false narrative about ICE ‘arresting’ 5-year-old boy
An image was circulated widely this week showing a visibly upset preschooler wearing an oversized hat and Spider-man backpack standing in the company of federal immigration agents. Evidently loath to investigate the circumstances surrounding the photo and what it actually depicts, Democrats and other radicals rushed to condemn U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D), for instance, suggested ICE had treated the boy like a criminal, while twice-failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris wrote that he “is just a baby. He should be at home with his family, not used as bait by ICE and held in a Texas detention center. I am outraged, and you should be too.”
‘No one thinks that makes any sense.’
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) went a step further, accusing ICE of “kidnapping 5-year-olds and using them as bait” and suggesting the agency should be defunded.
The liberal media didn’t appear particularly eager to correct Democrats’ false narrative, which was incubated by woke officials with Columbia Heights Public Schools, where the child was reportedly enrolled.
During his visit to Minneapolis on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance gave the press a reality check, noting that anti-ICE propagandists glossed over some critical information about the incident.
“I actually saw this terrible story while I was coming to Minneapolis,” said the vice president.
“And I see this story, and I’m a father of a 5-year-old — actually, a 5-year-old little boy. And I think to myself, ‘Oh my God, this is terrible. How do we arrest a 5-year-old?'”
“Well I do a little bit more follow-up research, and what I find is that the 5-year-old was not arrested; that his dad was an illegal alien; and when they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran,” said Vance.
Photo by Jim Watson – Pool/Getty Images
Vance told the Minneapolis crowd, “So the story is that ICE detained a 5-year-old. Well what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a 5-year-old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America?”
The Department of Homeland Security indicated that when ICE attempted to arrest the boy’s father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, in the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights on Jan. 20, the illegal alien from Ecuador “fled on foot — abandoning his child.”
Marcos Charles, the assistant director of enforcement and removal operations for ICE, indicated on Friday that after the illegal alien ditched his little boy and was arrested, ICE officers “stayed with the child. They cared for him, took him to get something to eat from a drive-thru restaurant, and spent hours ensuring he was taken care of. Again my officers did that. Not his father.”
Charles noted further that people inside the illegal alien’s apparent residence refused to open the door for the young boy and take him back.
According to DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, the boy’s alleged mother was inside the house and would not let him in even after officers assured her that she wouldn’t be taken into custody.
Marc Prokosch, a lawyer representing the family, indicated during a press conference on Thursday that the boy and his father were reunited and are being kept together at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, a family holding center in Dilley, Texas.
“Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates. This is consistent with past administration’s immigration enforcement,” said DHS.
The vice president further suggested that the argument that ICE cannot arrest illegal aliens who have children is unworkable given that’d mean “every single parent is going to be completely given immunity from ever being the subject of law enforcement.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. No one thinks that makes any sense,” said Vance.
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Socialism ‘will f**k you’: Bill Maher warns Democrats the radical left is leading party to ruin
Bill Maher criticized those behind the Democratic Socialist movement, stating that the Democratic Party must move to the center if it wants to win elections.
During a Friday episode of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Maher described how Democrats have become divided, with some pushing socialist ideals and others advocating for a more centrist position. He compared the comments of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a self-described Democratic Socialist, to those of Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger (D), who stated that the party should never “use the words ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again.”
‘Because socialism, to put it simply, just doesn’t work and has never worked.’
Spanberger also previously stated that if the party does not shift toward the center, “We will get f**king torn apart.”
“So how do we decide who’s right?” Maher asked. “Well, it turns out we don’t really have to flip a coin; we have the evidence. In 2024, 13 Democrats won in districts Trump also won.”
Maher noted that all of those Democrats were “moderates.”
“All the left-leaning think tanks have done autopsies on 2024, and they all came up with the same message: Move to the center,” he said.
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Zohran Mamdani. Photo by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
Maher stated that Generation Z has warmed to socialism because they attribute current affordability challenges to capitalism.
“No one wants to be approaching middle age and still writing their name on food before they put it in the fridge. So they’re quitting, quiet quitting, capitalism and texting socialism that they’re down to f**k,” Maher continued. “The thing is, socialism will f**k you. Because socialism, to put it simply, just doesn’t work and has never worked.”
“If you think New York can somehow reinvent this wheel, you’re in for a rude a-woke-ning,” Maher said.
He contended that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and Mamdani are “not Democrats.”
“They’ll be the first to tell you that. They’re Democratic Socialists, and that’s a very different thing, and I don’t think people know that yet,” he added.
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Bernie Sanders. Photo by Joe Maher/Getty Images For Fane
Maher explained that the U.S. already has “a lot of socialism,” citing Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps, veteran benefits, Pell grants, COVID-era payments, farm subsidies, disability payments, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, corporate bailouts, and the military-industrial complex.
He slammed the Democratic Socialists of America as “radicals” who want “completely open borders.” He also accused the group of “p***y politics,” stating that they required convention attendees in 2025 to submit a negative COVID test. Maher criticized the DSA’s request for attendees not to clap but to use “jazz hands” instead, as well as the stipulation against wearing “aggressive scents” during the conference to accommodate those sensitive to sensory overload.
“This is who the Democrats are thinking of following? You know, Chuck Schumer ain’t perfect, but at least he doesn’t crumble into a heap when confronted with Chanel No. 5,” Maher stated.
“You may not clap in the traditional way,” he told his audience.
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‘Socialism Is Not a Dirty Word Anymore’: Zohran Mamdani’s Victory Emboldens the Far Left
Zohran Mamdani’s election victory has emboldened far-left anti-Israel radicals like streamer Hasan Piker and former New York Rep. and “Squad” member Jamaal Bowman, who declared that America is at “the heart of the imperial war” and that “socialism is not a dirty word anymore.”
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Pity equals power for the progressive class
American politics once revolved around ideas — tax reform, national defense, energy independence, health care. But one side of the aisle has abandoned the work of persuasion for the theater of grievance. The modern left no longer campaigns on what it can build but on what has supposedly been done to it.
Victimhood has become the left’s organizing principle. The emotional currency of grievance has replaced the intellectual currency of ideas. That shift isn’t just cynical; it’s corrosive. It undermines the American spirit of self-reliance, accountability, and perseverance — the virtues that built this country in the first place.
Let others compete for who has suffered most. America’s story has never been written by its victims — only by its victors.
Consider New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Last month, he delivered a tearful campaign speech recalling how his “aunt stopped taking the subway after 9/11 because she didn’t feel safe in her hijab.” The story went viral. Media outlets rushed to elevate it as another morality play about post-9/11 Islamophobia.
Within days, however, fact-checkers discovered that the “aunt” didn’t live in New York City — and wasn’t his aunt at all but his father’s cousin. The story collapsed, but the damage was done.
Even if the tale were true, Mamdani’s framing was an insult to truth. His version turned the “victim” of 9/11 into someone who merely felt uncomfortable. The real victims were the firefighters who ran into burning towers, the police who breathed toxic dust for months, the passengers of Flight 93 who fought back knowing they would die, the families who never saw their loved ones again. To recast that national tragedy as a story about personal unease is moral inversion.
Privilege posing as persecution
Mamdani is no symbol of oppression. He was born in Uganda to two global elites: filmmaker Mira Nair and Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani. Educated at elite institutions, including Bowdoin College in Maine, he embodies privilege — not persecution.
He’s not alone. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has built her career on the same inversion. A graduate of Boston University, raised in a comfortable Westchester suburb, AOC is a product of the meritocracy she derides. Her father was an architect; her family owned a home. Yet her political persona depends on playing the perpetual underdog — the marginalized woman of color silenced by “the patriarchy.”
When criticized, she doesn’t answer with arguments but with emotion. Dissent becomes “hate.” Opposition becomes “bigotry.” As Newsweek once put it, “AOC’s weaponized victimhood undermines women.”
Grievance as status
This inversion — privilege masquerading as oppression — reveals something deeper about the left’s political psychology. Victimhood now confers moral authority. The more wounded you appear, the more virtuous you become. Pain is power.
But grievance politics reshapes the citizen’s role in democracy. Instead of the proud American who builds and contributes, we get the dependent petitioner, perpetually wronged and perpetually in need of government rescue. The state becomes therapist and provider, not guardian of liberty.
That’s why so many progressive campaigns sound like group therapy sessions. The message isn’t, “Here’s how we’ll improve schools or secure the border.” It’s, “Here’s who hurt us, and here’s who must atone.” The goal isn’t reform — it’s retribution.
The vanishing of virtue
When politics becomes a contest of feelings, truth and accountability vanish. Success is no longer measured by safer streets, better jobs, or stronger families, but by how “seen” or “unsafe” someone feels. Emotional satisfaction replaces objective progress.
But the American promise was never about comfort. It was about courage — the willingness to build, to sacrifice, to endure. This nation doesn’t owe its strength to grievance but to grit.
Think back to 9/11. The real victims weren’t the politically convenient ones. They were the firefighters who ran toward the towers, the police who never came home, the husbands and wives who never got to say goodbye, the children who grew up without parents. To twist their sacrifice into a sermon on discomfort dishonors them.
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Photo by Bloomberg / Getty Images
From grievance to gratitude
The contrast couldn’t be clearer. One version of politics says, “I was wronged, therefore I deserve.” The other says, “I was blessed, therefore I will serve.” The left has built a moral economy where pain is currency. Conservatives must offer a different creed — one grounded in purpose, gratitude, and resilience.
Freedom, not fairness, defines America’s promise. Adversity refines character; it doesn’t define it. As the nation nears its 250th birthday, we should remember who we are — a people forged by hardship and lifted by hope.
Let others compete for who has suffered most. We’ll compete for who can spread the most good. America’s story has never been written by its victims — only by its victors.
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