One of the problems of being competent is that people take your achievements for granted.
Pretty soon they forget all about them and concoct new complaints or demands.
This is the case with President Trump’s astonishingly successful fulfilled promise on border security, achieved within the first 100 days of his second term by his most underestimated Cabinet secretary, Kristi Noem, the tough-minded Homeland Security chief pilloried by the left as “ICE Barbie” because they can’t find anything real to criticize.
Thanks to Noem and “border czar” Tom Homan, as well as the president’s own Day One executive orders, Trump could truthfully declare at the end of April that the southern border was “closed,” with a 95% plunge in daily encounters and not a single alien released into the country.
But then came the hard part of unwinding Joe Biden’s toxic legacy: deportations.
This week, I observed Noem in action when she joined more than 100 heavily armed Border Patrol and ICE agents in armored vehicles with helicopter and drone support to execute a felony arrest warrant on a criminal illegal alien.
The predawn raid in the peaceful Chicago suburb of Elgin netted a total of five illegals from Mexico and Venezuela, with DHS alleging it had found convictions and arrests against three of the men for assault, felony stalking and aggravated DUI.
Previously deported
The operation targeted just one person, Carlos Gonzalez-Leon, who was previously deported to Mexico but returned under Biden and has been convicted for assault causing bodily harm on a family member.
Several days of surveillance of the rented house where he was living showed several other men coming and going and established a pattern of daily behavior for the household.
On Tuesday, Noem met with the large team of armed operators at a DHS facility just after 4 a.m., as they ran through the plan of action including contingencies for “shots fired,” “officer down,” “hostage rescue” and medic support.
It would be an overwhelming show of force, and they were leaving nothing to chance.
But there was a problem.
At 5 a.m., when the high-risk raid was scheduled, they weren’t certain Gonzalez-Leon, who slept in the basement, was actually in the house; “bedded down” in operator-speak.
They knew that one of the residents left for work just after 5 a.m. so Tuesday morning they watched the man leave and then executed a routine traffic stop a few blocks away so he could confirm his roommate was indeed asleep in bed.
At 5:38 a.m., Noem and the motorcade of a dozen trucks parked quietly nearby began moving, along with two BearCats (heavily armored tactical vehicles) containing armed Border Patrol officers in camouflage gear with helmets and night-vision goggles.
Six minutes later, sleepy Chippewa Drive didn’t know what hit it.
In rapid succession, the lead BearCat drove up Gonzalez-Leon’s driveway and three operators clinging to the back jumped off and ran toward the front porch, as dozens of their colleagues surrounded the house.
Bright white floodlights lit up the front door.
Searchlights from a helicopter bathed the rooftop.
Green laser beams from multiple firearms shone through windows, giving the operators an idea of where the residents were in the house.
At least one person was moving about the kitchen.
The air was crisp, and a bright crescent moon hung low in the sky.
Under the whop-whop sound of the circling helicopter, a dog was yelping.
Then an officer began barking instructions through a megaphone in English and Spanish: “Gonzalez-Leon, come to the front door with your hands up. We have a warrant.”
Seventy seconds later the message changed: “Police. Step away from the door. Step away from the door.”
Continue reading over at The New York Post:
Miranda Devine: Go inside an ICE raid as tough-minded DHS boss Kristi Noem succeeds in ousting criminal immigrants https://t.co/BfzfhRaB0k pic.twitter.com/380jwtqfgn
— NY Post Opinion (@NYPostOpinion) September 18, 2025
Thank you for visiting