Exclusive: Dems Grandstand While ICE Removes Violent Criminals

If insufferable Rep. Eric Swalwell is moving his lips, there’s a good chance he’s lying. The California Democrat with a fetish for Chinese Communist Party spies spent his time at Tuesday’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing demonizing federal immigration law enforcement agents to score political points with the anarchist wing of the far-left Democratic Party. 

But Swalwell, a candidate for governor, ensnared himself in one of the biggest lies the left has told about the Department of Homeland Security agents sworn to enforce the nation’s immigration laws: The fractured fairy tale that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers “grabbed” a 5-year-old boy and used him as “bait, forcing him to knock on his own door so they could arrest his father.” It’s a load of crap, but that didn’t stop Swalwell from repeating it as his lackey held a blown-up photo of the kid behind him. You know what they say about a lie traveling halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. 

“You now have decision: Will you stand with the kids who you are supposed to protect, or will you side with the killers bringing terror to our streets?” the pompous bag falsely lectured Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. He then absurdly asked, “Mr. Lyons, will you resign from ICE?” 

Swalwell is self-indulgently delusional enough to think that a) he had Lyons in a gotcha moment and b) the ICE chief would actually succumb to Swalwell’s faux moral pressure and answer “Yes.”  

“No, sir, I won’t,” Lyons said. 

“Why not?” Swalwell petulantly asked. 

“Because that child that you’re showing right there, the men and women of ICE took care of him when his father abandoned him and ran from law enforcement,” Lyons said. And Swalwell’s time was up. 

‘We Will Not Be Intimidated’

Like most things in the left’s anti-immigration enforcement show, it was all performative. But while Swalwell and his fellow actors were lustily jumping toward the spotlight and promising to gut ICE, the men and women who work to keep America’s borders and communities secure were busy rounding up the pedophiles, rapists, and violent illegal immigrants Democrats are sweating to protect. You know, people who are actually “bringing terror to our streets.”

Like Domingo Duran-Rojas, a Mexican national convicted of domestic assault in St. Louis, according to  DHS’s latest list of the “worst of the worst” criminal illegal aliens picked up by ICE agents. The report was exclusively provided to The Federalist.

How about Josue Salvador Portillo-Henriquez, a criminal illegal alien from El Salvador who, DHS said, was convicted on rape charges in Baltimore County, Maryland? He made the department’s WOW files. 

Or Daniel Pineda-Velasquez of Guatemala. Velasquez was convicted on charges of sex abuse of a minor, rape, third-degree sex offense, assault, and fourth-degree sex contact in Prince George’s County, Maryland, according to DHS. An immigration judge in 2024 ordered him removed, according to the Baltimore ICE office. 

Hey, Swalwell, why don’t you hold up a sign of the children this illegal immigrant reportedly sexually assaulted? Will you resign, sir? 

“Yesterday, our brave law enforcement arrested criminal illegal aliens including pedophiles, rapists, and violent assailants from across the country,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin in a statement to The Federalist. “Far too often these public safety threats are released by sanctuary politicians from their jails back into our neighborhoods.” 

As committee Democrats demand “dramatic changes” at ICE before they will vote for DHS funding about to run out, and weak-kneed Republicans aid and abet the left’s politically-driven assault on law enforcement, Lyons said the agency won’t be cowed by congressional threats. 

“We will not be intimidated,” the acting director told committee members. 

“We are enhancing public safety, securing our national security, and finally restoring integrity to an immigration system that had been allowed to collapse,” Lyons said. “While all illegal aliens are eligible for removal, we have prioritized and removed tens of thousands of the ‘worst of the worst’ — known dangerous criminals, known or suspected terrorists, and gang members who threaten our neighborhoods.”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.