In this episode, we delve into the complex layers surrounding the recent tragedy in Minnesota, where an incident involving ICE has sparked widespread political and social discourse. We discuss the immediate reactions, the tragic loss of life, and how political leaders are leveraging this event as a potential catalyst for a government shutdown. As we navigate through various perspectives, we urge listeners to consider the implications of politicizing such tragedies and what it means for the future of public safety and policy-making in America.
SPEAKER 01 :
We got breaking news. After the tragedy in Minnesota, the Democrats threaten another shutdown.
SPEAKER 05 :
Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Seculo. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 01 :
Welcome to Sekulow. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. We have a packed show today. Will Haynes will be joining me in studio in just a moment. And again, we’ll be taking your phone calls. There’s a lot of news. Obviously, all eyes have been on Minnesota. It feels like Minneapolis, specifically, and the Twin Cities seems to be, like I said, a very heavy, dark cloud that is over this part of the country. And it doesn’t matter what the news cycle is. It’s not even the same story. But things happen. Of course, we’re talking about a tragic death yesterday. And look, let’s not overshadow. We don’t know all the details, and I’m not going to act like we do. But of course, now the politicization of it is coming into play. You start falling on party lines. Whether Republicans say, well, this is what happens. Democrats say, well, this is what happened. Obviously, someone was fatally shot. By ICE agent. And what does that look like and how does that now play out on the scale? Now, the investigation is taking place right now. Kristi Noem is speaking right now, DHS secretary. We’ll keep an eye on that, see if there’s anything that we should break into. But look, I think we have to now look at this as something that is, it’s a real bellwether of what’s happening in America, how people respond to it. But then we also have to look at what the political implications are as well. As we saw Hakeem Jeffries say, what we’re focusing on now, maybe we need to put a pause. Maybe we need to be shutting down the government once again, specifically over the fact that this happened and now we need to get a better hold on what’s happening with ICE. Again, I think there’s a conversation that can be had on both sides of this. And I think there’s probably some gray area. And I think there’s somewhere in the middle. Simply those of us of faith have to come at it from a specific lens, a specific point of view. Loss of life is never. the answer here we can’t be looking at it that way but of course you had then the mayor come out and make you know kind of profanity lay statements not that the president doesn’t respond in that way as well so i can’t say that there’s a one side better or one side that looks like they’re more on the side of good in this kind of moment but i do want to look at the bigger picture here which is how then politics takes a tragedy and then twists it to reach their goals And that goal may in fact hurt more Americans. Instead of bringing people together, instead of figuring out some sort of process or regulation or whatever it may be, the idea of we need to just shut down the government or we need to come up with something like this, it’s where we see once again heading into a midterm what the real stakes are. And unfortunately, how Washington, D.C. doesn’t often respect you, the human being, respect the American, doesn’t even respect the people in Minnesota. And we know that. We have callers all the time from Minnesota. It’s one of our top stations there in Minneapolis. I can see because I know how many of you call in. I’d love to hear from you. How does it feel? We see it from the outside. We see it from the national news side. How does it feel in Minnesota? If you’re watching in Minnesota or in the area, I’d love to hear from you. Even if you’re not, I’d still love to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110. Because I believe it’s at least our obligation to discuss these kind of things in a serious tone, but also in a rational tone. If you come at it from a place of just political division, you are not going to get anywhere in these conversations. You can’t be on one side saying that you’re the moral right and then not have a discussion about the gray areas that seem to come in. And we’ve seen different versions of these videos play out. And look, they are graphic videos. And again, someone got shot. Not only someone got shot, someone got murdered. And I don’t know, but I haven’t seen really a played out version where it seemed to be that should have been the case. There was certainly some issues. I’m sure they’ll be investigated. And I’m not trying to be here and just talk out of my own head here. I think a lot of us have been focused on what we can do and how things can help. But my real concern is the politicization of any kind of tragedy and that Washington, D.C., jump on it. And you have now Democrats saying, well, now we need a government shutdown again because of it. And we know how that went last time. And I can point to this has to do with the midterms, not point to helping you, the American people. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. That’s 1-800-684-3110. We’ll be joining me in the next segment. We’re going to have a lot more to cover. Phone lines are open for you. As I said, it’s Logan Secular. Will Haines joining me in studio right now. Of course, we want to talk about this. It’s the main topic of the day. Minnesota seems to be where it doesn’t matter if we decide, hey, we’re going to divert off. Something happens in Minneapolis. And like I said, we’re not based there. We’re based in Tennessee. But somehow there’s a cloud over this area of the country. And more tragedy keeps coming upon this area. It almost feels not real. A lot of people are commenting. Some people agree with me. Some people disagree with me, and that’s okay. I think it’s open to have this discussion. We need to at least talk it out. But to me, the topic on hand is not necessarily whether you think that the ICE officer was justified or not when the car was being blocked. And we’re going to find out all the details there. Whether you think they’re justified in open firing, I think that’s a bit much to be okay with. But let’s say you are. That’s fine. Now let’s talk about the ramifications of this. Because in this moment now, you have the Democrats calling on a shutdown, and the shutdown of ICE, and the shutdown of what could be more pain to the American people, and using a moment to politicize and now swerve towards a midterm election. And that is always the concern, is sadly, Washington D.C. doesn’t have your back most of the time. They are looking towards, when’s the next vote? And Will, that feels like what happens in these moments. Instead of moments of reflection, instead of moments of conversation, instead of looking towards it, it is bloviating and making it some sort of political swerve.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s right. So right now you’re hearing from people like Chris Murphy, senator from Connecticut, who’s saying Democrats cannot vote for a DHS budget that doesn’t restrain the growing lawlessness of this agency. Pramila Jayapal, who is the leader of the Progressive Caucus, a Democrat from Washington in the House, said we can’t just keep authorizing money for these illegal killers. That’s what they are, this rogue force. And as well, Representative Ramirez from Illinois said statements and letters are not enough. And the appropriations process and the CR expiring on January 31st is our opportunity. So some some big names, especially with the leader of the Progressive Caucus, as well as a senator from Connecticut, Chris Murphy. Bringing this forward and trying to basically say like, hey, we’ve got another opportunity here. I know that, you know, Chuck Schumer and Leader Jeffries are focused on the Affordable Care Act subsidies that we brought everyone to a fiscal cliff on and government shut down last time. But maybe we try a different path and try a different shutdown. And that’s where we’re at. And it’s actually really disheartening because. There are so many problems in this country and the rhetoric from the left that has been used since before the election, even now calling ICE illegal killers, blanket statements about human beings and that work for the federal government that ICE are illegal killers. That’s taking it so broad. And I think that’s what you were also cautioning people of. There’s a lot of facts we know, a lot of things we’ve seen, a lot of things we don’t know about what happened there. And so maybe everyone should take a step back. But on the right, we are seeing everyone fall in line as well. And on the left, everyone is falling along party lines that… there is nothing wrong that happened and that there is everything wrong that happened. And I think at the same time, just like I said, these are human beings that are members of ice. There was an American citizen that was killed by federal law enforcement yesterday. And I think even needs to look, we need at least look into it. Exactly. And I think it’s the exact same cries that a lot of people had on January 6th, a few years ago, when, uh, An American citizen was killed inside the Capitol by federal law enforcement that you can be sad that an American was killed by federal law enforcement and want to know what really happened without even breaking your party line or killed in general.
SPEAKER 01 :
right you know how about no killing i think we we should be sadly that’s just the nature of the world and i hate that because i think that we’d be progressing a lot further if if the first jump wasn’t too and look i see a lot of comments coming in and i know that that we’re ruffling feathers here and i’m not trying to what we’re trying to do is to say take a breath think about what you’re if you’re going to post think about what you’re posting Think about who you’re going to be influencing. Think about if you know all the facts. Do you feel like you are informed enough to really form a full opinion? I know we are not. We do not know all the facts. We know that you have the DHS. I’m saying that was in self-defense. Yeah, but where’s the line of self-defense? There is that as well, which is, was this someone driving away, fleeing an accident? Was this someone blocking a road? And when does lethal force… Where’s the line for lethal force? And that’s something we need to have that discussion. On the other hand, we have this moment in time where every single tragedy is used as a political weapon. and is used to fracture us more and is used to look at it through a lens that is frankly not American, not Christian. It is to look through a lens of a political party, which is how do we progress? How do we move? Let’s say if you’re a Democrat and you wanna go for a shutdown here, how do we get rid of ICE slash really what we’re trying to do is get votes. How do we get votes so then we can keep our jobs and somehow funnel money continually? instead of actually looking at it from a humanitarian point of view. Look, similar situation with the fraud scandal, which is what’s really the heart of the fraud scandal? It may be fun to be like pointing fingers at Tim Walls or pointing fingers at Minnesota, but what it really is is that the American people were hurt. Tax money was being funneled to places that did not exist and being used for fraud. Tax money that could have gone to help people. Instead, it went to fraudulent organizations, potentially illegal organizations. It went to cause harm. So the serious nature of all of this, even when it can get tied up in political theater, needs to really be addressed. And as long as we have politicians, and I think we will have politicians the rest of our lives, that are really just fighting for their job and really just fighting to stay in power, and power I would even just put employed, we will always have these moments that are politicized. And how could they not be? And I’m saying that to both sides here. You had the mayor come out immediately in Minneapolis, make that, you know, not crazed, but a angry, profanity-laced speech. You had President Trump respond on Truth Social with also a similar, on the other side, post and you go okay so can we just take a moment grieve with this family address the situation that’s happening because i don’t care if you agreed with that person or not they still probably have you know i don’t know if they deserve to die i i think that’s a a gross overstatement at least based on what we’ve seen we have to take a real hard look at all of this and to say that it is clearly a republican or democrat thing it is not But with that, we have so many calls that are coming in as well right now. And I want you to call in and I will take your calls. I know a lot of you disagree with me and that’s fine. 1-800-684-3110. You know, we fight for everybody’s here and everyone’s free speech here at the ACLJ. It’s always been important to us. And we are going to talk about other things. I don’t want you to think we’re just going to be doom and gloom talking sad. We also have some some fun content to get to a little bit later in the show. But of course, this is where everyone’s minds at. And look, if if a vehicle is being used as a weapon, how It’s all a bit gray. And what I don’t love right now in society is that we jump to being the expert immediately. Whether it is Venezuela, whether it is Minnesota, that somehow We all are supposed to be, or Ukraine or Gaza, whatever it may be, Russia, Israel, or we have to know everything immediately. We have to pick our side and we have to be, you know, we have to make our statement immediately. This is how we feel. When sometimes you do need to take a look a little, you know, you need to go to that 10,000 foot view. We do have no lines open for you right now. That’s how impassionate a lot of you have happened. 1-800-684-3110. We only got a minute and a half in this segment, so I’m not going to take your calls in this segment, but I will take them in the next one. And look, it’s… It’s sometimes tough to come on here and do these shows because on the same hand, Minneapolis, as we said, is sort of the crux of two different controversies right now. The other one, of course, is the fraud scandal. The ACLJ is involved in that, by the way. We’re not taking that lightly. Like I said, as silly as you can make it and go, Tim Walls, funny, call him a name. We’re taking that real action here at the ACLJ. We’re going to expose what was going on because billions of dollars of American taxpayer dollars are being wasted. So yesterday we filed many, I think five freedom of information requests. And we’re going to get some answers. And the ACLJ team doesn’t only do that. We also have a petition where you can get behind that as well. So there are times where it’s clear. And I encourage you, go spend some time at ACLJ.org. ACLJ.org. Sign the petition. Get involved. See all the content that we produce here. We have an incredible team. Incredible team that does incredible work, and it only happens because people like you sign, support, get involved, donate. It’s fantastic. Phone lines are jammed. We’ve got no lines open right now, but we’ll see how many we can get to coming up in the next segment. That’s at 1-800-684-3110. Also, you’ll be able to hear specifically from some of those Democrat leaders. We’ll play some of that coming up, some sound bites, some video bites. So stay tuned. Again, go to aclj.org. We’ll be back with your calls and comments in just a moment, but stay engaged and involved on all our social media platforms as well. And if you’re on YouTube and you haven’t yet, hit subscribe. We’ll be right back. Phone lines are totally jammed. Before we get to the calls, I know Will kind of wanted to walk us through a bit of a timeline here, this situation that happened not only in Minnesota, but just in general and sort of the conversation that has surrounded it. ice and has surrounded immigration and some of the changes. And look, we have been honest with you. That’s what I’ve always told you. We are not going to tell you what you want to hear. We’re going to tell you what we believe legally and what we believe spiritually. And with that, I know can cause some conflict. That’s okay. Let’s have those discussions. I’ve always been open to having these discussions. Will, I know, wanted to walk us through a bit of a timeline here. And before we take calls, let’s go ahead and do that.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, and I think also this is because of how partisan it gets to with the finger pointing as well, because it… This is so predictable, unfortunately, and tragically in our country that something like this was going to happen because the Democrats almost wanted it to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. They were saying eventually ICE is going to kill an American citizen.
SPEAKER 01 :
The amount of people I saw last night posting, I told you this was going to happen. I’ve been waiting for this day and not in a positive, obviously in a negative saying, I told you, you know, eventually we’d get here.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, but here’s what’s frustrating, I think, when you look at this. It’s that, I mean, the president and the administration, it was never a secret that immigration was a big deal. And we know how bad it was under the Biden administration, how open borders were. And the American people were genuinely frustrated with that. And instead of Democrats trying to find a way to get common ground or to shut the border down, they gaslighted the American people and said it wasn’t true. And what happens? Then… Someone who’s going to do something different gets elected. The Trump administration. We knew all along there was going to be deportations and the border shutdown. Then politicians immediately start calling ICE going in and conducting federal law enforcement of the immigration laws of this country. Nazi tactics. They call it fascist. Tim Walz himself said that ICE was the Gestapo. So they are using all the rhetoric that no one learned anything from during the election cycle where there were two assassination attempts on the current president now of the United States. After calling him Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, and then there are two assassination attempts, they still keep doing it and they call ICE his Gestapo. Those are very heated, powerful words. that have consequences. So what happens? You see what happened in LA. The need for the National Guard after American citizens trying to stop the federal law enforcement activity, going after people that are here illegally, not going after those people that are here legally. And what are they doing? They’re shutting down streets, setting cars on fire that are not even connected to the government, trying to stop The operation of the federal government. And that was happening all over the country. And then there’s a big fraud scandal in Minnesota. There’s a tension there. ICE goes there as a response of that as a part of it going around the country where there are more sanctuary, more friendly cities towards illegal undocumented immigrants. And The illegal activity and the disruptive activity of American citizens in the streets, which was able to be continued in many of these blue cities, raised the temperature even more. You have to think that the members of federal law enforcement are nervous and on high alert because of that. throughout the country, and eventually something like this was going to happen. I don’t think that any of us should be able to look at a couple video clips that are a few seconds long online and decide one way or the other what happened there. I mean, I think that a real investigation should be done, that the body cam footage should be reviewed, that people that are actual experts in this should look into it. And yes, there’s a lot of leeway when you are law enforcement and a large vehicle is coming at you. But at the same time, we got there because of the rhetoric, because those members of ICE should not have been afraid of the American public that they may be run over and killed. And when you’re calling them the Gestapo, like the governor of Minnesota has, that fear is going to be in many people that are just doing their job. And you can’t start looking at all of the members of ICE and calling them illegal killers, calling American citizens and entire government branch illegal killers, and expect this to not continue. The rhetoric is going to keep making it worse. In the wake of this, when the mayor of Minneapolis gets up there and uses expletives to say, get out of my city, That’s not going to make it any better. That’s not working together. When Tim Walz is inferring he’s at war with the federal government by calling up the National Guard, saying that we’ll be ready, and then saying, you know, no other governors had to go to war with the federal government before. One, completely ignoring an actual war in this country where governors and the federal government did go to war. that one that happened that’s not good people don’t want to go back to that but to making that inference doesn’t make it better either more law enforcement are going to die or more American citizens are going to die They’ve got to figure this out without immediately going to all of them are illegal killers because then the people that want to disrupt that, they don’t see them as humans. They dehumanize them. This whole thing has got to come down a few notches.
SPEAKER 01 :
I want to hear from you. Let’s go to the phones. I’m going to kind of try to ping pong back and forth at different points of view. Let’s go to Matthew first on line six. Matthew, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, thank you. Hey, you guys have got this right. You need to have respect for human life. There should be an investigation. You should watch the body cam footage. And there needs to be respect for law enforcement. Law enforcement can be wrong. They should be questioned, but they should not be yelled at, called names, and run over by cars.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, I think, Matthew, that’s a very rational point of view, going, you know what? Things happen. There’s not necessarily always this clear-cut answer. But you know what? I want to hear from someone who feels completely on the other side, and that’s totally fine. Let’s go to Charles in Denver. Charles, you’re on the air as well.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. I believe that the… she was resisting the rest then there is not one single camera vantage point that shows how far the officer was in front of the car uh but they’re saying that he should have seen where her tires were pointed if he’s too close to the bumper he couldn’t see the tires And what is the turning radius of that car?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, Charles, I mean, that’s partially why we say there needs to be a full investigation here. Right, exactly. Charles, I think, and once again, the member of ICE that pulled the trigger on this, there’s a good chance did fear for his life. Yeah, maybe justifiable. And with all of that context of everything that’s gone on and being called illegal killers and being called the Gestapo and a car coming at you, yeah, I’m not saying that it wasn’t, and by the way, I’m not saying that there is not a justifiable defense that will come out of that from a investigation. I’m also not even saying that he should be investigated as a potential criminal act here or non-justifiable, just that we need to know what happened. But to that point as well, though, you also bring up resisting arrest. ICE arresting an American citizen for being there, they don’t enforce regular American laws. They’re not a police force in that sense. Therefore, even that brings up more questions of what is law enforcement in that situation. Do they have the right to detain her in enforcing immigration laws? That’s a big question that a lot of armchair expert attorneys on Twitter have the answer for, but may not necessarily be the truth when all the facts are laid on the table.
SPEAKER 01 :
Phone lines are jammed right now, but they will open up. And we have a second half hour of this broadcast. So if you don’t get us on your local radio station, we are broadcasting as well on YouTube, Rumble, ACLJ.org. You can go there, find us live at the Salem News Channel, and be a part of that conversation. It’s a great way, actually, to gauge what people are thinking, too. If you’re on their YouTube channel, you can see all the comments that come in are on Rumble and have this discussion back and forth. There’s a lot of people that agree, a lot of people that disagree, and that’s okay. That’s part of our show. Go to ACLJ.org right now. Second half hour coming right up.
SPEAKER 05 :
keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 01 :
Welcome back to Sekulow. We have other topics to hit today, but of course we are really talking about what’s going on in Minnesota. I think we can’t avoid it, whether that is the fraud situation. And of course, right now, mainly everyone’s focused on that ICE-involved shooting that happened yesterday and what that looks like on the political stage. As well, something that we wanted to discuss, but it’s kind of gotten lost in the weeds here, is this shutdown that’s been looming.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s right. And once again, The end of this month, we are the 8th of January today, the 31st. We have 31 days in January. I didn’t know if you knew this. It’s one of those months. But that’s the end of another funding issue. It wouldn’t be a full government shutdown like we saw back in October because there was some of the federal government that was appropriated out for a full year. But. We have large chunks of the government that could be without funding come January 31st if the Congress does not come up with something. One of those appropriation bills we actually talked about yesterday where there was a million dollars earmarked by Congress. Both Ilhan Omar as well as the two senators from Minnesota going to a recovery and drug addiction program in Minneapolis. So once again, we’re like, why? Why right now would you optically decide a specific line item of DOJ money is a great thing that we should be pushing for, especially knowing all eyeballs will be on this. But that was in it. And we know that there’s many on the right. They were trying to get that money stripped out. But now we’re starting to see. People like Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut, as well as Pramila Jayapal from Washington, who is the progressive chair caucus leader. And we have also Representative Ramirez from Illinois. All are kind of pushing now in light of what happened in Minneapolis yesterday. to leverage this fiscal cliff that’s coming up on January 31st as a way to either defund or rein in ICE as a part of this funding package. Basically saying we’ll hold the government hostage once again And not let people get paid, not let things move forward, create all that havoc once again if you don’t do our bidding on ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And at the end of the day, we cannot get to this point where they’re wanting to do away with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. There is no moderation even or nuance to the positions here anymore that they think that ICE are illegal killers on the left. That’s their side. That’s the line, yeah. And then every enforcement of every law can be done by ICE is seeming to come out of the right at this point. Like where is the common sense here? But in regard to the left… If they think that this is a winning strategy, I kind of want to see it play out because I don’t think that the shutdown previously was really good. But them trying to now hijack a tragedy, another tragedy and say, we’re going to shut down the government. You know, we’re going to see what happens there. We’re going to see what kind of benefits, what kind of pain we can inflict on the American people again, because that’s what they did at the end of last year. We’re going to do it again. And we’re going to use the death of an American citizen as the turning point here. And we really think that’s going to help us in the midterms. I just don’t see it. But it’s really just the worst of politics to me.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, look, we got one minute left in this segment. When we get back, I want to hear from you. Phone lines are completely jammed. Clearly, a lot of passionate people on both sides of this argument. And like I said, I don’t think there should be two sides of this. I think we should all be looking at it from all points of view right now. I don’t really like that it’s been decided who was good, who was bad. What would that look like? Of course, there’s a gray area here and we need to look all into that. We don’t have all the information. But that discussion is going to keep on going. But like I said, my main point was the politicized version, because I think that, as Will said, is one of the worst things about American politics, how quickly we take a tragedy either way and turn it into some sort of vote farm. We’ll be back in just a moment. I want you to get involved with the ACLJ. I want you to go to ACLJ.org, sign our petitions, get involved, maybe even join our email list. There’s a lot of great ways to do it. We’ll be right back with more on Sekulow after this quick break. Again, only a quick break. And then I know some of you’ve been a hold for over 30 minutes. I’m going to get to you as soon as I can. You may have been watching our stream and say, y’all took a real diversion here talking about the new updated food pyramid. Look, I don’t think we thought that this topic was going to carry us this whole show talking about what’s going on in Minnesota. There was a moment where we thought we’re going to discuss that in an upcoming segment. Maybe we’ll talk about it in the next segment. But right now we have so many calls and so many of you have been a hold for so long that I want to make sure we hear from you, the American people, because I think that’s very important. I’m going to go in order.
SPEAKER 09 :
uh there’s there’s gonna be some people you’re gonna agree with some people you disagree with that’s okay that’s part of the the way we run here but i’m just gonna go in order because of how long people have been on hold let’s go first to melissa who is calling in texas melissa go ahead hey i’m so glad to be able to talk to you um i’m a federal employee i had to work through the last shutdown um i didn’t get paid right A lot of people were sent home and didn’t get paid. But, you know, what else didn’t get done is all the human relations stuff. Bills didn’t get paid. Utilities were shut off because we’re still not caught up on paying bills. People are losing health insurance benefits because open season occurred right in the middle of the government shutdown. So… There’s so much fallout for federal employees from the first shutdown, and I am appalled that the Dems have the nerve to threaten another shutdown by weaponizing their agenda against the American people.
SPEAKER 01 :
It is one of those moments. Like we said, it may be a little bit different this time around because there are some protections, but it’s still going to hurt. Especially if it starts lasting as long as the last one. This isn’t a performance anymore. They’re now doing it performatively because guess what happens? That pushes up their chances of new votes, re-election. They see all Republicans are doing it because we remember what the talking points were last time with the Republicans are causing the shutdown because they won’t budge at all on their resolutions or the bills that were put in place. Now they’ve come up with a heartstring version that they can pull on people but say, we’re still going to shut down the government. We’re still going to try to do this because now we need to shut down ICE. How do you do that? We’ve got to have a different look at it, Will. I think you respond to Melissa real quick before we get to the next call.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I mean, I agree with you, Melissa. It’s once again, it’s what I said at the end of last segment. It’s politics at its worst when the the members of Congress decide there is no more talking to each other. The only thing we can do. And that’s been for a long time. But the only thing we can do is threaten to shut down the government on January 31st. And we can’t find a way to have some sort of sane immigration policy. The fact that Democrats don’t even want to go there, and we’ve seen that it wasn’t that hard to shut down the border. that that tells you everything you need to know. It’s a really sick, swampy place.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, and Governor Tim Walz is speaking right now. We haven’t cut into any of these and we’ve had a lot of the different political sides speaking just because so far there’s not really been anything that is worth treating. We’ll find some comments, I’m sure, that we could go to later on. Let’s continue on. I’d rather hear from you. Florence in New York on Line 3. You’re on the air.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hi, guys. Thanks so much for taking my call. Again, there’s so much to unravel here. But first of all, it is a tragedy that this poor woman lost her life. It’s a tragedy. It’s a tragedy that the ICE agent has to deal with what just took place. Whoever it was has to deal with that. Second of all, we say we don’t want to point fingers, but the finger has to go towards the Democrat Party. They have made the ICE agents the enemy of the people, like they’re the big boogeyman. We’ve known we’ve had a problem with illegal immigrants in this country for a while, and they know that we voted Donald Trump in so he can clean this mess up. Second of all, you have people like Krista, Jayapal, Chris Murphy is the biggest joke. They went online and they opened up all of these sites to tell you where the ICE agent was, making sure that you would fight them, resist them. And that’s not what the ICE agent is there to do. So now this tragedy happened. So instead of the mayor coming out, putting on his big boy pants, saying, listen, this is a tragedy what happened. Let us get to the bottom of what happened before we make any comment, anything. And let’s protect this great city. Let’s if we’re going to protest, let’s protest peacefully. I think we have used the word peaceful protest in such a negative way to allow such hate speech to go out, to allow murders, more to destruction of your cities. And instead of walls coming out and saying, listen, guys. Enough is enough. Let’s just wait and see. If you’re going to protest, let’s protest peacefully. Leave the ICE agents alone. They’re here to do a reason. But again, you made them the enemy of the people. Jayapal, she shouldn’t even speak, considering what she did to Netanyahu when he came to our country to visit. She had her big sign up when she was standing there. So she’s the biggest divisive. racist going. This is what a communist does. These people have been indoctrinated, whether it’s on the internet, whether it’s on the media, whether it’s your mayor, whether it’s your governor, whether it’s your spokesperson. They have made basically ICE agents, President Donald Trump, everything that he stands for, the enemy. And the reason why the Democrat now wants to call for the shutdown, i.e. shutdown, is is because they have nothing else. There is nowhere else that they can go.
SPEAKER 01 :
Florence, again, I appreciate you calling, and you were a great caller a few days ago, and you proved why you’re a great caller again. You’re coming at it from a rational point of view, and one that, honestly, a lot of New Yorkers have. A lot of people from the East Coast feel the same way that you do. which is that you are right, that they have been, honestly, you know what has happened to ICE, and I can say this as someone who can look at it from a bit of a media perspective. If you look at the way ICE is treated online, and I will even say this from our own accounts, from the government accounts, meaning like from the Department of Homeland Security accounts or from the White House accounts, there’s been a cartoonification, there’s been a video gamification of the work of ICE. And what happens with that when you do a little funny video and you put it to Pokemon, got to catch them all, or you put it to a Sabrina Carpenter, a man child or whatever it may be. You start to trivialize it in a way that makes it a little less serious. And because of that, it becomes a little less real for people. And when it becomes less real, the human life side of it becomes a little bit more transient. It becomes a little bit more disposable. And I think you could say that for both sides. When you make a little fun graphic that says a ball of ice and you start threatening ice agents and then on the other side you make a comedic video about catching people and sending them back to their country to you know the theme song for cops or to like I said this one specifically I always can go back to that Pokemon one as much as it is comedic creative people share it you do go does this make it a little less real for people therefore they feel like they have a bit more right to take a life to use a car as a weapon to respond in a way that is dehumanizing in nature.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, and once again, uh, to Florence’s point, when you see the governor of Minnesota, as he just said in, in his press conference, one, he made it all about president Trump and he said the lack of humanity by ice was shocking. All these things are what I’ve been talking about for almost an hour now, that they are dehumanizing other American citizens that work in a federal government job. Just as they say that they dehumanize the person who tragically lost their life here. When you think of them as the Gestapo, when you think of them as lacking humanity and then it makes the crowd that does want to do harm to people, it makes it easier for them. And you already see, and I’ve seen it since this happened on the internet, people who are saying things that are criminal in nature, using violent threats against individuals if they were to cross their paths. That’s illegal, but it’s all because of the dehumanization of these other people.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, absolutely. We got two minutes. Let’s quickly take one more call before we go to break. Actually, I’m going to jump to Bill in Wyoming. Bill, we only got two minutes, but I know you’re a frequent caller. You can get your comments out. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, thanks for taking my call. You guys almost, I’d like to condense everything that you guys talked about earlier on your program in the fact that That if we can take and address those who are so vociferous about this and ask them one simple question that hopefully they can understand. And that is, would we be going through all of this if the previous administration had followed the laws and made sure that the borders were not open?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, Bill, of course not. I think that is a very clear answer, which is yes, if we had actually taken care of the border crisis during the crisis, remember, we couldn’t even use the word crisis. That was the whole thing. We weren’t allowed to say crisis until they said we could say crisis, but crisis was the word. And we know what was going on because we all can see what was happening in your society. It didn’t have to do with the people who are coming over here who wanted a better life. It was about drugs. It was about all of these problems that were coming in and killing our citizens. Members of your family. We all could see it. It was clear. So President Trump comes in, they change the tone. The tone does change, and you can agree and disagree with how that happens, but you are right. Now, what do I also say? I’m someone who very much looks forward. You can look back and say, yes, they may be to blame for how we got to here, but that’s gone. You can’t change that. What we can change is what the future looks like for the American people. So now it’s been a year since President Trump has been in office, since we’ve had a lot of these policies. Now we’ve got to really move forward. They’ll continually turn their back and look at President Trump, I’m sure, next time around, or whoever it may be. But I’m not for that. Move forward, everyone. We’ll be right back with your phone calls coming up. Welcome back to Secular. Look, we only got one segment left for today and we have a full bank of calls right now. So I always like to hear from you, the American people. Let’s go ahead and get to some of those right off the bat. I’ll wait for the song to fade out. Now isn’t casually. There you go. Let’s go to Mary Ellen calling from Chicago area in Illinois. Go ahead, Mary Ellen.
SPEAKER 11 :
I just have a kind of a different perspective coming from Chicago and Minneapolis and I’m thinking and I’ve looked at this for how many years now we’ve heard of all these people who drive off and then get shot and killed by the police because they never either obeyed what the cop officer said or stopped or rolled down their window or whatever and it’s in my opinion it’s like Why we don’t hear from politicians saying, look, when an officer or federal agent of the government stops you, you need to stop, listen, and follow orders. And so your life will be spared. And I mean, how many lives could have been spared? But we see how the Democrats over the years, they want to defund the police. So that, you know, it erodes across the country the respect for law and order.
SPEAKER 04 :
Right, Mary Ellen, I think that there is a hypocrisy in politics. I mean, that’s an understatement when it comes to anything. And I think all sides… take part in that i mean the fact that yes the same party that wants to defund the police also is saying uh you know that that this is i can’t believe this would happen but they have eroded the trust in the law enforcement and made dehumanize them and and even the governor of that state yes that it is It is an erosion of public trust. And then they act surprised and outraged and say this is dehumanized when because of their rhetoric, people don’t respect the law enforcement and they put themselves in situations that end up creating terrible crises and tragedies. But at the same time, I want to see less Americans die from instances like this no matter what their politics are of when you are creating that distrust and then people go and do get in these situations and then you understand that the law enforcement are gonna be on edge knowing what is being said about them this ends up happening but i also caution people on the right we’ve seen 25 seconds of video yeah that is it i I cannot fathom that someone would with 100% certainty say what the intent of the woman who is no longer alive was at that moment. Whether it was fleeing or the tires or whatever, we don’t know. Based on that clip. And so just let’s take a pause here and just see what plays out. A good call coming in or a good comment.
SPEAKER 01 :
Jerry in Tennessee on line one. Jerry, go ahead. Watch it on YouTube, which a lot of you watch on. Over half a million of you watch on YouTube, which we really appreciate. Go ahead, Jerry.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hey, guys. Appreciate you taking my call. Man, I’m just really concerned about our nation, as I’m sure everybody that’s listening to this is. But how did we get down this really tough road? We’ve really tolerated too much violence in all aspects of our lives. I mean, we’re tolerating violence against the police in some cases, violent demonstrations. We’re tolerating violent rhetoric from politicians on both sides. You know, the spin that the media puts in everything. It’s just all we all jump to the conclusion that we’re right and everybody else is our enemy.
SPEAKER 01 :
If we could just tone it down and say… Jerry, that has been a message that a lot of us have been preaching, I feel like, but it doesn’t… It feels like it falls on deaf ears, to be honest.
SPEAKER 04 :
I mean, to Jerry’s point, yes. All we’re saying is that, yeah, let’s find some humanity in people and not everyone be our enemy. And we’re being called cowards from people that we agree with on 99% of every issue that we talk to every day. We’re just… We’re not afraid to tell the truth or say what we see when it comes to these issues. And that, yeah… We don’t know everything about this. And also in saying that she refused an order from ICE. Do I, as an American citizen… Do they have jurisdiction over me wherever I am? Because maybe we should be clear on that. They are immigration and custom enforcement. If I’m not crossing a border as an American citizen, is there any jurisdiction over an American citizen? And those are questions I feel like some well-meaning people on the left are maybe trying to get out there, but it’s not working because everyone is calling them Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo. That’s Tim Walz.
SPEAKER 01 :
Doesn’t help anybody. All right. We got three calls, three and a half minutes left of the show. We’re going to do our best to get to them. Let’s start with Cesar, who’s calling from Maryland on line five. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hello. Good afternoon. Yeah, I just wanted to say that, you know, this is very sad. The tragedy on both sides, you know, for people who are being persecuted on one point, but also the officers who have to do this job. You know, but honestly, I want to see some vetting going on and evaluation, mental evaluations of these officers. Because I have sometimes seen officers who are like in a power train, you know, and they just want power and they want to show what their power is. And I think if we evaluate them and don’t just give anybody who ever wants, you know, a job, I think we would do a lot better.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, Cesar, I’m not sure. Well, I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but I also, you know, I don’t know what the vetting process is of ice. We obviously have seen a lot of recruitment ads. If you’re watching maybe the UFC, you’ve gotten ads for, do you want to join ice? Here’s how you do it. And yeah, they’re kind of cool ads. They try to make it seem like this cool thing. I don’t know what the process is. There may be those guardrails there. And look. moments like this happen for members of law enforcement in general we we know this whether they’re on the right side which is often the case and we’re not saying by the way this one that they’re not on the right side we’re saying is we’ve seen a 20 second video and now it’s being politicized that’s all we’re saying if that is enough for you to not understand or to be disagreeing with us to us just to go we’ve seen 20 seconds of video and now the democrats are running with it as their political pawn that we think is a unfortunate really unfortunate way to look at human life You need to kind of, like you said, take a step back. I want to quickly try to take one more call, and then we’re probably not going to be able to get to Shelly. I’m sorry. We’re probably not going to be able to get to you today. Let’s go to Dorothy, who’s calling, though, in Ohio. It’s been holding for a half hour. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yes, I would just like to say that the Democrat Party is communist, and they’ve been trying to have a communist revolution for at least the last 10 years. In every incident, they’ve been instigating the politicians I’m talking about And that should be some kind of law for them to not be able to hold their seat when they try to deliberately instigate civil unrest from coast to coast. That’s what they’ve been trying to do. And this is what the rhetoric that they’ve been using for the last 10 years at least.
SPEAKER 01 :
Dorothy, I appreciate your calling. And look, I think there is a lot to be said about that, which is this has been, we always hit these sort of tipping points. You can point back to a lot that’s happened in 2025 and now into 2026. There are moments of reflection that go, well, what have we done wrong? The problem is we have very short-term compassion. We have very short-term change of hearts. President Trump gets shot. A couple weeks later, it’s no longer a tragedy. Charlie Kirk is assassinated. A couple weeks later, it’s no longer a tragedy. We’re making fun of his family. This happens. We’re immediately jumping on his side in Minnesota. This isn’t white collar financial fraud, which of course is horrible. We’re dealing with that. ACLJ.org, get involved. Talking about the loss of human life one way or the other. Can’t be trivialized. We have to look into these things and it can’t be politicized. So take a breath, everybody. Take a moment. We’ll be back with our show tomorrow. I hope you join us. I hope you subscribe. I hope you engaged in this show. I know it’s a different one, but you know what we tell you? We’re always going to tell you the truth. Sometimes you’re not going to want to hear it. Sometimes you’re going to disagree with us, but that’s okay. We’ll talk to you tomorrow on Sekulow.
