Free Republic

“Well-trained … ninjas” from Chile are burglarizing wealthy Americans in the Detroit, Michigan, suburbs after using the Visa Waiver Program to get into the United States, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard says. In an interview with FOX 2 Detroit, Bouchard sounded the alarm yet again on the rise of foreign burglary gangs from South America operating across the U.S. — including in the Detroit suburbs where wealthy residents are being targeted for their money, jewelry, and designer handbags.

It may seem like a surprise to many that there could be a confrontation between Chinese gangsters at a marijuana farm on the Oklahoma prairie.But it is a reality that has been commonplace in Oklahoma since legislators opened the state up to the medicalmarijuana business. As of January 2022, there hadn't been widely reported cases of Chinese gangsters specifically involved in the Oklahoma marijuana business. However, it's important to note that organized crime groups often exploit vulnerabilities in various industries, including the cannabis market. Here are some ways in which organized crime groups, including those with Chinese connections, might become...

The only thing that’s clear is that Venezuela’s societal breakdown and criminality are coming soon to an American neighborhood near you. Here’s an “only in 2024” story: It seems that, in Chicago, a cartel-linked illegal alien Venezuelan with a long criminal record apparently shot an illegal alien man who claims to be a woman and works as a prostitute. One would think the shooter would be sucked into Chicago’s criminal justice system and put away for life for past crimes and transphobia. However, the alleged shooter walked right out of jail without charges. The story comes from the Chicago Sun-Times,...

A TikTok influencer is advising illegal immigrants on how to 'invade' American homes and invoke squatter's rights, making it difficult for them to be removed from properties. Moreno, alleging he has friends who 'have already taken about seven homes', argued the only way for migrants to not live in the streets or be a 'public burden' is to 'seize' and 'invade' abandoned properties.

The federal government pays more than $100 million a year to employees who aren’t doing their actual government jobs, but rather working for unions representing government employees against management — with taxpayers essentially funding both sides of the bargaining table. For decades, the government has tracked and reported those figures, but the Biden administration has removed the reports. Under the policy known as “official time,” hundreds of nominal government employees haven’t done anything but full-time union work in years, yet remain on the federal payroll. Not only is the policy expensive to taxpayers, but it also props up the power...

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's free bus trips for illegal immigrants to the sanctuary cities shifted the open-borders debate from a Texas problem, and turned every state into a border state, making it go national. Now, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's targeting of an open-borders NGO stands to draw attention to the nefarious role these self-congratulating government-financed groups are playing in egging on the current border surge. According to the Texas Tribune: In a Tuesday evening statement, Paxton accused Annunciation House of a series of offenses, which included smuggling people across the southern border and operating a stash house. “The chaos...

hicago is also being terrorized. There, professional criminals enlist migrants from the shelters to raid luxury stores at the suburban Oakbrook Center shopping mall, 20 miles west of downtown. These migrants wouldn't have a clue where Oak Brook, an upscale suburb, is, or how to get there without the criminal masterminds. South American gangs are turning suburban malls into danger zones, explains retired Riverside, Illinois, Police Chief Tom Weitzel. "You're at one of the suburban malls... pushing your kids in a stroller" and you can get caught in the violence, he said in an interview with Fox News. "A lot...

Bukele's war on gangs is credited with slashing homicide rates while restoring security and dignity to citizens of what was once one of the world's most dangerous countries. There is no sign of Bukele's crackdown coming to an end any time soon. The president, who describes himself as the 'world's coolest dictator', appears to have swept to victory in last weekend's election, so far winning 83 percent of the vote. His war on El Salvador's gangs is cited as a major reason behind his popularity.

FBI Overstepped in Search of Hundreds of Safe Deposit Boxes, Court RulesThe 9th Circuit compared the searches to the “abuses of power” that “led to adoption of the Fourth Amendment in the first place.”The FBI overstepped its constitutional authority when agents searched hundreds of safe deposit boxes without warrants in 2021, a federal appeals court ruled. The court compared the FBI’s tactics to the kind of indiscriminate searches that led to the enactment of the Bill of Rights in the first place.In March 2021, the FBI raided U.S. Private Vaults, a safe deposit box company in Beverly Hills, California. The...

A prosecutor investigating the dramatic live-broadcast armed assault last week on an Ecuadoran television station was shot dead Wednesday, the country's attorney general said. "In the face of the murder of our colleague Cesar Suarez... I am going to be emphatic: organized crime groups, criminals, terrorists will not stop our commitment to Ecuadoran society," Attorney General Diana Salazar said in a statement on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Local media broadcast images of Suarez's truck with bullet holes through the driver's window on a street in the port city of Guayaquil, the nerve center of Ecuador's war against...

An annual report from the Inspector General of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) revealed that millions of dollars worth of tech devices were reported lost or stolen “without appropriate search and recovery efforts.” The fiscal year 2023 annual report released Tuesday states CPS schools reported 77,505 tech devices as lost or stolen during the 2021-22 school year, totaling well over $23 million in original purchase price. The discovery, as a result of the district’s first post-COVID-19 inventory, calls the numbers “unacceptably high” and says the oversight process is in need of a “serious overhaul.” The report said the missing items included...

Ecuador has erupted into a 'civil war' with cartel thugs after the president ordered the army onto the streets and declared a state of 'internal armed conflict'. Crazed criminals have rampaged through the South American country's cities today after President Daniel Noboa, 36, ordered a state of emergency. Hooded gangsters seized a state TV news studio today, while a university was attacked and jail guards reportedly executed by prisoners. Ecuador has been rocked by a series of attacks including explosions and the abduction of several police officers after the government imposed a state of emergency in the wake of the...

PORTLAND, Maine — Illegal marijuana grows run by Chinese nationals have sprung up all across the state of Maine, and residents say law enforcement isn’t doing enough to stop their spread. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identified 270 suspected Chinese illegal marijuana grow operations in the state that could be making an estimated $4.37 billion in revenue, which are often used for more criminal activities or are sent back to China, the DCNF exclusively reported in August.

President Joe Biden took major action ahead of the holiday and pardoned all Americans arrested, prosecuted, or convicted on federal charges for marijuana use, following through on his 2020 campaign promise to expunge cannabis use offenses. Biden signed a proclamation Friday that forgives U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents caught by law enforcement for possessing the drug and charged, going far beyond the sweeping actions he took last year for thousands of people convicted of possession. The new action includes "additional offenses of simple possession and use of marijuana under federal and D.C. law," the White House said in a...

Two more Venezuelan migrants staying in Chicago were arrested Friday after allegedly stealing hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise from a suburban Macy’s that has been an ongoing target of retail theft by migrants ... Edys Alberto Herrera-Gotopo, 20, and Johan Gavidia-Rojas, 18, entered the store together in Oak Brook, Illinois, shortly after 7 p.m. and were each carrying empty bags ... The two men worked together, with one grabbing items of clothing and stuffing them into a bag while the other acted as a lookout before the duo switched roles... When the suspects left the store without paying... ......

Maine officials said they seized some 3,400 marijuana plants and 111 pounds of processed marijuana in June at a property in Carmel, Maine, identified as one of many unlicensed marijuana-growing operations in the state run by Chinese networks. PHOTO: PENOBSCOT COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICECARMEL, Maine—An astronomical electricity bill was the first tipoff that something unusual was going on at a former chicken farm in this town of 3,000 people off Interstate 95.A Massachusetts-registered construction company had bought the 5.5-acre property in 2021. But instead of construction equipment moving in, a new power pole sprang up. Electricity use jumped to nearly...

Retailers across New York state say there’s no end in sight to the rising epidemic of organized shoplifting rings — and warn it could lead to more store closures, increased costs for consumers and threats of violence against store employees. Store owners said they lost $4.4 billion last year as a result of retail theft — which they say adds to the urgency for Gov. Kathy Hochul to crack down. However, Hochul vetoed a bipartisan bill last week — to the chagrin of store owners — that would have created a task force to combat organized theft. ... The Retail...

On February 25, 2023, Indian River County, Florida sheriff's deputies responded to a local big box store in Vero Beach, Florida for a report of a shoplifting in progress. Asset Protection employees had been monitoring three females as they loaded up a shopping cart. When one of the undercover Walmart team members was made, the three female suspects ditched the cart, but still exited the store with two stolen bags, sunglasses, and deodorant. While identifying the suspect, deputies learned they were habitual shoplifters and placed an ICE hold on all three. Video is 15 minutes long

PHILADELPHIA — Groups of teenagers swarmed into stores in Philadelphia's Center City, stuffing plastic bags with merchandise and fleeing, although police made several arrests, authorities and witnesses said. An Apple Store was hit at around 8 p.m. Tuesday and police chased fleeing teenagers, recovering dropped iPhones and a "pile of iPads" at one spot, a police statement said. More than 100 people who appeared to be teenagers stole from a Lululemon store, NBC10 Philadelphia reported, citing a police officer. Video posted on social media showed masked people in hoodies running out of Lululemon and police officers grabbing several and tackling...

• Corporate America is finally waking up to the fact that woke policies on crime are costing them billions. Organized shoplifting efforts and flash mobs of robberies across the country caused businesses $100 billion in losses in 2021 and have only gotten worse since then according to the National Retail Federation. As former Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli recently put it, Biden’s America has become a "lawless society." And a lawless society is bad for business. Big companies, from Whole Foods, Walmart and Walgreens to Nordstrom, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Lululemon and more have all suffered. Mom-and-pop businesses have suffered too....