Obama bro frets over detained migrant child — then an Angel Dad answers

BS BULLETIN

Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau lamented the detention of a 5-year-old boy, writing that as a father he “literally cannot imagine” the family’s experience.
Angel Dad Joe Abraham responded with the story of his daughter Katie, killed by an illegal immigrant drunk driver.
Abraham’s gut-punch: “I know exactly what it feels like when your daughter goes off to a university to visit friends and NEVER comes home.”

Former Obama speechwriter and “Pod Save America” host Jon Favreau saw the story of a 5-year-old boy detained with his father by immigration authorities in Texas and reacted as a dad. Then another dad answered him. And the contrast is brutal.

The boy, identified in reporting as Liam Tadeo, was detained with his father following an immigration enforcement encounter in Austin and transferred to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley. His family says he had been preparing to start kindergarten and was instead spending the week in detention.

Favreau reposted video of the child Thursday and wrote: “My son is about to start kindergarten and I literally cannot imagine what this family is going through.”

That prompted a response from Joe Abraham. Abraham knows something about worrying about your child. His daughter, 20-year-old Katie Abraham, and her friend Chloe Polzin were killed in January 2025 when authorities say an illegal immigrant driving drunk crashed into them in Illinois and fled. The driver, Guatemalan national Julio Cucul-Bol, later pleaded guilty to charges including aggravated DUI resulting in death and leaving the scene of a fatal crash. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Abraham responded directly to Favreau: “I know exactly what it feels like when your daughter goes off to a university to visit friends and NEVER comes home.”

He added that Katie was killed by an illegal immigrant whom he says was “incentivized and protected by policies that failed her at every stop.”

Abraham has spent the period since his daughter’s death pushing for tougher immigration enforcement. This week, he took over as executive director of ICE’s Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office — known as VOICE — which assists people affected by crimes committed by removable immigrants.

The child was reportedly traveling with his father to a soccer game when immigration agents detained them. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, has demanded their release and described the Dilley facility as a “trailer prison.” Available reporting says some circumstances surrounding the father’s immigration status and the enforcement encounter remain unclear, and ICE had not publicly supplied a full account when the story first broke.

But Abraham’s response raises a larger question that immigration debates routinely manage to avoid. There are human beings on both sides of immigration policy. The media tells the stories of children frightened by immigration enforcement and families separated through detention or deportation.

But Americans like Abraham ask why the families of citizens killed by people who entered or remained in the country illegally don’t always receive the same sustained sympathy.

Katie Abraham isn’t a statistic to her father. She’s the daughter who never came home. And unlike Liam’s missed first week of kindergarten, there is no government policy that can give Joe Abraham another first day with Katie.

MY QUICK TAKE

Jon Favreau is a father. His reaction to seeing a frightened 5-year-old is understandable. Joe Abraham is a father too. That’s precisely the point. Our immigration debate has developed a peculiar compassion meter where we’re constantly instructed to imagine the terror experienced by the person being deported — but considerably less often asked to imagine the phone call telling an American parent that his daughter is dead.

Joe Abraham’s response lands because his loss isn’t hypothetical. Favreau wrote that he “literally cannot imagine” what Liam’s family is experiencing. Joe doesn’t have to imagine. He buried Katie.

And there is one difference so enormous that it overwhelms everything else: Liam’s parents can still hug their little boy. Joe Abraham would give anything on Earth for one more chance to hug his daughter.

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