James Talarico wants you angry. He needs you furious, actually, because that anger is currency in a Texas Senate race where every emotional beat counts. So when a five-year-old boy named Liam Tadeo was deported alongside his father this week, Talarico reached for the most inflammatory word in his vocabulary. Kidnapped. ICE kidnapped this child, he declared, throwing the boy into a prison camp instead of a kindergarten classroom.
Except that’s not what happened. Not even close.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin set the record straight Thursday, and his response matters because it cuts through the theatrical outrage that’s become standard operating procedure for Democrats facing tough elections. The father, Victor Martinez Nieto, was in the country illegally. He was detained with his son while heading to a soccer match in Austin. And when deportation proceedings moved forward, Martinez Nieto made a choice. He could return to his home country with Liam, or he could designate another safe person to care for his son while he was removed alone.
He chose to keep his family together. ICE didn’t separate them. The father decided.
You know what’s missing from Talarico’s version? That part. The part where a parent exercises agency and makes a decision about his own child. The part where federal authorities actually respect family unity instead of tearing it apart. Those details don’t fit the narrative, so they get memory-holed in favor of words like kidnapped and prison camp.
This matters beyond one case in Texas. We’ve spent years now watching immigration enforcement get painted as inherently cruel, as if enforcing laws that exist on the books is somehow proof of heartlessness. But laws without enforcement aren’t laws at all. They’re suggestions, and suggestions don’t protect sovereignty or maintain order. When someone enters this country illegally, there are consequences. That’s not cruelty. That’s citizenship meaning something.
Mullin’s point about parental responsibility lands hard because it’s true. When any parent breaks the law and gets arrested, their children face disruption. We don’t stop prosecuting crimes because criminals have kids. We figure out how to protect those children while still holding adults accountable for their choices. Martinez Nieto made choices that led to this outcome, and while that’s undoubtedly difficult for his family, it doesn’t transform law enforcement into kidnapping.
The timing here isn’t accidental either. Talarico is running against an incumbent in a state where border security plays differently than it does in Brooklyn or San Francisco. Texas voters live with the consequences of broken immigration policy every single day. They watch their communities absorb costs and chaos that Washington types never experience firsthand. So when a Democratic candidate tries to weaponize a deportation case by stripping away context and adding incendiary language, it’s not just misleading. It’s insulting.
There’s something deeply cynical about using a child’s face to score political points while deliberately obscuring facts that would complicate your attack line. Liam Tadeo is five years old. He didn’t choose any of this. But neither did the American taxpayers who fund an immigration system that’s supposed to mean something, or the legal immigrants who waited years and followed every rule to get here the right way.
Talarico won’t tell you the full story because the full story doesn’t serve him. But voters deserve better than half-truths wrapped in outrage. They deserve leaders who can distinguish between enforcing laws and committing atrocities. Right now, they’re getting neither.
Related: Jim Jordan Has Had Enough of the Virginia Prosecutor Who Considers Deportation Before Justice