Democrats in Carmel Outraged Over ICE

Totally out of control. Our road funding is a debacle. Roads, period, are a debacle. The funding and the roads themselves are a disaster. Look at our primary driver, our primary tool to attract economic development to our state. It is a corporation, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation. So corrupt and unethical that the governor had to spend $800,000 to audit it last year. There really haven’t been any changes from that $800,000 audit, which, by the way, confirmed what the Indy Star and other news outlets had already reported about the level of corruption, the level of underhanded behavior from the IEDC, and the unethical conduct. The Medicaid system is hundreds of millions of dollars underwater. My point on all of this is there’s nothing Indiana Republicans are doing that the average person looks at and says, “Damn, I can’t wait to vote for those people.” Think about your rank-and-file House member or Senate member. Are there any of them where every time they’re up for election people say they can’t wait to vote for that person? If you’re being honest with yourself, the answer is no. Yet Republicans keep winning because Democrats refuse to be a viable option. When we talk about Democrats refusing to be a viable option, we’re talking about taking issues where mainstream society is and then digging in on things the average person often doesn’t care about, making them the cause du jour in an extreme fashion that doesn’t resonate with mainstream society. Take the trans issue. The average person says if you’re an adult, you can do whatever you want to do. If you’re an adult, cut, grow, whatever. You’re a grown person and you make your own choices. Just don’t shove it down my throat. Don’t make me consume it. Don’t make me cheerlead for it. But you do whatever you want to do. When it comes to kids, though, society says you’re a minor. You’re a child. You don’t know who you want to date. You don’t know what you want for lunch. You don’t know what you want to be. You certainly aren’t capable of making that sort of decision. Yet Democrats throw it in people’s faces: look at us, look at us, look at us. And people respond by saying they don’t want to look. Just live your life the same way they want to live theirs. Democrats alienate people on the trans issue. I think the Democrat analysis of the 2024 election played that out. Their own analysis showed they were too extreme on the social stuff and that their views were outside the mainstream. If you’ve looked at the talking points from the Democrat Party after 2024, at least from the party apparatus itself, they’ve been trying to move away from that. Abortion is the same thing. A lot of the American public is open to abortion with restrictions. We are a pro-life nation. Most people probably aren’t as pro-life as I am, but they’re also not for on-demand abortion, which became a talking point of the Democrat Party in 2024 and in previous years. If you look at the analysis done by various groups after the 2024 election, that’s another issue where they said it wasn’t driving Americans to the polls. The Democrat Party, and Kamala Harris in particular, took a position outside the mainstream. So the point is the Democrats keep making themselves unelectable. The American public, including people in Indiana, are not happy with Republican rule. They’re not happy with Republican governance. They’re not happy with the spending. They’re not happy with the crony capitalism. They’re unhappy with a whole range of issues. There’s no level of government in Indiana under Republicans, who have had control for twenty years, where you say you feel super confident and think they’ve done a really great job. Yet Democrats become so extreme on a lot of social issues that voters recoil. How many times have we seen it? People say they don’t like a particular Republican but still can’t vote for a Democrat. Why? Because the issues Democrats put front and center often aren’t top priorities for many people, and the positions can be so extreme that voters simply say they can’t do it. So people keep voting for what they see as bad Republican governance. Fast forward to last night. The Indy Star had a big article about a meeting in Carmel about ICE renting an office there, essentially an administrative office. The event featured the one Democrat on the Carmel City Council, Anita Joshi, I believe that’s how it’s pronounced. If I’m mispronouncing it, I’m sorry. The head of the Hamilton County Democrats was also there speaking. Let me read what the Star reported, which came from the mayor of Carmel herself about what ICE is actually doing there. ICE is leasing a privately owned office that it would use as overflow space for administrative personnel currently working in the ICE office on Woodland Drive in Indianapolis. That’s it. A bunch of paper pushers, government bureaucrats, not people apprehending illegal immigrants or brandishing weapons. This meeting involved about 200 people outraged over bureaucratic paper pushers being in a quiet, obscure office. Why does this matter? Because poll after poll shows the one area where Donald Trump continues to succeed is border and immigration policy. Trump is doing poorly on the economy, inflation, affordability, and foreign policy. Yet despite his overall unpopularity, he remains above 50 percent on handling the border and immigration. Why? Because immigration was one of the reasons he was elected. People believed immigration had gotten out of control. There are tens of millions of people here illegally, perhaps 30 million or more. Under Joe Biden there was a flood of people entering illegally. People said enough. They want a welcoming country, but one with rules. I once heard it described as a very big wall with a very wide gate. We want to welcome people who want to assimilate, contribute, respect American customs and traditions, and provide for themselves. What we don’t want is a country where we have no idea who is coming in, where illegal behavior is rewarded. That’s what ICE is doing. That’s their job, and that job remains popular with the American public even while Trump himself is unpopular. What the Democrats are doing here, though, is taking an extreme position that doesn’t resonate with the people of America, much less the people of Indiana, which is a conservative state. People are going to see what essentially amounts to a Democrat Party rally over ICE having an obscure administrative office and remember why they can’t vote for Democrats. All the Republican tax increases, utility bill increases, and corruption won’t matter if voters look at the alternative and decide they can’t support it. One quote from the Democrat city councilwoman illustrates this. She said, “We are told this ICE office is administrative. And for some that’s it, the decision is made and that’s the end of it. I’m here to tell you this is not how democracy works. This is not how community works.” The average person reads that and thinks it sounds ridiculous. The recoil is immediate. Why do scumbags like Diego Morales win elections? Because Democrats provide no viable alternative. And when Democrats do have someone who might be able to win, the rest of the party can be so extreme that the candidate can’t break through. Maybe someone like Beau Bayh could. He might be a fairly moderate guy, probably similar to his father. He could raise money, run ads, and expose all the problems with Diego Morales. And there are a lot of them. We probably haven’t even scratched the surface. But voters will still say they can’t deal with the alternative. Greg Ballard, if he gets on the ballot and gathers the signatures, might offer some kind of safe haven for people who can’t vote for the Democrat. We have a right to know who is in this country. That’s not an extreme position. We have a right to have a border policy that says you can’t just walk into the country illegally. That’s not extreme. And we have a right to remove people who are here illegally, especially violent offenders. These positions resonate with the American public, particularly in a red state like Indiana. Yet Democrats take extreme positions even when the situation doesn’t warrant it. We’re not even debating ICE officers here. We’re debating government paper pushers. If the Department of Education said it was renting an office in Carmel, would there be 200 people shouting at the sky? Pick any agency. The Social Security Administration. Any of them. The answer would be no. But because it’s ICE, people are losing their minds. It gets even worse. According to the Indy Star, Joshi spoke during a March 30 town hall meeting at a church packed with about 200 community members. Attendees discussed plans to boycott businesses and pressure elected officials until it was clear they didn’t want ICE in Carmel. So the plan is to boycott local merchants who have nothing to do with any of this. People who set up their lives in the city, who contribute to the community, who support Little League teams, softball clubs, and the Boy Scouts. The average person recoils at that and says they can’t support it. Josh Lowry, chair of the Hamilton County Democrat Party, was there and said they needed to protest, boycott, and make it as public as possible so there would be an economic reason for the office owner not to rent to ICE. So someone who pays property taxes, contributes to the community, and is doing nothing illegal or unethical is supposed to have their life made difficult for following the law. Again, it’s like begging people not to vote for you. Just saying, please don’t take us seriously. At the event there were also high school students, including a sixteen-year-old who helped organize classmates to walk out earlier this year over ICE at Carmel High School. She said undocumented immigrants are not animals. But who is treating them like animals? Illegal immigrants aren’t being treated differently under Trump than they were under Obama or Biden. The difference now is enforcement. Illegal immigrants broke the law coming into the country. They’re not American citizens. They don’t have the same rights, and the government has the authority to detain people who break the law. But in the mind of someone with no life experience, this becomes a humanitarian crisis. The question for everyone at that event should be simple. How many illegal immigrants are you housing? How many are you feeding? How many are you personally taking care of? The student also said regardless of status they shouldn’t be left in a cell in critical condition without medical care or a stable environment, that they should receive due process and basic human decency. But they already receive due process. They go before judges. They’re processed and deported. This illustrates the broader problem. People speak confidently about systems they don’t understand. And yet these voices are elevated. A sixteen-year-old with no life experience becomes someone with influence at a political event. Meanwhile, many voters simply shake their heads. The Democrats are frustrating to watch because people would like the Republican problems to stop. They would like their finances not to be abused. They would like taxes and utility bills to stop rising. But Democrats cannot seem to help themselves.