This happens to me all the time.
I read a sob story, sometimes about crime, but mostly about ICE enforcement, and I wonder what the rest of the story is.
The “victim” of the evil ICE Gestapo is some poor, innocent migrant who came to the United States only wanting a better life, only to discover that cruel Republicans who hate all brown, black, yellow, and alphabet people are roaming the country checking your papers, eager to throw you to the alligators or the wolves.
I just chaired an emergency meeting of the Board of Pardons to grant a unanimous pardon to At “Ricky” Chandee – a Minnesota father and longtime public servant facing deportation for a single conviction from over 30 years ago.https://t.co/vdlBYGTKzx pic.twitter.com/Qi8fuU9eqf
— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) May 4, 2026
You know the stories. Our “neighbors” who turn out to be gang members, drug dealers, human traffickers, paedos, and rapists, but you only find that one little fact if you are willing to dig into the case, because the media fails to point it out.
Sometimes you can find the relevant fact in paragraph 47 of a story that lionizes the victim, and other times you only find it by doing real digging, as I had to with this particular case that my Governor, Tim Walz, wanted me to open my heart to.
Walz called a special meeting of the Board of Pardons to review the case of “Ricky” Chandee, who was set to be deported back to his home country of Laos.
What was striking to me about this story was that I left rather confused about what Ricky’s crime was, other than it was termed an “assault,” which is rather vague. Was it a bar fight? A schoolyard dispute? Since Ricky is not an illegal alien but rather a refugee, issues like that would seem to matter, given that everybody might have a run-in with the law in their youth, but some crimes are minor, and others are not.
Well, it turns out that Ricky shot two people in a drive-by shooting. He was arrested, served his time, and seems to have straightened out his life.
Definitely a lot more of an edge case than many, the left goes out of its way to defend against deportation, but the crime was pretty bad. And given the fact that the media and the governor have danced around the original crime, acting like it is no big deal, it’s quite possible that his lack of an arrest record doesn’t necessarily mean he left the gang life when he got out of prison, just that he was never caught and prosecuted.
SOMALI CRIME: A Somali teen was caught with an illegal machine gun after a Minnesota high school graduation drive-by. Released without charges. 3 days later he did it again at another graduation with another illegal machine gun. The DOJ stepped in. Two graduation ceremonies. Two… https://t.co/WcB7sKV0Pb pic.twitter.com/tvnD0Yewl4
— @amuse (@amuse) April 18, 2026
SOMALI CRIME: A Somali teen was caught with an illegal machine gun after a Minnesota high school graduation drive-by. Released without charges. 3 days later he did it again at another graduation with another illegal machine gun. The DOJ stepped in. Two graduation ceremonies. Two machine guns. Zero local accountability.
Perhaps I could be more easily persuaded if I hadn’t seen that there is no level of criminal activity that will not be excused, particularly involving immigrants and illegal aliens. Tim Walz defends rapists and paedos from deportations, so he and the media are in no position to persuade me that this one time, this one guy, really is reformed and on the straight and narrow and deserving of mercy.
How Minnesota’s mainstream media reports on yet another Somali clan shooting at a graduation event vs. @AlphaNews & @CrimeWatchMpls reporting… 🤔 pic.twitter.com/kI5aH80V66
— Liz Collin (@lizcollin) May 5, 2026
Tim Walz tells me this man is not the “worst of the worst,” and perhaps really is not. But then again, Tim Walz defends the worst of the worst, insisting that the most vile people in the world are our neighbors and the heart of our community. His telling me that Ricky is my neighbor and the heart of the community is hardly persuasive.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.
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