An extra-large King of NASCAR Richard Petty T-shirt and patterned green and black camouflage clothing added to the local color of the public meeting. Decent hard-working people concerned about the air, water and land filled the room that night more than a decade ago in Dimock Township in Susquehanna County. Both pro and con, we listened to business-suit-wearing natural gas executives and political hacks make their case for the benefits of continuing support for fracking in the Marcellus Shale region.

Of course these slick corporate hustlers spun their story to envision a magical cash pile from an already magical landscape where local residents hunted, fished, raced off-road vehicles and otherwise lived off natural splendor. But neighbor had already turned against neighbor as big business pillaged the land and gasbag bosses took the money and ran.

Expect similar deception in Tremont Township in Schuylkill County where federal government pirates work with free-market collaborators as they plunder the countryside and quality of life of people who deserve much better than a proposed Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center that will hold up to 7,500 prisoners.

Trust neither Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro nor Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser to help terminate this prison camp plan for the former Big Lots warehouse built on land the federal government has already purchased for approximately $119.5 million.

Not since smug millionaire robber barons and coal company marauders looted Schuylkill County in the last century has this hardcore county faced such an existential threat. Tradition still matters among generations of coal field dwellers with deep roots in the region, people who work to survive and raise their families in little towns like Tremont, Ravine, Pine Grove and Tower City. Survival is difficult for many of these people, particularly those who might not make on Social Security what they once did in full-time jobs.

History matters little if at all to the ICE storm troopers. Neither does the hard labor that went into building little one-time coal towns where tradition is still worth fighting for and people hang on the best they can. Liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans and independents must join forces to battle this armed and dangerous invasion.

The shale wars divided people into fierce camps. That long ago night at the meeting I watched pampered liberals mock working-class men and women who attended the gas meeting, people who lacked the formal education and sophistication some of the smug know-it-all “activists” possessed as they opposed the gas trucks and gas land workers that overran the environment and overworked the mountains. I also knew how some of the local rednecks snickered the second they smelled a lib in the room the way they boasted over cold bottles of beer they could smell a big-racked buck on the first day of deer season.

Pennsylvanians should have learned from our shared history that polarized us deeply.

Now is the time to push aside the Yuengling bottles and put away the college degrees. Shake hands with people on the other side and for whatever the reason stand together in opposition to the proposed Tremont Township ICE facility. The more of us who combat the detention camp the better the odds of stopping the federal government’s damaging plan. Whether you ride a dirt bike, four-wheeler or snowmobile through the mountains or study bugs and leaves as a student or professor, you must enlist to take down this disastrous plan to disrespect everything our ancestors worked to achieve.

My grandfather emigrated from rural Ireland to Scranton, worked underground for 45 years as a coal miner and died from Black Lung disease he contracted after inhaling toxic coal dust. My dad patrolled back roads near Tremont as a state trooper when I was a little boy and my family lived in nearby Lykens. My wife, Stephanie, was born in Lykens and grew up in Tower City. Her mother was an immigrant British war bride who met her father when he served as a captain in the 8^th Air Force in England, returning to his Tower City hometown after World War II to serve as the town dentist.

The coal region lives and breathes as our literal common ground. That’s why we join others who share common values, respect decency, fight ICE cops and defy all pompous politicians who disrespect and patronize tradition as quaint and foolish.

Coal crackers, and I use the term as a badge of honor, have always been smarter than they think. We the people vs. the politicians who belittle us share a genuine stake in the future of our hometowns, our state, our nation and our world. Coal fields activists such as “Black Jack” Kehoe and Mother Jones have been here before. Those of us who follow their strong spirits remain.

Underestimate us if you choose.

Go ahead.

Sell us short.

This sale won’t go as easy as you think.

Back in the 60s when life was simpler we used to call into the local radio station and ask the disc jockey to dedicate a song to somebody special. The other day my Appalachian American friend Helo in Liverpool, Pennsylvania requested that Saturday Night Live at the Oldies play the Gordon Lightfoot song Cotton Jenny for Kimmy, his beloved partner in time.

Helo, as in helicopter, would be eating asphalt without Kimmy by his side.

Known to his one percenter motorcycle club brothers as one righteous bearded tattooed former U.S. Marine survival specialist, Helo knows the value of freedom, loyalty and fighting for what he believes in. Like the man with the good heart in the song who loves going home for supper with Cotton Jenny after a hard shift working in the mill, Helo celebrates the simple pleasures and treasures in life, priceless gemstones of existence too many people overlook until it’s too late.

Life’s too short.

Reality offers no guarantees.

But we can increase our chances of happiness or decrease the odds for peace of mind by the way we live, just like that grateful working man in the mill in Gordon Lightfoot’s ode to Cotton Jenny.

So this song goes out to you, Kimmy.

From Helo with love.

Not good enough, Guv.

Don’t tell me you can’t.

You just won’t.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is absolutely empowered to take varied aggressive action to combat and neutralize abuse by Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons.

But he refuses.

Instead Shapiro playacts leadership, preening, posturing and preparing to one day announce his bid for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. More and more feeling the heat on his religiously dull book tour, though, he now seems inclined to at least offer lip service.

Blowing bureaucratic kisses to decent, hardworking people doesn’t cut it.

But at least Shapiro’s press office finally responded to one of my regular emails, this time addressing questions about mounting concern in Tremont Township where taxpayers are outraged by future ICE plans for their community that could raise taxes and slash services throughout Schuylkill County.

Plans are already in motion to turn a now vacant warehouse into an ICE detention fortress that will imprison about 7,500 immigrant detainees. Local officials estimate the sale of the warehouse property will result in lost annual revenue of $222,000 for Schuylkill County, $555,000 for the Pine Grove Area School District and $196,000 for Tremont Twp.

On 2/3/2026 I sent questions about the furor to Rosie Lapowsky who had been promoted to the top job of press secretary since I last contacted her with specific questions she ignored.

I asked, “What is Gov. Josh Shapiro’s position on the proposed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ICE facility in Tremont? Does Shapiro support the move? Will he assist the DHS move into this community? Why hasn’t Shapiro issued a statement thus far?”

In an email instructing me to attribute the response to “spokesperson Kayla Anderson,” the statement signed not by a person but by “Governor’s Press Office” says:

“Governor Shapiro opposes the federal Department of Homeland Security establishing new detention facilities in Pennsylvania, a view shared by the local communities who would be burdened by these centers. While the state does not get advance notice of or approve these types of sales, our Administration is actively evaluating our options. The Governor continues to work across state government agencies to protect people’s rights and halt the incredible overreach of the federal government into our communities that is making people less safe.”

Despite my specific questions about a specific Pennsylvania locale “burdened by these centers,” Shapiro’s flacks fail to pinpoint Tremont Township, Schuylkill County or ICE in the statement. Shapiro’s flacks fail to detail the “options” they claim the “Administration is actively evaluating.” Nor do Shapiro’s flacks tell us exactly how Shapiro “continues to work across state government agencies,” how he plans “to protect people’s rights,” what exactly he will do in Schuylkill County or elsewhere in the state to “halt the incredible overreach of the federal government into our communities that is making people less safe.”

The most “incredible overreach” encroaching on Tremont Township residents’ rights occurs each day Shapiro fails to personally take action to combat ICE abuses with aggressive public policy he has the power to launch. Unlike strong Democratic governors in other states, Shapiro has refrained from cracking down on ICE and refuses to publicly support barring local law enforcement agencies from formally facilitating federal immigration arrests.

According to a 2/4/2026 Washington Post article, “At least eight other states have already either prohibited or set restrictions against local police and sheriff’s offices entering into what are known as 287(g) partnerships, which enable those agencies to help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement take into custody people they say are in the country illegally. New Mexico, New York, Hawaii and Virginia are considering similar bans during their 2026 state legislative sessions.”

Maryland is also currently considering a ban.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) also took additional steps to distance state law enforcement agencies from federal immigration operations, ordering the end of partnership agreements and condemning federal operations in other states as undermining public confidence, according to a 2/5/2026 Washington Post article.

As in these other states with courageous governors who actually lead, a Pennsylvania ban against 287 (g) would immediately sever ICE agreements between sheriff’s offices such as the current 287 (g) partnership in Schuylkill County, police departments and rabid district attorneys such as Republican bullyboy Sam Sanguedolce in Luzerne County who has agreed to a 287 (g) partnership.

Like their Democratic Party boss Shapiro, most Democrats in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and Senate, including all members of the lackluster Northeastern Pennsylvania contingent led by punchy State Sen. Marty Flynn, have failed to offer specific action-packed suggestions to fight back against ICE wrecking ball enforcement.

Shapiro’s vague response to my questions about safeguarding former coal patch communities in Tremont Township, Tremont Borough, Pine Grove, Joliett, Reinerton and elsewhere in this hardcore hunk of hard coal country is as flimsy as a threadbare flannel hunting shirt. Not only is Shapiro wretched presidential material, he’s not even good ol’ Schuylkill County commissioner material.

A Pennsylvania Dutch saying tells us a city dog wants to run out the door but a country dog stays on the porch because he’s not fenced in. Don’t fence in Tremont, Governor. America’s better off when good people breathe free.

We also need more bite and less bark.

Too bad our Blue Dog governor won’t hunt.

Distant and icy, Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti remains publicly silent about recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol killings in Minneapolis.

Aloof reserve from this Democratic congressional candidate in Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District and too-cool-for-her-own-good opportunistic public servant should come as no surprise.

In a 28/22news.com television interview one year ago Cognetti even distanced herself from the noble national sanctuary city movement that helps protect immigrant rights. Sanctuary policies clearly define how local or state government shares information and assistance with ICE or other federal immigration law officers.

“It’s important to note too that Scranton is not a sanctuary city, Lackawanna County is not a sanctuary county so if ICE comes in with lawful warrants, they will execute those warrants,” Cognetti said.

Now the 45-year-old third term mayor refuses to answer any of my questions about ICE. So has Christopher Hughes, a timid one-time rookie newspaper columnist and Cognetti’s City Hall public relations flack. Scranton Police Chief Tom Carroll and Cognetti’s congressional campaign manager Anna Korman also have ignored my questions about how Cognetti’s administration handles ICE requests for information or how she will combat an ICE invasion of the city she is paid to represent.

Cognetti’s abrupt turnaround occurred as soon as I started asking questions about her unwavering support for American-financed Israeli genocide. Die-hard Democratic cheerleader Cognetti embraced former President Joe Biden and other loyalist members of her party as they emboldened the Israeli slaughter in Gaza. A January 22, 2026 article in the Jewish Insider reaffirmed Cognetti’s firm allegiance to Israel and even her desire to visit the tiny authoritarian nation.

I supported Cognetti’s first run for mayor in 2019, writing news columns that encouraged her campaign. She once even privately asked me for advice. I believed her promise to fight corruption and truly expected her to stand on sound principle. But Cognetti devolved to steadfastly advocate cruel and murderous aggression against Palestinian civilians that included men, women and children, bloody carnage deemed genocide by numerous international human rights scholars.

Now Cognetti stands in icy silence as ICE and Border Patrol agents brutalize American men, women and children and run amok across the nation.

In a June 10, 2025 email Scranton Police Chief Tom Carroll said, “ICE operates independently of SPD when they work in Scranton.” Carroll’s statement was in response to my email asking whether the Scranton Police Department assisted ICE in a May 15, 2025 arrest in the South Side of the city.

Law enforcement agents had located Mexican citizen Higinio Mendez-Salazar after his previously having been removed from the United States, according to a press release from the United States Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania State Police assisted in making that arrest, according to the release.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro regularly stresses that state police he commands do not directly assist ICE. Immigrant rights groups accuse the Democrat and coy unannounced presidential candidate of arming ICE by providing ICE with data that endangers lives and human rights, including state police officers using their own discretion when dealing with ICE.

Cognetti will need to depend on Shapiro, his influence and fundraising ability in her bid to unseat Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-PA). The headline on the Jewish Insider article reads “Paige Cognetti running in Josh Shapiro’s footsteps in key Pa. swing district.”

Chief Carroll did not, however, respond to my follow-up question and June 10, 2025 email about the Scranton ICE arrest in which I asked “Did any SPD officer respond to the scene for any reason?”

Nor did PR flak Hughes respond when I asked in a November 2, 2025 email which I also sent to Carroll, “Has Mayor Paige Cognetti instructed Scranton Police Chief Tom Carroll to order Scranton police officers to cooperate with federal ICE enforcement activities within the city limits?”

I asked, “Do Scranton police cooperate with ICE in any way?  If so, how? Does a written city policy exist that spells out how city police should deal with ICE enforcement in the city? If so, please provide that policy. Have Scranton police officers accompanied or assisted ICE agents on any ICE enforcement action in the city? If so, where and when?”

On December 5, 2025, I wrote in an email to Carroll, “Does the Scranton Police Department maintain a formal written agreement with Homeland Security and/or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)? If so, will you please email me a copy? If not, what is your informal arrangement? I’m writing immigration columns for The Scranton City News and want to stay up to date.”

In a December 10, 2025 email to Carroll I wrote, “Is there a reason why you’re no longer responding to my press questions? Did Mayor Cognetti instruct you to ignore my questions?”

Carroll did not respond.

I asked PR man Hughes in a January 23, 2026 email if Cognetti had instructed him not to respond to my questions, a copy of which I sent to Cognetti.  Neither Hughes nor Cognetti responded.

In a brief cell phone call congressional campaign manager Anna Korman said she answered my call at an untimely time to talk but at least provided her email. Korman, a George Washington University graduate, has worked in various political positions over the past five years, including the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Party of Georgia.

In a January 26, 2026 email to Korman I asked, “What does Paige think about the latest Minneapolis ICE killing?” In a January 27, 2026 email to Korman I asked, “Does Paige Cognetti support defunding ICE? If so why? If not, why not?”

Korman did not respond to those emails or to seven other emailed questions about Cognetti’s position on ICE and other matters. In one of my last emails to Korman I asked, “Has Mayor Paige Cognetti instructed her police chief Tom Carroll to cooperate with ICE requests for information from the police department? How does Cognetti plan to combat an ICE invasion of the city she represents while she is running for Congress?”

What do Cognetti and her minions fear?

What information are they hiding?

Why am I blackballed as a decades-long state and national award-winning journalist by the mayor of the city to which my paternal grandfather emigrated from Ireland to work underground for 45 years as a coal miner? My grandfather died from Black Lung disease after breathing toxic coal dust the way countless vulnerable immigrants still die a hundred years later from pesticides and other abuses at the hands of brutal corporate bosses and political connivers.

Harvard Business School graduate Paige Cognetti trades in an exclusive marketplace made up of elite politically-connected and privileged insiders. Jewish Insider reported, “Cognetti, who launched her bid last September, has since raised more than $1.1 million, garnering over $640,000 in donations last quarter, her campaign recently announced.”

Cognetti is a favored darling in a clannish, arrogant and vindictive Democratic Party that disrespects truth. Without truth trustworthiness ceases to exist. Without integrity born of honor, no political candidate is worth our votes.

Chameleon Paige Cognetti is not worth our votes.

Dumped carelessly on its side in an East Gibson Street snow bank, the child’s bike lay abandoned for days. Before it fell somebody at least leaned the blue Huffy Rock It kid’s bike against a tree. My first thought was that some Hill Section hooligan stole the bike and ditched it when an impromptu joyride ended.

Even as a 74-year-old I could relate to how the bicycle’s owner must have felt.

A thief stole my English bike when I was 10, riding away from the side street outside our rented corner house where I left my three-speed with the handlebar shifter on the sidewalk before parking it on the back porch for the night. When I went outside and realized the bike was missing, I raced up and down several streets desperately looking for my bike to no avail. Days later police found the bike undamaged in another town miles away, a happy ending from a bygone time when cops would spend time looking for a kid’s lost bike with a baseball card attached  with a clothespin to the back fork to hit the spokes and make a flapping sound like an imaginary motorcycle engine.

The bike in the snow pile looked to be in decent shape.

My plan was to take a picture on my phone and email the photo to Scranton Police Chief Tom Carroll. He could then dispatch an officer to pick up the bike and check to see if anybody reported a bike stolen. If so, we could reunite the bike with its owner and all live happily ever after.

But I was concerned the chief would ignore my inquiry as he has ignored several recent emails about whether the police department maintains a working relationship with ICE. Carroll used to respond to my emails until I started asking questions neither he nor congressional candidate and his boss Mayor Paige Cognetti want to answer.  In my last email I asked Carroll if Cognetti ordered him not to respond to my questions. The chief ignored that email too.

I also thought about calling 911 but wondered if an emergency call might be inappropriate in a city where serious crime including murder can increasingly erupt at any moment and require immediate attention.

But when I was taking a picture of the bike a woman spoke to me through the screen in her ground floor apartment window, telling me I could have the bike if I wanted it because her landlord put the bike out with the garbage. Sanitation workers had picked up the garbage the day before and left the bike.

Maybe the landlord thought a scrap metal hunter would take the bike. In this city too many hardworking people scour neighborhood streets for other people’s castoffs. They need furniture or money to pay heating, food, child care and other bills, especially in a cold winter like the one we’re experiencing.

If the deserted bike worked, and I don’t know it did, why didn’t the landlord take the bicycle to a place that accepts bikes and even makes small repairs, fixing broken bikes for kids who need them? Why hadn’t some well-meaning city cop placed the bike into the trunk of a squad car and dropped it off at such a place?

While on patrol in 1957 my Pennsylvania State Police trooper father once encountered several small children crying because their family goat had died. Within days Shamus had a new goat sitting beside him in the patrol car as he drove in uniform to the farm to drop off the animal. Now laughing children named the goat Corby, Not only did these Black boys and girls have a new goat but a stellar impression of white police as well.

I might have picked up the bike if I weren’t hobbling around waiting for a new hip. Maybe guilt provoked me to write this column in the first place. So why didn’t somebody else do a good deed and help turn what many people consider junk into a gift?

Ask the apartment building landlord.

Ask Chief Carroll.

Ask Mayor Cognetti.

Ask Scranton’s beautiful people Gen XYZers who pose taking selfies before altars of The Office themed murals that now define and defy the honorable hardscrabble history of our city.

Ask yourself if the New Year’s idiom “out with the old, in with the new” guarantees good cheer.

Because as Father Time marches on, one lone blue bicycle still lays forgotten against a tree in a dirty snow bank, twisted like the bright memory of a once new little bike that sparkled.

Bathed in orange sunshine and perched on a wooden boat dock railing overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway in Clearwater Beach, Florida, the seagull smoothed her feathers, cocked her head and stared at me.

“I know, Margot,” I said. “I know.”

My editor and manager Stephanie to whom I am married grinned at me from across the patio table.

“Yes, yes,” I said. “You planting the seed in my head sprouted a fruitful wild orchard of overgrown madness.”

As Harry Nillsson sang, “She put de lime in de coconut.”

I drank ’em bot’ up.

About 2 1/2 years after wrapping up a whirlwind 50-chapter novel called Swan Dive! published as a free serialization on my website, the time had come to again plunge deep into Gulf Coast culture and soar. My publisher Lee Sebastiani at Avventura Press, Stephanie and I decided to take this freaky subtropical tale of intrigue to new heights with a major rewrite, update and publication as a polished new paperback available everywhere books are sold.

Margot, who plays an important part in the adventure, showed up to greet me the week before Christmas at Frenchy’s Oasis Motel where Stephanie and I hide out whenever we can and eat grouper and the famous fish spread at Frenchy’s Saltwater Café right across the street. Stephanie, Margot, a diverse cast of characters and an increasingly mean society helped make up my mind to rise again.

The plot took shape as I drank Nicaraguan rum and fresh sweet orange juice on the patio outside our retro efficiency and started taking notes in a used reporter’s notebook. Like the misfit I am and proud to be, I welcomed my role as an outlaw wordslinger ready, willing and able to create original stories tattooed with my indelible personal brand.

Turning 75 this year I take everything personally and am sick of listening to well-meaning people ask if I’m retired. Not everyone can or wants to be a cultural desperado. But the best of us are outlaws, one-percenters who let our freak flags fly. People like us know even good people drown in the mainstream. Instead we soar, gliding high above routine the way my characters do in Swan Dive! No matter your age, my novels offer the wings that propel you airborne. If you need to kiss the sky, I invite you to lift off with us and ascend on a head trip designed to help free your mind.

Set in Clearwater Beach Swan Dive! tells the tale of old-timer Sam Bennett, a grizzled and lovable eccentric who writes poetry, lives alone in a seedy room, drinks martinis ‘til his face starts to bleed and wants to fly like the seagulls he loves more than people. Will he or won’t he fly? Can he possibly embrace his dreams?

Meanwhile back-to-back killer hurricanes hammer the Tampa Bay area while RayRay’s Elbow Room beach bar owner RayRay Gagliardi wields a mean hockey stick in a brawl. Russian mobster real estate developers poison the environment. ICE freezes humanity. A Black Afghanistan combat vet hunts a white ex-cop from Philly for familial revenge. And smooth-talking twin AI chatbots try to destroy the world one best friend at a time. Swan Dive! alerts society to potential deadly consequences that might define America’s future.

We’re tentatively planning an autumn launch in Clearwater Beach and a funky barnstorming book tour to Key West and back, a route Margot herself has traveled on vacation with her eye-patch-wearing pirate parrot boyfriend Dillon. But that’s another flighty yarn that packs birds-of-a-feather into the pages of Swan Dive!

So prepare for take-off.

Get ready to fly!

Inflated with cold December air a white plastic bag from the ice cream store blew across the barren asphalt parking lot like a lone holiday balloon adrift in a ghostly parade.

Inside the Asian Taste restaurant aromatic smells of sizzling Chinese food filled the room. Sitting alone at a table for two, an Asian man licked both chop sticks at the same time and placed containers from his take-out order into a brown bag to toss in the garbage can.

“Very good,” he told the woman owner who was raised near Hong Kong, one of three people including her husband who run the business.

“Thank you,” she said between cooking and taking orders on the phone and in person.

A caramel-colored couple sat tucked into a corner table, the woman wearing a black skull cap tight over her ears, the man neat in a track suit and red sneakers, sharing a plate of steaming dumplings. Talking quietly between bites they listened to each other as they speared plump pieces of white dough with plastic forks.

Then there’s me, Mr. Tofu, the name the woman behind the counter says she will always remember because she knows my consistent spicy bean curd order by heart even before I get there on Friday night. Tonight, though, I arrive unannounced a day early because I just got back from Clearwater Beach, Florida.

For the past week I drank cold fresh orange juice and rum in my bathing suit by the Frenchy’s Oasis Motel swimming pool or on the patio outside our room overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway brimming with glistening lights, luxury boats, hungry pelicans and a sleek blue-gray dolphin Stephanie and I named Harrietta. I got a sun tan, ate grilled grouper burgers every day and told my outlaw tales at Frenchy’s Saltwater Café with RayRay, Canadian Mike, KK and Chris, old friends we’ve known there for decades.

Now I’m home in Scranton sharing dinner with strangers at nightfall on Christmas Day.

A woman who sat in her car for the past 20 minutes walked into the restaurant to pick up the order she called in. Ten minutes later an Indian man walked in. The woman in charge seemed to know his order, too.

At the table closest to the window a mother with chestnut hair pulled back and unlaced sneakers, a father in a hooded camouflage sweatshirt and a child with bushy blond hair ate from white take-out containers. The baby looked like his mother. Sitting on daddy’s lap wearing no shoes or socks, his little feet dangled no bigger than egg rolls. Wriggling tiny toes glistening red from the winter chill, he laughed as mommy and daddy talked with words that will help shape their future forever.

Did Santa Claus leave gifts for this baby this morning? Where will this young family stay tonight? Where will they stay tomorrow? I had no reason to believe they’re homeless but also had no reason to believe they’re not sleeping in their car. Unlike the woman behind the counter who will always know Mr. Tofu’s order, I’ll never know if this mother, father and child ever find “room at the inn” in a rich society usually too busy for people like them.

What I did know as I left the Chinese restaurant carrying take-out was that a bright sliver of moon hung low in the darkening sky, a thin waxing crescent looming above our earthly hope that wise people on our planet will truly labor to provide a healthy and happy new year for us all.

Our lost immigrant child will spend the holiday with her father in a dangerous land she never really knew. Yet, the impact of her angelic sprit lives in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, among friends who love her in the town she called home for most of her life.

Now living in Honduras with her father Concepción, who goes by Carlos, 11-year-old Allison struggles to fend off homesickness after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents teamed up with Dunmore police to seize her at her elementary school on October 29.

An ICE spokesman in Philadelphia ignored my request for information to track the U.S. government deportation itinerary for her and her father. Dunmore Police Chief Sal Marchese said he didn’t want to talk about his officers wasting local resources by doing ICE work and ended our phone call. Mayor Max Conway and Councilman William Trip O’Malley dismissed my repeated requests for help stressing Allison’s plight. Dunmore resident and State Sen. Marty Flynn also ignored my written questions about the ICE raid that trapped Allison and her father.

While these privileged Dunmore fathers and descendants of immigrants prepare to celebrate the comforts of a lavish small-town Christmas with their families, a little girl who lived in a rented Dunmore house for most of her life aches for a “room” in a concrete block structure in one of the most violent parts of a corrupt, crime-ridden Latin American nation.

Carlos sent a Dunmore friend a photo of the small living space he’s building out of cinderblocks. The friend said she communicates with Carlos almost daily via text message.

“I want him to know he is not forgotten,” she said.

She has also spoken with Allison.

“She was crying,” the friend said.

“They are staying with relatives until their place is ready. For now she has some young cousins who have befriended her,” the friend said. “Allison is still trying to adjust to life in Honduras but has no choice but to adapt. She begins school in February. She cannot read in Spanish because she started school here in kindergarten and reads English only. Dad wants to make sure she learns but remains fluent in English.”

Teachers at Allison’s old school are pooling money to send for Christmas, said the friend who first met Allison while walking her dog.

“She started coming over to the house to pet my dog,” she said.

As Halloween approached Allison grew excited, the friend said. She told Allison she could pick out a costume online and wear it to trick or treat at her house. Allison chose to dress like Little Red Riding Hood. Perhaps it’s melodramatic to say, but this blameless child had no idea how ferocious the big bad wolf at the door would be. Little did Allison know that civic “leaders” like Conway, O’Malley, Marchese and Flynn, men who wield the power to pressure the government, would abandon her.  Allison never showed up on Halloween to pick up her costume the friend later donated to the Dunmore student theater.

The grim Dunmore ICE operation was no fairy tale.

Nor is the hellhole where U.S. government officials banished Allison and her father.

News reports about the area where Allison and her father live paint a grisly picture, particularly for women and girls who face MS-13 and 18th Street gang members who control the region, drug trafficking shoot-outs, countless guns and massive political corruption.

According to a 2019 New York Times story, a woman from the town where Allison now lives was “gang-raped not once but twice in her 38 years. When she was 13, someone drugged her drink at a wedding and she was discovered a dozen hours later in a garbage dump, naked, unconscious, bound at the feet and hands, teeth marks and bruises all over her body. She became pregnant with her now 23-year-old daughter. She says the police never investigated anyone at the wedding to determine who kidnapped her.” Another girl who was gang-raped and murdered was 14. Another young woman was skinned before she was killed.

According to the Women’s Refugee Commission, in 2023 Honduras had one of the highest femicide (killing women for being women) rates in the world—7.2 per 100,000 women. Rape is reported nearly every hour. For countless women and girls fleeing Honduras is not about seeking a better life. It is the only way to stay alive.

While campaigning in 2023 President Donald Trump promised to deport only dangerous criminals, including rapists and murderers. Instead the overwhelming majority of deportees have no criminal record. And Trump recently pardoned the former Honduran president who was serving a 45-year federal prison sentence on cocaine trafficking charges. He is now free.

Neither Carlos nor Allison committed a crime in the United States. Living here as undocumented immigrants is a civil violation of law, not a criminal offense. This hard-working father who once diligently pursued the American Dream and his innocent daughter are now prisoners in a deadly country she only knew for the first few years of her life.

A life sentence in Honduras is often a very short stay.

Dunmore felt much more like home, especially at Christmas.

When the White House approved my press credential request many of you expected me to personally cover President Donald Trump’s recent Northeastern Pennsylvania appearance at the Mt. Airy Casino Resort.

Sorry to disappoint you.

I never intended to subject myself to such a tawdry spectacle. I can get into a neo-nutsy Klan meeting without press credentials. Mt. Airy casino with its sordid Denapled criminal history is bad enough. But the sleazy Pocono-no-no gambling den featuring Trump as the jackpot is worse.

Then why apply for press credentials?

Principle, that’s why.

A Trump public appearance isn’t some black-tie RSVP event at Mar-a-Lago exclusively roped off for establishment members of the press. Upholding my personal outlaw journalism ethics requires sometimes violating societal and cultural norms and breaking status quo rules on my own terms. Government hacks deciding who does and does not get to cover a presidential event reeks of censorship and authoritarian control. Every legitimate working journalist who applies should get approved. Judging from my decades-long resume, like me or not, I’m as experienced and authentic as the news business gets.

Unfortunately few one-percenter outlaw journalists remain in America. Even when local and national reporters and columnists get press credentials these mostly ass-kissing clerks of fact write political stories the way toady stenographers take down lunch orders from elite bosses. Even the so-called alternative press fears the power structure and timidly backs off instead of forging ahead like they own the joint.

Outlaws own the joint.

I own the joint.

I earned and deserved that press credential. I cover whom I choose when I choose and where I choose with or without permission. My press pass is like the dark Buddha tattoo I wear on my left shoulder. My First Amendment guaranteed free speech is indelible. I yell “fire” in a crowded theater when I see a fire.

Trump and every other living former president can shove it up their Oval Office. Nobody’s cultish White House staff or snooty presidential campaign advisors should be able to hold press freedom over any journalist’s head the way then Vice President Kamala Harris’s handlers once kept me out of one of her NEPA appearances because they limited press coverage to members of the national traveling pool. Trump’s Pentagon now threatens New York Times reporters with a loyalty oath or risk having press credentials revoked or not approved. In response Times management is currently suing the highest reaches of government.

I don’t have anywhere near the Times’ power.

But I sure can hold a grudge.

Outlaw journalists don’t forgive or forget. When Trump first ran for president 10 years ago he blew me off when I approached him with a face-to-face question after a breakfast appearance in a New Hampshire hotel.

I shot from the lip.

“The room wasn’t secure,” I told Trump. “Nobody was wanded. Nobody was searched. Nobody was patted down.”

Trump glared at me.

“Who are you with?” he snapped. “Who are you with?”

I named the radio station where I worked and glared back.

As he lumbered red-faced and fuming for the door I went after him.

“How do you expect to secure the border when you couldn’t even secure the breakfast nook?” I shouted at Trump as he disappeared into a big black SUV. “How do you secure the border when you can’t secure the scrambled eggs?”

I captured the exchange on my phone’s video. But what if my Droid had been a Glock or a cheap Wednesday morning special?  How would America have handled another of our terrible land-of-the-free scenes of carnage from which grief and chaos come alive when gunfire explodes and people die?

Years later Trump got nicked by a bullet that killed a man and wounded two others in Butler, Pennsylvania. Had Trump, the Secret Service and a former Times Leader editor who berated me for writing how easy it would have been to attack Trump listened to me, the Butler assassination attempt might have never occurred.

This week, instead of Trump snubbing me, I snubbed him. I’m not obsessed with getting even, but we all should stand on principle. Other dedicated members of the press should follow my lead. Call out Trump on Air Force One when he spits his ruthless brand of raw sexism. Be aggressive, rude and persistent.

Be an outlaw.

Ride the edge.

If crime never sleeps why didn’t anybody answer the telephone at Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce’s office when I called 570-825-1674 at 1:13 p.m. and 1:14 p.m. on Friday? I let the phone ring and ring and ring until the ringing automatically turned into a busy signal.

Who knows what mayhem might have been breaking out all over? Maybe county crime busters were out looking for vulnerable undocumented immigrants. Or maybe the DA and his crew were just asleep at the switch.

So I called 570-825-1675, the second number listed for the DA’s office on his page on the official Luzerne County website. A recorded voice told me “The number you have dialed is not valid. Please check the number and try again.”

Again the line went to a busy signal. When I called twice more I received the same recording. At 1:25 p.m. I called the original number and finally reached a human.

I identified myself. I asked for Sam. “Hold, please,” she said.

As I waited a recorded voice informed me “We appreciate your business,” like I was calling a beer distributorship in South Wilkes-Barre instead of trying to reach the chief public service law enforcement officer of Luzerne County.

When the DA’s office telephone answerer came back on the line she said the DA’s personal secretary was not answering her telephone.

“Maybe she’s at lunch,” she said offering to take a message.

I explained I merely wanted to confirm Sam did or did not receive the three emails I sent him during the past two weeks asking if his staff has yet received federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) training. Sam is the first DA in Pennsylvania to sign onto the 287(g) program that authorizes DA’s office detectives to cooperate with ICE and apprehend immigrants. Detectives must receive ICE training before depleting county resources to help ICE, a federal government agency that receives more public money than any law enforcement agency in the United States.

Why trumpet the big blowhard announcement Sanguedolce made back in June to accept Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s invitation to skate with her in the racist ICE Capades unless he expected to quickly get training for his enforcers?

Talk about thin ICE.

An ICE spokesman in Philadelphia also did not respond to questions about whether Luzerne County’s wannabe J. Edgar Hoover got the required training for his Junior G-Men.

Of course our intrepid district attorney never got back to me.

Sam’s resume on the county website says, “In this year’s Primary Election, Sam won both the Republican and Democrat nomination for another term as District Attorney, and was elected to serve another fouryear term in November of 2023.”

Even Luzerne County, the land that time forgot, is wrapping up 2025, Sam.

And “fouryear” should not be one word.

I wonder what Sam Sanguedolce’s immigrant ancestors, whose Italian surname translates into the term “sweet blood,” would think about his sour bloodthirsty willingness to help terrify tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free? Don’t expect this aloof right-wing Republican political opportunist to lift the lamp beside the golden door.

Sanguedolce’s shoddy professionalism should show the ICE goon squad they chose the wrong border posse with which to ride the range. ICE has more than its own share of brainpower problems without partnering with the gang that couldn’t spell, respond to simple questions or think straight.