This column was hard for me to write, but here goes.
Every time there are breaking news stories highlighting successful ICE raids, we learn what evil is. Not the notion debated in panels on TV news hours or tweeted from think tank interns, but the real kind. I’m talking about the type walking on two feet, smiling at neighbors, and ruining lives behind closed doors.
We’re told about the arrests in the cold newspeak spoken by the newsreader providing the voiceover as we watch footage accompanied by numbers, charts, and press statements. We learn so much, but not the most important part: What those men actually did before they were caught.
- Whom did they hurt?
- How many homes were shattered?
- How many childhoods did they end?
We count those successful ICE raids like wins on the scoreboard. It’s what sits underneath the scoreboard that hits hard: Each raid is also a confession of how a system failed, resulting in a child paying the ultimate price.
On top of all this, nobody wants to say their names.
Jocelyn Nungaray
Jocelyn Nungaray was twelve years old when she was raped and murdered by two men who should never have been here. We should know her name, far and wide, not because of how her life ended, but because she represents each child lost in a country that never protected its children.
Her body was found in a Houston creek on June 17, 2024. Two men, Franklin Peña Ramos and Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel, had recently crossed the border. Illegally. The Venezuelan men are now charged with the most serious counts in the book, including capital murder.
It’s at this point that the shade begins to darken the page. Instead of being a vivacious early teen, she’s become a statistic. She was a little girl with two parents and a favorite school subject, who is now remembered with a tribute where her body was found.
- There wasn’t a single government press release providing its location
- Not a single media organization asked for information about it.
- Not a single politician, from either party, sought statements from the family.
Once again, the victims are invisible.
214
Recently, the Department of Homeland Security reported that 214 people in the Houston area were arrested within six months: All of them here illegally, and all of them charged with child sex crimes.
Using chryons or screaming headlines, newsrooms across the country used the number like they were updating a game:
“Trump’s ICE Ramps Up Enforcement.”
“Crackdown Nets 200+.”
“Houston Sees Record Arrests.”
But, lost in all the noise, did anybody ask the questions that matter?
- How many kids were hurt?
- How many lives were violated, manipulated, and scarred before someone finally put cuffs on the offender?
- How many children screamed in silence while the cameras stayed focused on Washington?
214 arrests, no mention of the damage, no mention of the names for the broken, and, sadly, no justice for the forgotten.
The Other We Know About
On July 2, 2025, in Pasadena, Texas, a 56-year-old illegal immigrant from Honduras lured his female neighbor into his apartment by pretending his air conditioner was broken.
According to police, Zavala targeted a woman living in an apartment near his and spoke to her under the pretense that there was a problem with her air conditioning, KTRK reported. Police say Zavala told the woman her AC was leaking from her apartment into his, and then grabbed her and forced her into his apartment, where he sexually assaulted her. The woman was able to get away from Zavala and escape his apartment, which was above hers, police told KPRC. She found a friend, got into her vehicle, and drove away, police said.
Trusting him, she walked in to help. Once inside, he locked the door and sexually assaulted her.
She reportedly has developmental challenges. He admitted to the assault and targeted her for her vulnerability. And now, according to police, he sits in jail under an ICE detainer, facing multiple charges with a court date set for September.
Her story isn’t trending because she wouldn’t die, and the police aren’t releasing her name, resulting in her tragic tale fading away.
The struggle she faces isn’t a policy debate; it’s about her trauma, dignity, and daily struggles. Her name sits upon a docket that most media outlets won’t take the time to read.
Our current media has evolved to the point where these kinds of victims are never mentioned in press conferences. Why? Maybe because they’re too real, too uncomfortable, and far too removed from photo ops.
This young lady survived!
Still, she’s invisible.
It’s Easier to Count Arrests Than Confront the Damage
The headline screams “214 Arrests!” It makes it sound like action is taking place and the number is added to each press release, slapped into a graphic, and waved around like a win.
What don’t we see? Behind every one of those arrests is a child who has been hurt, manipulated, coerced, violated, or worse. Some of those children may never be able to talk about what happened. Some will never understand it, while some will carry it quietly, like a shadow that shows up on bright days, never loud, never gone, always there.
ICE reports that 179 of the 214 arrests had final deportation orders already in place.
Thanks to ICE Houston, there are 214 less pedophiles on our streets. These are the type of perverted predators ICE is targeting and removing from our country,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “President Trump and Secretary Noem will not allow these sickos to prey on children in the U.S. Our message to these depraved criminals is clear: LEAVE NOW. If you don’t, we will hunt you down and deport you.
These crimes aren’t mysteries committed by border ghosts. The people were known, documented, and ordered to leave! Yet, they not only stayed, they were here long enough to destroy lives.
We need to ask ourselves
- How many Jocelyns didn’t make the news?
- How many young lives were broken while local jurisdictions ignored detainers?
- How many kids were passed over by a system more interested in the rights of the predator than the cries of the victim?
No one knows. What’s worse? Until President Trump, nobody in power seemed to want to.
Sanctuary for Whom, Exactly?
Let’s stop pretending this happened in a vacuum. We all know perfectly well what the hell happened.
In their minds, things made sense. The Biden administration rolled back enforcement priorities, allowing monsters in so they would win elections.
Think I’m exaggerating?
ICE was restricted from doing its job. The Biden administration encouraged sanctuary cities to block any cooperation with federal authorities. By doing so, blind ideology was transformed into government policy, hiding behind a single word: compassion.
What Joe Biden and the committee controlling his marinette strings have no clue about is a simple, yet complex idea: There’s nothing compassionate about shielding violent offenders, no mercy behind those preying on the innocent.
How in the bloody hell can they claim to be “pro-immigration,” while defending people who destroy children?
The ugly truth is that if those 179 people with final deportation orders had been removed when they were supposed to be, many of the 214 arrests would never have happened. Those children would be sleeping in their homes right now, having been unharmed.
The system, in all its benevolence, decided that compassion for the abusers outweighed safety for the children.
This isn’t simply a policy failure; it’s a moral failure.
It Isn’t Justice: It’s Optics.
The number of arrests doesn’t represent policy success; it represents a cleanup by a government scrambling to mop up the blood from a floor it stopped caring about years ago.
For years, ICE had its hands tied while trying to enforce laws the left decided weren’t convenient. President Trump and people like Tom Homan are desperately trying to clean up our streets; unfortunately for us all, they’re showing up long after the damage was already done. Making a horrible story even worse, there has been no accounting for what has been lost, no victim tally, transparency, follow-up, or a Biden official standing up to take responsibility for what they didn’t do.
And why? I’ll give you two reasons: a lack of integrity and, important for those on the left, it’s not good optics.
For four years, DHS didn’t want to release the number of children hurt, the politicians never wanted to talk about it, and the lapdog media obeyed; they never reported it. Why? All for the same reason: The truth made them look bad.
Suits in front of and behind the camera kept living their lives above the flotsam and jetsam of the great unwashed, victims were buried beneath the ever-changing narrative, their stories were left out, names never surfaced, and their pain, as personal as any pain can get, is quietly filed away in a cabinet located in some prosecutor’s office, never mentioned again.
Because of the left, we’re not witnessing justice, just brand management.
Final Thoughts
We know Jocelyn’s name and the woman in Pasadena, but we don’t see the rest of the victims. We haven’t a clue how many children were hurt in those 214 arrests, how many of them still need to heal. We don’t know how many will never heal, because nobody is counting.
Headlines tally the arrests, ICE reports the victories, politicians high-five each other, yelling “Mission Accomplished” on yet another cycle of failure.
However, under the Biden regime, not a single agency, including DHS, DOJ, or the media, has ever dared publish a victim count.
If they did, then the Biden administration would have to face the consequences of what it allowed. These aren’t immigration statistics, they’re the names you’ll never hear. Children who aren’t sleeping tonight, families without answers, lives altered by policies sold to the public as “humane.”
If our media cared as much about the real victims as they did about the headlines, if they had integrity, character, and an insatiable demand for the absolute truth, maybe we’d have answers, not just soundbites where lefties sound as though they were tough.
Until we, as a society, can clean up the disastrous messes left by the Biden/Obama administrations, we can finally start putting the victims first. Until then? It’s all theater.
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Because children don’t belong in statistics.
They belong in safety.
And someone has to speak their names.
