Selective Compassion and the Tragedy of Katie Abraham

“Katie got a death sentence without any due process,” Joe said. “We have a life sentence… stuck in a cold dark jail cell ourselves.”

Hi all,

Happy New Year! I wish you all the best for this coming New Year. It will be an interesting one for sure. We just locked picture on the “White Guilt” documentary and we’re now working on the sound, music, graphics, and the final polish. I will keep you all posted.

A little over a month ago, I was talking about the film with my friend Beth Feeley from Chicago who had seen a rough cut. She told me the themes hit close to home—directly connected to the tragedy that her friend Joe Abraham and his family have been living through since January of 2025. That’s how I first came to know the story of Joe and his daughter Katie.

Like many Americans, I had heard of Operation Midway Blitz, ICE’s push to round up the worst criminal illegal aliens in Chicago, and what I saw on the news was painted as chaos and cruelty. Protesters filled the streets and politicians like Illinois Governor Pritzker donned bulletproof vests and condemned ICE. At the same time, I saw on social media glimpses of everyday Chicagoans greeting and feeding the ICE officers. Two very different pictures.

What I didn’t know was that the operation was launched in Katie Abraham’s honor, with her father Joe’s full support.

I spoke with Joe for over an hour. He described how, in January 2025, 20-year-old Katie was killed at a Urbana stoplight when Julio Cucul Bol—a previously deported Guatemalan national using a Mexican alias—slammed into her Honda Civic at 80 mph. He was drunk. He fled the scene. Katie died instantly. Her friend the next day. Three other girls were injured.

Joe’s grief is raw, and so is his anger at the “selective compassion” shown by Illinois leaders, especially Governor Pritzker. As Joe put it: “My family does not qualify for any compassion… I think it’s because we’re law-abiding, we’re productive.” Sympathy flows to those who broke the rules, but for Joe’s family—nothing. No call, no visit from the governor, even when they sat ten feet apart at a congressional hearing.

We talked about the social contract as defined by Edmund Burke. Citizens follow the law, pay taxes, raise good kids, and they expect protection in return. Joe did everything right. His own parents immigrated legally and built a productive life in America. Yet our leaders allowed hundreds of thousands in without any vetting, and left families like his exposed.

“Katie got a death sentence without any due process,” Joe said. “We have a life sentence… stuck in a cold dark jail cell ourselves.”

Why do some leaders protect non-citizens over citizens? On the human level, it’s a deep betrayal — like your life, your child’s future, is worth less than a political calculation.

Yet Midway Blitz honored Katie by removing thousands of serious threats from Chicago’s streets. Joe believes she’d approve. “Katie’s looking out for others now,” he said. Indeed, a recent news release revealed the criminal records of many that had been arrested.

After our call, I decided to include a small clip of Joe and Katie into the White Guilt film — it was too late to do a full story that would do justice. I also could not stop thinking about this story and, even though I’m not a podcaster, I thought it would be good to bring this conversation to you. So I asked Joe if he’d be willing to do this and he generously offered his time. I hope you have time to listen to it — the full, unedited transcript is below.

The full conversation:

If anything, this conversation is a reminder that the social contract isn’t just words on paper. When it’s violated, real people lose everything.

All my best,

Eli

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The full transcript:

Eli: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Man of Steele podcast. I have a very special guest today, Joe Abraham. You may have heard of him. If not, he is what you call the angel father or part of the angel family. He tragically lost his daughter about a year ago. Her name was Katie Abraham, and she was only 20 years old.

And it’s a very tragic situation because her car, the car that she was in was rear ended by someone who crossed the border illegally and was not supposed to be here. And so we’re going to talk about this situation and so forth and how it relates to the larger politics. First, but let me first have Joe introduce himself.

Joe: Thank you Eli, appreciate you having me on. Yeah, so Katie was my youngest daughter. I’ve got three kids, she’s my youngest. She was on a trip with some friends to the University of Illinois, which is in Urbana, Illinois. And they were just visiting some friends at the University of Illinois. Katie was a student at Ohio University. So they were just there for the weekend. And she was at a stoplight on one of the streets in Urbana right in front of the hospital there, their vehicle was rear ended at almost 80 miles an hour and they were in a little Honda Civic and the SUV that rear ended them at 80 miles an hour is being driven by a drunk driver who was an illegal alien who had been previously deported and reentered. He was using an alias, a Mexican national alias. He was a Guatemalan national and decimated the vehicle. So Katie died on the scene. Another friend of hers died in the hospital the next day. After completely devastating these lives and the damage that was caused by this reckless behavior, he fled the scene. He didn’t stick around to help. He didn’t stick around to help first responders understand what happened and maybe they were able to maybe respond quicker. He just ran. He fled.

Then we learned that he left Urbana, ended up in Chicago, and then was apprehended sort of south of Dallas, north of the border, I think around Milford by US Marshals. And that same day, the US Marshals knew that this wasn’t Julio Cucul Bol from Guat— I’m sorry, Juan Suarez from Mexico. It was Julio Cucul Bol from Guatemala. So federal law enforcement—knew he was using an alias. Illinois clearly did no vetting for identification. And so he was, you know, entered in with without any issues on the Illinois side. But it’s just a devastating thing, Eli. It’s it’s a phone call you get that, you know, the detectives are on the other line. They’re they’re talking about how your daughter’s dead. And it’s something you can never prepare for. It is like your just heart drops in your stomach and someone just kicks you in the chest. It’s just so gut wrenching that, that, you know, any family has to go through what we have been through the past year. And then on top of that, to have Illinois respond in the way that it has, which is complete utter silence and disrespect of Katie and her situation and how she died so violently.

Eli: And I think what makes this a real tragedy is the fact that it’s a different thing if a citizen is killed by a citizen. I mean, that does not lessen the devastation But when a citizen is killed by somebody who is not here legally, that just adds a whole dimension of who’s responsible for this? It’s just that’s whole different dimension to the tragedy because you feel like if we had upheld the law, this would never happen. It’s one thing when somebody violates the law on equal standing, but this is not equal standing. But before you go into all of those details, why don’t you tell the listeners who Katie Abraham was. What was she like as a person?

Joe: So Katie was such a bright soul in our family. She had such a great wit. Her sense of humor was so incredible. Her storytelling, she loved the water. She took to water right away. She was a water polo player, did really well, excelled at that. She was also a swimmer. She always said she felt more comfortable in the water than on land. And she loved music. Eclectic taste, anything from country to sort of the new folk, new music folks are listening to now. I’m not real familiar with it, but her and I would get together when she wanted to hear country or, you know, back, you know, the old rock and roll from like the 70s, 80s, alternative from the 90s grunge, that kind of thing. So she was open to so many different things.

She just she was like a little sponge and all of life. She just enjoyed life. She was good at everything she did. She encouraged people. She made everyone see and heard and inclusive for everyone.

That’s why, to be honest with you, most people say, you know, Katie wouldn’t like what’s happening here with ICE and this, that, and the other. And Katie was a compassionate, for sure, loving person, but there is no way anyone can tell me Katie would look back and not reject the way she violently died. And Katie had a sense of fairness, right? So Katie’s perspective wasn’t that you get to break all the rules and then, you know, no consequences and there’ll be forgiveness later. There can be no forgiveness without any real consequences. That’s that’s something to me that’s very fundamental and basic.

And so so I don’t believe that Katie would say that, you know, if ICE is saving lives, which I think they have, if they’re pulling out really bad people from the communities, people don’t even realize the lives that are being affected in a positive way. So it’s unfortunate that’s not tangible. You can’t see it touch it, but you know what’s there. So yeah, I don’t I don’t believe for a minute Katie would have rejected the Midway Blitz operation that would have saved lives. I just wish someone was looking out for for Katie like now I think Katie’s looking out for others.

And the one thing, Eli, I got to tell you is you see a lot of these sob stories. The media is so one-sided in their compassion, just like our politicians, everything’s one-sided. You see a lot of these lawbreakers or rule breakers being sort of pulled out of the streets. And let’s be honest, Governor Pritzker and...Preckwinkle and Johnson, the mayor, they want ICE in the streets because they need the chaos out there because ICE has to go out there with a presence, right? They can’t just send one or two guys out to apprehend anyone. They need a whole presence to go with them to secure things. As the rhetoric, the hyperbolic rhetoric from our politicians have created a hostile environment for these guys to operate within. So instead of working with them where you could do it sort of behind the scenes, it doesn’t have to look like this.

You could do this in an orderly fashion, but they need the chaos in the streets. But here’s what bothers me on the one-sided media chaos, no one has talked to me about, hey, Joe, how does it feel that your daughter’s vehicle had to be pried open like a tuna can so her dead body can be pulled out and recovered? You never see that. You never hear about that. You only hear about this person or that person who broke all the rules and could be a criminal or a member. But my goodness, we have separated them. But you know, I’m separated. Katie was disappeared. She was snatched away. She was taken. I will never see her again. That’s the difference. She’s not in detention center and she’s not in another country. This illegal alien along with aid from the state of Illinois and the politicians have disappeared my daughter forever.

Eli: And she was only about 20 years old?

Joe: 20 years old, just 20 years old.

Eli: And obviously, you know, going to college, preparing for her whole life, her whole dream, having her own dreams of what she wanted to become. Now, as you mentioned, you know, the loss of, you know, the future. I mean, that’s something that you guys will never have, you’ll never experience, you raised them to become somebody, you raised them to become productive citizens. And that’s something that you were robbed of in a way.

Most people are in favor of legal immigration coming through the system. I mean, my own family is part of that as well. But there is a difference, I think, with the Biden administration, where they just turn the blind eye, opened the border, and never has to suffer the consequences of their own decision. I mean, they’re so high above and above, they have security, all of that, but they never have a deal with the reality on the ground. And I think it’s just an underlayer of tragedy where they say, we’re good people, we should let people across the border, some people may have to pay the price, but so what? I mean, that’s the —and you just happened to be one of those people that had to pay the price.

And as you mentioned in our earlier conversation, the phrase, “selective compassion,” and it’s like they have compassion for the people coming across the border. But none of these people who are responsible for those people coming across the border seem to have any compassion for you. Is that the case?

Joe: Yeah, my family does not qualify for any compassion for whatever reason. I think it’s because we’re law abiding, we’re productive. We pay the high gouging taxes that our politicians put on us. It’s interesting to hear them talk about corporations gouging here and there. They are the largest gougers of anybody, right? They only know one lever to pull and that’s take more money from the people. That’s the only lever they have.

And that’s just not really if you come down to it, there’s no creativity in anything when you do. We can get a nine year old to do that. We don’t need politicians to come up with that solution.

But yeah, the the fact that you look at someone like Katie and how they’ve broken that chain. And it’s not just that they took Katie’s life. Right. She got a death sentence without any due process. She got a death sentence without any sort of trial. And her family, we have a life sentence. So Julio Cucul Bol got a plea deal, he’ll spend some time in prison. But our whole family’s in prison now. So I don’t care that he’s in prison. They should have vetted him out and filtered him out. And it could have easily been done if they had minimal cooperation with the federal law enforcement. And Katie could be alive right now. But she got death penalty. We all have a life sentence. We are sitting in a cold dark jail cell ourselves.

Julio Cucul Bol will get out at some time. We will never get out. We’re stuck here. And we were put there, not only by Julio Cucul Bol who for sure killed Katie, but the environment he was in that allowed Katie to be killed, was manmade by self-serving politicians. They only are thinking of themselves and where their next step is. And I’m sorry. And I believe Katie would feel this as well.

The choice here is not unfettered, unvetted, unhealth screened, unlimited immigration or nothing. See, that’s not the choice. That’s just a false choice. So you can’t be a racist and a bigot if you don’t accept their terms. That’s not leadership and that those are not real terms, right? So for example, Julio Cucul Bol, in open federal court, said he had HIV. He was being treated for HIV now that he’s incarcerated. He was using an alias. He did not read or write in any language. No formal schooling at all and he didn’t speak English Okay, so right there, there’s four. He had been previously deported, let back in, no background checks to see that he was using an alias. No health screens for this guy. He’s running around with HIV in our communities. He said this in open court, I have the transcripts. I was in the courtroom when he said that, when they asked him if he’s being treated for that.

So, what were you doing for job training for this guy? How to assimilate? Educational support? What were your plans for a Julio Cucul Bol? Of the five, 600,000 that you let in, I don’t think every one was a doctor, lawyer, and engineer. I think you needed to provide some support and Illinois did nothing like that. So I want to know what systems were in place there that you’re allowing everybody and anybody and then how are you helping them? How are you helping them, not only from a health standpoint, but from education, training, job training, and then how are you helping them assimilate into the communities to understand what it is to be a good citizen? So to me, just feels like, because I’m not getting answers, it’s all silence. It feels like they’ve done nothing. They’ve just opened the doors, kicked the side door open, Eli, let five, 600, 700,000 people in without knowing who’s who in the zoo. And it just seems like a wild west free for all. And people like my family are suffering because of that.

Eli: Not just your family, another girl died in that car and three other girls who also were fighting for their lives. You have five people in just one car. They suffered.

The politicians seem to have no sympathy for you, seem to have no compassion for what your family’s been through. Why is that the case? It seems like, okay, there’s gotta be some other motivation at play. And do you have any thoughts on what that may be?

Joe: You know, I mean, I have my suspicions just being a long time, lifelong Illinoian and a Cook County resident. I suspect, I don’t have any proof, but look, they they’re losing citizens left and right in Illinois. I mean, they’re losing population. So I suspect they need bodies for the congressional apportionment for federal funding. I suspect at some point they thought amnesty was coming. So anyone they can get in would become voters right away. I don’t even know.

My gut tells me I have no proof. I’m just a lifelong Illinoisan that sees how they fix this state and a Cook County resident and see how Chicago and Cook County operate. I suspect there’s some ballots tied to these warm bodies because in Illinois, I suspect it’s not so much voters. It’s actually more ballots. So if you can get some ballots out there, then you could kind of distort the voters role. Have no proof.

Just Joe’s two cents living in Illinois all his life to see how they run things around here. So that’s the only thing I can think of. And obviously political ambition. These folks are self-serving. They think this is the path towards ⁓ higher office, ⁓ which is very odd for me. I mean, if you see how Illinois runs, the only folks that think Illinois is a good run state are the people running the state. I can’t believe anyone else believes this is how a state should be run. You know, living here all my life.

Eli: Yeah, by the way, I did include a small section of what happened, of the tragedy into the White Guilt film that I’m doing with my father. And in that clip, Governor Pritzker is before the Congress, and he’s being asked if he has any thoughts about the illegal status of Julio, the person who killed Katie. At first, he offers his condolences in front of these people. He offers his condolences to you, I suppose, but he’s not saying it to you directly. He’s saying it to these elected officials. And then at the point he refuses to answer that one question (about the illegal status) and he say, no, that person is deserve due process and so forth, which maybe was required under law. But what’s missing is, has he ever spoken to you directly about this? Has he ever come to you?

Joe: He has never spoken to me. I was looking forward to that congressional hearing. I thought he would approach me. I didn’t feel it was my place to go up to any politicians. I just assumed because they all say they’re compassionate and they care about their citizens, I just assumed he would come up and talk to me. I was sitting right behind him. There’s no way he didn’t know who I was. There’s just, I would never buy that. That would be an untruthful thing that if that’s how he would position it. But yes, he did acknowledge that.

Was it sincere? I don’t think so. But what he kept saying was he protects all residents. He conflates citizens, legal immigrants and illegal immigrants, conflates them all. We’re all the same. We’re just residents, right? So someone who walks over to the border day one is the same as me, just for some perspective on that. And what he kept saying is, and if they do wrong, they will have their due process and be adjudicated in Illinois, which I struggle with because all I was asking from him is what was your front end process? Because if you just have a Wild West and anyone comes in and just like any population, there’s no population in this world where there’s 100 % positive good people. You have just like citizens, there’s good and there’s bad. Just like productive and unproductive. It’s human nature. So you’re bringing immigrants from everywhere. You can’t assume 100 percent are good to go and they’re gonna be solid citizens making no trouble. You gotta make a distinction and you gotta have a front end process. I don’t care about the due process and his jail time. I’m devastated now.

And this could have been avoided if you had a front end process. You’ve nullified federal law, right? So you said, we don’t follow federal law here and we don’t do immigration. So you throw your hands up and it’s nothing. You nullify federal law and you don’t step in and fill the void. You just let it happen and say, it’s not my deal, it’s federal deal. And then you say, well, if they do something wrong, if they kill Katie Abraham, don’t worry, Joe, we’re going to have some due process for him. He’ll go through his due process and then we’ll, you know, get some some jail time for you. So you should feel good about that. I don’t. I don’t. I wish he never came here. I wish he stayed in Guatemala. I wouldn’t be in the jail cell myself and my family wouldn’t be suffering. The kid would be alive. But they have no compassion for regular people. They just need certain amount of numbers. I don’t know what they’re really doing because no one will talk to me. And that’s a disappointing thing. I’m a lifelong Illinois resident who was completely ignored after losing his daughter in the streets of Urbana. It’s ridiculous.

Eli: Sadly, you’re approaching the first year anniversary (of losing your daughter). So you’ve been on this journey for a year and you still have not, I’m assuming you still not have received any satisfactory answer or any type of policy action or real safe guard.

But before I go on, for the audience, I know that you are an American citizen born here, but I believe your father is an immigrant. Can you tell us about that, like how he came to the country and how that informed your view?

Joe: Yeah, so my parents were immigrants and certainly not the way it looked here. They were legal immigrants. They followed the process. It took them years. My father came from a third world country. He would tell you right off the bat. There’s not 100 % good people coming out of third world countries. You need to make sure that they’re going through the same sort of a rigorous process to understand who they are. Are they who they say they are?

So yeah, my dad, and when he came here, Eli, he wanted to be here. There was a reason for him to be here. He did not want to take anything from this country. He believed in it. He wanted to come and participate in it. He was not going to be a spectator in this country. He was going to provide back and he was going to provide a productive family, which he did five productive kids and he’s got eight grandchildren. He passed away in 2024.

The immigration that I see through my dad and it does not look like today and it shouldn’t look like today. And it’s unfortunate because, you know, rather than Governor Pritzker being sort of thoughtful and putting a pause saying, hold on, let’s maybe reevaluate what we’re doing here. There’s some people that have died along the way. There’s some crimes that are being committed. There’s people being victimized.

Let’s put a pause. Let’s understand what we’re doing. Can we do better? He doesn’t do that. There’s no, there’s no sort of consideration. There’s no service. There’s no, it’s just arrogance. What I’m doing and we’re going to go full speed ahead and I’m doubling down.

He behaves like an authoritarian. So understand this. He calls Donald Trump an authoritarian. And what is he doing in our own state? There’s no way you put these two together. There’s no way you can say the one’s an authoritarian and the other one isn’t. If Trump’s an authoritarian, you’re two times the authoritarian. OK, so I don’t buy that at all. Leadership isn’t a governor saying, what is Donald Trump for today? Is he for this today? Then I’m going to take a 180 and be for that. If you think that’s leadership and that’s going to get you to your next step because he doesn’t really care about being the governor of Illinois. He thinks he’s gonna achieve to some higher level.

I hope the voters see right through that and really make them pay for that in the ballot box. All his money, notwithstanding, I know he will spend hundreds of millions of dollars and support a lot of his fellow politicians, but, hopefully again, the voters can see through the money and they can see through the hyperbolic language and they can see through the inconsistencies and really take care of him through the ballot box.

Eli: Yeah, I think you kind of nailed it in the way we were talking about him, the governor as an authoritarian. It seems like his behavior is probably the worst of human values, which is at the political level. Politics is just gutter. I mean, it’s in the gutter. And he’s not operating from any humanity. I mean, a politician always has to have that humanity to pull them out, to be able to respond to larger things, but he just operated from pure political motive, it seems. Because how else can we explain this selective compassion? And I recently saw a clip of him where he basically said, we are waiting until the Democrats get back into power, and when the Democrats get back into power, we are going to go after ICE. We are going to name them and we’re going to put them in jail. And what was interesting for me was the passion that he had in that statement. And I’m thinking about you, and he has none of that for you. But he has more passion to play the political game rather than the human reality. Do you have any thoughts about that new statement?

Joe: I think you nailed that right there, this is a game for him. He is an aloof billionaire. This is a political game he’s playing. There’s no human effect on this. So this is all partisanship. This is all gamesmanship. This is all just straight up political game for him. I don’t know how else to call it because then he sets up this Illinois Accountability Commission, right, to go after ICE and these guys.

And it’s disgusting because I’m waiting for my Illinois Accountability Commission for the victims, right? What did they do? What did their policies do that harmed all these victims? And he should be talking to every victim of his policies, not just me and Katie. He should be out there as a human being talking to everyone that was negatively impacted by his policies. And there are plenty.

But here’s the thing that just strikes me so odd, because you got someone like him and the Democratic Party here that run this state, they talk about diversity, inclusion, this, that, and the other. I’m going to be honest with you here. I went and met with dozens of ICE agents in Chicago here during (Operation) Midway Blitz. I wanted to do a little bit of homework. What I saw, Eli, was something that the Pritzkers of the world should be celebrating. I saw the most diverse workforce I think I’ve ever seen. Never saw anything like this in corporate America. I’ve always been in corporate America.

It was the most diverse, professional, cooperative, and again, these were at least a hundred in the room. I met dozens of them. And I’m thinking to myself, this is everything they talk about. Diversity, inclusion, cooperation, professionalism. It was all there in DHS and ICE offices. I’m shocked no one’s amplifying that and talking about, wow, look at these guys. This is what a... diverse, effective, professional workforce should look like. Instead, they just go out and they say derogatory things toward them. Then I went to Broadview (ICE detention center), was at Broadview and saw the makeup at Broadview, the majority being old white people (who were protestors). I couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t believe it. And I’m like, these are the heroes and these are the villains. The world is upside down if that’s the case. And it’s amazing to me that the Pritzker’s and Preckwinkles and Johnsons don’t see that and don’t champion that and don’t say, look at how effective these guys are and what they do and look how diverse they are and look how professional they are. But they only want to go to the sob stories they want. Again, they want the big numbers in the streets so they can play to that and they can be performative. It’s not real and it’s not compassion. And I want the voters really to see through that.

I mean, they’ve got to be able to see through that. It’s so obvious to me.

Eli: I think it’s willful blindness. They are blind. They have their own ideology. And that’s what matters to most of them, their political power. And when you operate on that level of political power or ideological power, humaneness takes a back seat. Humanity takes a back seat because it gets you in the way. It’s inconvenient.

And that is what I think makes it evil in a way because the governor can’t even, or even your local rep can’t even come to you out of compassion because they’ve got to stick to their policy. And I think that also reflects on us Americans. And I think that, you know, if you look at the 80s, you were kind of a weird guy if you walked around in a Reagan shirt or a Mondale shirt. I mean, that was just a little weird. Like you were a political animal. But now we’ve all become political animals. Politics has taken over us so much. And maybe that’s where our morality is at.

Can you tell people though, who don’t know what Operation Midway Blitz was and how that’s related to Katie?

Joe: Midway Blitz was an operation by ICE. They had identified a certain number of hardened criminals, certain number of gang bangers, murderers, pedophile, these type of things. Worst of the worst, right? So they when they contacted me, they said, look, we’re going to do this thing in Chicago. We want to get the worst of the worst out. We’re going to start with that. We have a lot of work to do, but we want to start with the worst of the worst. And we would love to honor Katie in this operation.

So I just asked a few questions about exactly what they’re doing and I was satisfied with all their responses. And I said, yeah, Katie would absolutely be on board with removing these types of people that will not victimize others, right? So unfortunately again, it comes back to that tangible. People can’t see, wow, we’ve had so many X amount of less victims because of this, but it’s out there and it’s real.

So, it was basically ICE’s operation to come into Chicago, get a targeted number of hardened sort of criminals, the worst of the worst, and then sort of move from there. So, that’s kind of, Eli, when I went down, I visited, addressed the ICE agents, got to meet so many of them and saw the contrast between what was happening in the streets and who these folks were.

So that’s how that came about. Now, DHS and ICE and the White House, Donald Trump’s administration, whatever you want to say about them, these folks have been responsive, caring, compassionate, authentic, right from the get-go. They’ve been working with us. What can we do for you? How can we help you? What’s happening? Do you need anything from us? So the contrast between Governor Pritzker and his administration and Donald Trump and his administration, honestly, in my view, night and day, not even a comparison. When we met Donald Trump in the White House, he was genuine, authentic, caring. He looked, you could see in his face, he was moved by the fact that I lost my 20 year old daughter. And he didn’t have to do that. Governor Pritzker, I’m a lifelong Illinoisan, Governor Pritzker probably doesn’t even know who I am, even though I’m sitting in the room, 10 feet away from him. He didn’t have any time to even look in my direction. So that’s how much he cared about Katie and her life. It’s such an amazing contrast. And again, I want Illinois voters to understand that this is not what the media tells you. Now, I understand the media needs to make a living. They need Pritzker money. I get that. But this is not what they’re telling people. Governor Pritzker is not a compassionate person from what I can see.

From my place, from my seat, he’s not. He hasn’t shown one bit of empathy or caring to a lifelong Illinoisan and his murdered daughter. And it’s very unfortunate. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been till this day contacting us.

Eli: You made a very interesting point about how we don’t see the success of these operations. What we see in the media, and I live in LA, so if you watch the local news, it’s all about, first of all, I never get any numbers on the bad guys, who were arrested.

We just see that it is more about somebody’s grandmother or somebody like that or so forth. But we never see the full picture. We never get the full picture. And you made an interesting point, which is that you can’t quite measure the success because it was, how many, I think I saw the article and they had a whole bunch of documented arrests of illegal immigrants who have been convicted of DUI. It was something like 10 of them, right?

Joe: I don’t know the exact numbers, they’ve pulled, I’d want to say around 3,000, which include sort of DUI folks. I just don’t know what the breakdown. Yeah, I think it’s around 3,000 criminals they’ve already removed. And I think some of that does have DUIs, but I think it’s a mixed bag. That’s like in total. So that would be everything from people in gangs, DUI, pedophiles, murderers, rapists, these type of things. And I know they had a number in mind. was probably, I’m just gonna left top my head, it’s probably wrong, but I think it was like four or 5,000 people they had in mind in Chicago that they wanted to get out of our communities because it’s their public safety threats, right?

And let’s be honest, Julio Cucul Bol, I would say, isn’t necessarily the worst of the worst, but he has done so much damage. And I’m sorry, but Illinois has to accept some responsibility for that. They allowed him in without any guidance. They just threw him to the wolves. He had no idea what was happening, from mountainous regions of Guatemala, thrown into Illinois using the state like a playground and ATM machine and whatever else. So the state never set him up for success, only set him up for failure and families for suffering. That’s all they did. And instead of, again, pausing and saying, you know what, maybe we overdid this, let’s give it a pause, let’s reevaluate some of the things. They don’t. They go all in because they’re authoritarian. They’re a super majority. They don’t care about what the voters are thinking or saying.

This is why it’s so maddening to watch someone like Governor Pritzker say, Donald Trump’s authoritarian and democracy is on trial. Meanwhile, he’s acting worse than authoritarian. And this state is so, if you think about this state being a super majority, it has been so distorted by our politicians on one side that this state should never be a one super majority state. It just shouldn’t. I mean, I think Trump got what, 44, 45 % of the vote, but we’re a one party’s super majority state, that’s how severe they fix the state.

Eli: What I can’t get over with your tragedy is how politicians seem to just show so much compassion to people who shouldn’t even be here. Almost everybody I know in my family or even in LA are legal immigrants. And they tell you, especially coming from Mexico, they came, they waited in Tijuana. They lived in Tijuana for five years. They’ve suffered hardships in Tijuana. They’ve been exploited in Tijuana. Some of them have been raped in Tijuana. It’s not easy to become a legal immigrant. And then they watch all the others just come across the border without doing any-- they just cut-- I mean, you how angry we are as Americans if somebody cuts the line in anything? We get pissed.

Joe: Yeah, yeah.

Eli: They have the same reaction, probably even more so, and it hurts the legal immigration process. So I think when people like Governor Pritzker and so forth, rather to put the emphasis on the legal process, they seem to put all the emphasis on the illegal process as some sort of humanitarian gesture. And then turn around and call anybody who objects, a racist. The white guilt phenomenon. And they get to transform our society and with no consequence. Except, well, maybe that’s not true. Maybe the consequence is they get more political power. Meanwhile, obviously, the other consequence is that you lose your daughter. I think that’s something the Americans keep asking. Do we want to live with those consequences?

Joe: Yeah, and they only care about in the abstract. You’re absolutely right. Their compassion and their caring is in the abstract, not the concrete. It doesn’t matter to them. But here’s also the thing. They talk about compassion for these illegals. trying to get better. So let’s give them benefit of the doubt here, Eli. Let’s just assume their good intentions are what they are, just good intentions. They want to do right by folks.

Let’s just assume that, I don’t believe that for a second, but for the sake of this argument, why don’t we look at the outcomes and the effects of the policies you’ve put in to help these people? Because what you’ve done now over the last four five years, you’ve got the majority of Americans saying, pause immigration. We don’t necessarily want it right now. It got too out of control. So you’ve overplayed your hand. The effects of your policies have done the opposite.

People want less now, immigration. So your outcomes of your own policies are in conflict with what you’re saying you want. And there’s no pause. There’s no, geez, let’s reconsider this because we don’t want that. As a family of immigrants, we don’t want that. We want people to be able to come here legally and have this experience. But these guys, they might have overplayed their hand for four years and...maybe they don’t care after that, but certainly they’ve really poisoned the well when it comes to immigration and they did that and they should own it and they won’t.

Eli: They really have destroyed that. One thing that I did want to bring up, because I think what we’re kind of talking about in a way is, what is the contract between the elected and the citizen? And Edmund Burke calls it the social contract. And there’s a quote that I have from him, and it says,

“It be looked on with other reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

And I think that’s one of the best expressions because others like Rousseau and so forth thought of this partnership, this contract between the elected and the citizen, as something temporary. But Burke is basically saying that this contract is belonging to the ages. It is literally a creation of Western civilization, it’s holy in a way.

And when we have our governor just abusing the social contract, removing us from that contract by force, by annihilating us, by taking somebody like you and ghosting them. He is not allowing you to be part of that contract and he’s reaping all the benefits.

I mean, that’s why I have a lot of sympathy for you in your position because I would not want to be in that position and nobody else would want to be in your position. And it’s horrible that you have to be in that position and it makes it worse because it’s almost like kicking the horse when it’s dead.

Joe: That’s a great quote and that’s a great read. So if we look at it on my end, right, law abiding, I’m productive. I pay my taxes and I’ve raised good children out of trouble. Right. So I’m not sure what else I could do on my social bargain. But if I didn’t do any of those things I would have men with guns at my house. So when your daughter, your youngest daughter loses her life sitting in a car in the streets of Urbana, Illinois, because you allowed some guy unvetted, unchecked, unaudited to be running around the streets of Urbana like it was his backyard, smashing into a car at 80 miles an hour...He had been pulled over before in Urbana, got no consequences. I don’t even know how many times he got pulled over, but no consequences. So Illinois knew about this guy. They just did nothing about it. So did they fail on their bargain? Did they fail their social contract? I’d have to say in every aspect, 100 % failed.

But here’s where, here’s the hook and the frustration and what keeps you up at night and the salt in the wound What is my recourse? Again, if I did nothing or if I didn’t, if I didn’t hold my end up with a bargain, I’d have men with guns at my house. What is my recourse? They failed in every aspect. Easy, easy fixes. Things that could have absolutely been preventable. Things that are so fundamentally simple, rudimentary that you couldn’t get it figured out in Illinois. It was so difficult, couldn’t get it figured out. And now what is my, I want to know what can I do?

What is my recourse? I have to just sit here and do nothing, continue to be law abiding, pay taxes and be productive and keep working for these guys. It’s so frustrating. And then you get complete silence on their end. it is one of the toughest pills to swallow over the last year is not only the way Governor Pritzker behaved in his administration, but the whole social contract piece of it, the whole... front end vetting where you just didn’t care about your communities and you just, things were just a wild west out here. That’s all it was. You threw in hundreds of thousands of people in the middle of the night, kicked the side door open, let them all in. In the dark of night, no one even knew what was happening. Next thing you know, you wake up and it’s, your state looks and behaves completely different than what it ought to be. A law-abiding, productive, good state, well-run state, and we’re just not there.

Eli: I think the other dimension of this is that when you watch that congressional hearing with the governor, with Governor Pritzker and you see him offer this criminal due process, in a way, he’s giving that guy the social contract.

He basically extended his social contract to somebody who’s not here in the country illegally. I think that’s really a testament of how perverted our — like you said earlier today, everything’s upside down, what’s up, what’s down — how perverted this whole thing has become. Because where is his social contract to you? And where is his obligation to you?

For him, you’re a political liability. mean, do you think that he wants you to basically shut up and go away?

Joe: I don’t think he spends two seconds thinking about me. I’m not a politician. I’m not a powerful bureaucrat. I’m just someone who lived in Illinois. I was productive, paid taxes. He doesn’t care about me. I want voters to know if anything happens on their end, this is what’s going to happen to you as well. You have no state government behind you.

To your point, Julio Cuco Bol got more social bargain than I did. Let’s understand that. I’ve been law abiding all my life, lived here all my life, dedicated myself to Illinois all my life, paid my taxes. He shows up already being deported, showed up again, fake documents like you wouldn’t believe. That’s why I can’t call him undocumented. The guy got more documents than I did. And he wasn’t productive, wasn’t working, the state didn’t help him in any way. So where’s the state’s responsibility? So, mean, everything’s just a, I’m the only one that pulled the weight here. And that’s the frustrating thing. The state left me high and dry. Julio Cucul Bol is left high and dry. And Julio Cucul Bol had more consideration than me and my family. That’s, that’s again, what voters got to understand. If anything happens, you are last in line.

Everyone else is ahead of you. You have no exemptions. These folks have all the exemptions. So just be aware of that as well. And that’s not the way things should work here in this country. Sorry. You know, you don’t give exemptions to one group of people at the expense of other groups of people. That’s not supposed to work.

Eli: I do really, really thank you for coming on and really sharing your story. And before we get off, do you have any thoughts about, I guess, the question of justice? I mean, it seems like you may not think that may be possible. But how are you moving forward with this tragedy? Do you have any goals in mind of what you want to do with it?

Joe: I mean, this year has been a constant battle, a day to day, hour to hour battle. What I’m hoping, and it’s never gonna be the same, life will never be the same. Katie was such a bright, beautiful person to not have her in this world. The world is a worst place without her, in my view. So ⁓ I’m hoping maybe this year we can...try to get back to as much normalcy as we can. I certainly will continue to speak out because I feel like I have to, I must because of the disrespect and the way they treated Katie and her death, almost like a piece of trash, a garbage that could be thrown on the side of the road and be ignored. Katie was a better person than that. She was better than any of these guys. The way they’ve behaved over the last year, Katie would have never, never been like this. She was such a good person. And to see them and their policies take away someone like Katie, it’s just a tough thing to get through, Eli. It’s it’s going to be a difficult road for us, a difficult journey. We’re trying to do the best we can right now. We’ll probably end up doing something in Katie’s name so her name can continue to live on despite how Illinois has completely rejected her and others like her. Because again, I can only speak to Katie.

I’m sure there are hundreds, not thousands of Katie’s out there and not necessarily killed by illegal aliens, but you know, people are dying every weekend in this city and no one seems to really care or do anything about it. It’s just the same old same old. And unless we start moving these people out of office from the ballot box, I think the voters will continue to get what we get.

Eli: I think the one irony is that you’re not a very political guy. I’ve already spoken to you a couple of times, but what I think comes across is...how American you are. You are exercising your full rights as a citizen. And I think you should be commended in the way of trying to make the meaning out of it. I mean, I think that’s the least that we could do. I mean, if I was in your shoes, I would hopefully have the courage and the strength of you to be able to do what you do.

So I hope you know that your voice has a lot more power, that you may be able to see in your own way. And I kind of know this is my own father has had to fight his own battles and so forth. He sometimes even wonders, what is it for? Who’s listening? Then you get an email one day or you get a letter one day and shows that people have listened to you, have fought their own battles inspired by you. I know that’s not much of a solace but I think that you are having a more of an impact that you realized. I mean, after all, we connected on this and so forth. So before we get off, do you have anything you want to say to America?

Joe: I continue to speak because of the disrespect that they gave Katie and that that’s what sort of keeps me going. And the fact that they, you know, think Katie is not worth sort of responding to, that’s what keeps me going. And I do want voters to know that, you know, like me, you probably will not qualify for their compassion. And they do only have a one-sided compassion and they govern with arrogance, personal ambition, no humility, no sense of service or duty. It’s all self-serving, Eli, from what I can see in Illinois. And I really, really pray that the voters sort of wake up to this and really respond to this because again, this is not just about Katie.

This is about so many others. Unless these folks get moved out, unfortunately, things are going to continue and it’s going to be the same. You’re going to get these double down on awful policies, never reevaluating, never looking inward to see if they’re really ⁓ doing the right thing for the citizens versus themselves and their party. It’s just a very sad state that we have right now in Illinois. And I feel terrible about it.

I don’t know how much longer I can be here. I might become one of these Illinois ⁓ refugees that has to leave and go to another state. Clearly they don’t want me here anyway. So I just hope it turns around. I hope it doesn’t get too late and I hope we see some change because we can do better than we should be doing.

Eli: Thank you, thank you Joe, really for coming on and for sharing your story and I hope they make a difference. So thank you for coming on.

Joe: Eli, thank you and hopefully we’ll can talk again in the future. I enjoyed the time here and it was great speaking with you.

Eli: We’ll keep in touch for sure. Thank you.