I was separated from my mom because Ireland enforced its laws



I spent the first nine months of my life separated from my mother — not because of cruelty or neglect, but because Ireland enforced its immigration laws.

My mother, a U.S. citizen in her late 20s, traveled to Ireland to visit her brother while pregnant with me. Medical complications during her pregnancy made further air travel unsafe, and she overstayed her visa. After my birth, Ireland’s immigration rules required her to leave while officials sorted out my paperwork.

A nation without enforcement invites chaos, and chaos always hurts the most vulnerable first.

As a result, I — a U.S. citizen by birth and by heritage — spent my infancy with a foster family in a foreign country.

I don’t blame Ireland for enforcing its laws. I don’t blame my mother for traveling when it was risky. Life handed us a difficult situation, but the government didn’t become the villain. That experience taught me a truth that applies directly to America’s current debate over deportation and family separation.

Enforcement isn’t cruelty

My story doesn’t qualify as a sob story. It’s simply the fact of the matter. For years, activists and media outlets have flooded Americans with emotional tales of children separated from their parents during deportation. The usual narrative paints Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as soulless monsters tearing families apart for sport.

That’s nonsense.

I lived through separation. I understand the pain. But I also understand something else: Nations enforce laws not because they’re heartless, but because they must.

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Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

My mother’s visa violation led to our temporary separation. The U.S. does the same to those who violate our immigration laws. These actions don’t stem from hatred or malice. They serve the purpose of preserving order, national sovereignty, and the rule of law.

I know what loss feels like

I spent my earliest months far from the woman who gave me life. I never had the chance to meet my father — he was murdered before I could know him. My mother died of cancer when I was 7. Separation and loss defined my childhood.

But I’ve never blamed the Irish government for upholding its laws. Immigration enforcement didn’t cause my father’s death. It didn’t cause my mother’s cancer. Life brings tragedy, sometimes with no one to blame.

Emotional pain doesn’t make law enforcement unjust. It makes law enforcement necessary. Countries must uphold their borders. And when they fail to do so, real people suffer — on both sides of the law.

The American system is under siege

The United States faces a historic immigration crisis.

In 2019, during President Trump’s first term, ICE arrested approximately 143,000 aliens and removed more than 267,000. In 2024, under Joe Biden, those numbers shifted: 113,431 arrests, 271,484 removals — despite over 11 million border encounters during his term. That dwarfs the roughly 3 million encounters under Trump’s entire administration.

The Department of Homeland Security also reports that 1.4 million inadmissible aliens received parole into the country’s interior. As of mid-2024, nearly 650,000 criminal illegal aliens remained on ICE’s non-detained docket — free to roam the United States.

That doesn’t seem like compassion. That’s more like collapse.

These figures signal a breakdown of accountability. And when laws go unenforced at this scale, tragedy doesn’t just grow — it multiplies.

Responsibility, not blame

I only had a handful of years with my mother. I understand the impulse to blame something — or someone — when that kind of pain hits. But blame rarely leads to truth. It deflects responsibility and gives emotional suffering a temporary target.

It’s a political crutch as much as a psychological one. But what if we stopped pointing fingers and started taking responsibility? Every choice brings consequences. That’s not cruelty — it’s Newton’s third law in action.

Walk into someone’s home uninvited, and that person has every right to call the police. Try to explain away the trespass, and it won’t change the fact that the law exists to protect the homeowner. If we accept that principle at the level of private property, we should respect it at the level of national borders.

Not every story is the same

My situation 30 years ago was different from what we see today. My mother, aside from a parking ticket, had no criminal history. She didn’t intend to break the law. In contrast, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 44% of prosecuted illegal immigrants today already have a criminal record.

I didn’t arrive in America through human smugglers. I wasn’t trafficked. I wasn’t handed over to a fraudulent sponsor.

I came home because my grandfather — a World War II veteran and political organizer — fought for me. He used every resource he had, including connections to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), to bring me back to the United States. I flew across the Atlantic on the lap of a decorated American soldier, finally returning to the country that already recognized me as its own.

We owe the next generation better

That’s why I can’t accept the argument that lawlessness is compassion. It isn’t.

We owe it to every child born here, raised here, or separated like I was not to replace justice with sentimentality. A nation without enforcement invites chaos, and chaos always hurts the most vulnerable first.

This debate isn’t about cruelty. It’s about sovereignty. It’s about clarity. It’s about preserving a system that works for those who follow the law — and holding accountable those who don’t.

Arnold Schwarzenegger goes full patriot on ‘The View,’ derails Joy Behar’s anti-ICE ambush



On June 17, Arnold Schwarzenegger braved the coven that is ABC’s “The View.” Joy Behar tried to snare him with a question about ICE raids, but it didn’t go in the America-hating direction she hoped it would. In fact, it went in the completely opposite direction.

Pat Gray of “Pat Gray Unleashed” plays the clip of the Terminator’s epic pro-America speech.

“You're an immigrant in this country. Did you have a visceral reaction to what [ICE is] doing?” Behar asked.

“I'm so proud and happy that I was embraced by the American people,” Schwarzenegger responded. “I came over here at the age of 21 with absolutely nothing. And then to create a career like that — I mean, in no other country in the world could you do that.”

“My bodybuilding career … my acting career, becoming governor, the beautiful family that I have created — all of this is because of America,” he continued. “This is the greatest country in the world, and it is the land of opportunity.”

Schwarzenegger then announced that he will be giving the keynote speech at Mount Vernon on July 4 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America. The event will include a naturalization ceremony — a formal rite of passage in which legal immigrants who have met the requirements to become U.S. citizens take the Oath of Allegiance, officially granting them U.S. citizenship. During the ceremony, these new citizens pledge loyalty to the United States, renounce allegiance to foreign governments, and agree to uphold the Constitution.

Schwarzenegger made it crystal clear that he loves this ceremony. “It's really a great, great celebration, and this is what this is all about — to celebrate people becoming Americans and coming to America,” he said.

All this while, the panel was politely nodding along, occasionally adding a “that’s true” or a “that’s great.” But then Schwarzenegger said something that caused their countenances to visibly sour.

“But the key thing also is at the same time, we got to do things legal,” he said. “Those people that are doing illegal things in America and the foreigners, they are not smart.”

“When you come to America, you’re a guest, and you have to behave like a guest. Like when I go to someone’s house and I’m a guest, then I will do everything I can to keep things clean … and do everything that is the right thing to do rather than committing a crime or being abusive,” he continued.

That’s when Sunny Hostin placed her manicured, heavily ringed hand on his arm as if to say, “All right, honey, don’t go there.”

But he would not be deterred. “The important thing is when you become an immigrant to think about: Okay, I go to America because I want to use America for the great opportunities that America has in education, in jobs, creating a family. … Then I have to give something back,” he said, arguing that immigrants “have a responsibility … to give back to America.”

They “didn't expect conservative Arnold from 30 years ago”; they wanted “‘screw your freedom’ from five years ago,” says Pat.

To see the footage of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s patriotic speech that left “The View’s” hosts deeply uncomfortable, watch the video above.

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If we can’t speak civilly, we’ll fight brutally



Last weekend in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, protesters gathered for a No Kings rally, holding signs that compared federal immigration officers to Nazis — one reading, “Nazis used trains. ICE uses planes.” These kinds of messages aren’t just offensive, they’re dangerous. And they’re becoming far too common in politics.

The same weekend, halfway across the country, Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman (DFL) was shot and killed in a politically motivated attack. While the investigation is ongoing, the timing is chilling — and it reminds us that words and rhetoric can have consequences far beyond the floor of a legislative chamber.

Most people don’t want politics to be a blood sport. They want real solutions.

When public servants are threatened, harassed, or even harmed for doing their jobs, something has gone deeply wrong in our democracy.

It’s time to turn down the temperature — not just in our political speeches, but on our main streets, in school board meetings, and even our protest signs.

Cool the rhetoric

Public service is about problem-solving, not posturing. I’ve always believed in working with my neighbors — even when we disagree — to make our community safer and stronger. But that’s becoming harder when disagreement is met with dehumanization and history is twisted into political theater.

We’ve seen it right here in my community. At a recent public hearing on how to protect children from online predators, a woman disrupted the meeting to shout that our Jewish sheriff, Fred Harran, was a “Nazi.” A week later, during a Bucks County Commissioners meeting about a law enforcement partnership with ICE, Commissioner Bob Harvie warned of “parallels” between modern politics and pre-war Nazi Germany.

I’ve worked hard in the state House to expand Holocaust education in Pennsylvania schools, because I believe history must be remembered — not weaponized. As the daughter of educators, I was raised to know that using Nazi references as political attacks not only dishonors the memory of those who suffered, it poisons the possibility of honest, civil debate.

Civil discourse is critical

None of this is to say we shouldn’t debate serious issues — immigration, public safety, fiscal priorities, and the future of our communities. Or that we shouldn’t take part in peaceful protest rooted in our First Amendment rights. We must. But we must also remember that democracy isn’t about shouting each other down — it’s about listening, questioning, and finding common ground.

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Blaze Media Illustration

The truth is, most people don’t want politics to be a blood sport. They want real solutions. They want their kids to be safe, their neighborhoods to be strong, and their elected officials to focus on solving problems — not scoring points.

Let’s be better than the signs. Let’s be better than the sound bites. Let’s choose to be neighbors first and partisans second.

Because if we don’t change the tone now, we risk losing more than just elections — we risk losing one another.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPennsylvania and made available via RealClearWire.

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