Cagle World

I’ve been writing about immigration for over two decades. I’ve been practicing immigration law for over three decades.

You could say I’m an expert.

For much of my professional life, I’ve tried to straddle the often invisible line between advocating for immigrant rights, and supporting government efforts to keep this country safe. I work with the government, when necessary, because it’s better to avoid the adversarial process and reach a good result for both the client and the country.

And never before, not even during the first Trump administration, a man for whom I voted twice, did I think that due process was in danger.

I can’t say that anymore.

The straw that broke the camel’s back happened when ICE removed, because they don’t say “deported” anymore, a man who had been granted protection by a Trump-era judge.

In 2019, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was arrested by ICE under suspicion of being a gang member. No evidence was presented in court about his alleged gang ties, nothing more than suggestions from confidential informants.

I say this, even though his alleged “gang ties” are irrelevant. The immigration judge, under Trump’s DOJ, found that Abrego would very likely be persecuted, tortured and even killed if he were forced to go back to his native country, El Salvador.

Let’s pause for a moment, while I give you some inside baseball.

The protection that Abrego Garcia was given is called “withholding of removal.” This is similar to asylum, but has a higher standard of proof.

For asylum, you need to prove to an immigration judge that you have a 10% chance of being persecuted if you are forced toreturn to your home country.

The standard is called “well founded fear” of persecution.

For withholding, you have a higher bar to satisfy. You need to show that it is “more likely than not” that you will be in danger if you are returned.

In other words, you need to show at least a 51% chance that you will be harmed.

I’ve had both sorts of cases, and I can promise you that withholding cases are much more difficult because of the evidentiary burden that my clients carry.

I’ve won those cases, but it’s really quite a fight. When you satisfy that burden, a judge is then statutorily required to bar your“deportation” to your home country.

That means that even if you are not a nice person, a gang member let’s say, you are still entitled to protection from removal.

When ICE arrested Abrego Garcia last month, they knew that he had an order of withholding.

They knew, by their own admission, that he was protected by law from being sent back to El Salvador.

They knew that this would be a violation of both domestic immigration law, and international human rights law.

And they put him on a plane and sent him to El Salvador, to one of the most dangerous and notorious prisons in the Western Hemisphere.

When the media got word of the story and it was publicized, the response from the government was, essentially, “oops.” And then it became, “and we can’t get him back because he’s El Salvador’s problem now.”

And then it became “and he was a gang member, trust us.”

Assuming that he was a gang member, even though there is no conclusive proof of that and even though an immigration judge would have mentioned that in his decision, the “oops” reaction is absolutely and fundamentally repellent.

That is because our government is essentially saying that it does not matter that they ignored a mandatory protection granted under the first Trump administration.

It is saying that it did not need to go to court to have the order of withholding lifted by legal process. It is saying that my clients are in the same, tenuous situation.

It is saying that the government can unilaterally undo the decision of a judge, without any appellate review.

That is not the sort of country I want to live in.

A friend on social media said that she hoped the government would deport as many people who were a danger to our country as possible.

I told her that I wanted that, too, as long as they followed the law.

Due process is as important as national security.

As Ben Franklin, the greatest Philadelphian of all time wrote “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a littletemporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Conservatives always respected the rule of law. This one still does.

–

Copyright 2025 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

This might appear to be a frivolous observation, given other issues that have hit the headlines over the past few days, but I have a big problem with the secretary of Homeland Security’s wardrobe.

Normally, I don’t pay all that much attention the sartorial style of women in the public eye, especially since I developed my fashion sense in the mid-1970s when polyester, paisley and smocking were respectable.

However, when it comes to the women who head agencies that I deal with on a regular basis, I demand a bit of decorum. They don’t have to look like Amish maidens right before they get unleashed for Rumspringa, but cleavage, Botox and hair extensions really don’t scream “I am a competent public servant.”

Which brings me to my problem with Kristi Noem.

I admit I was predisposed to strongly dislike the former governor of South Dakota when I found out that she murdered her puppy.

You might think that “murder” is too strong a phrase, and you might tell me since I never grew up on a farm or a ranch, I don’t understand how some communities treat animals. I am also fully aware there are several Americas, and that in some of them, hunting is a sacrament. I am quite happy not to live in any of those communities, because I am incapable of even squashing a spider without feeling as if I need to confess.

“Bless me father for I have sinned, I just killed Charlotte.”

But I respect the fact that not everyone is like me.

However, if we move beyond the puppycide, there is a lot more to dislike about Kristi than her lack of humanity. It is, perhaps, her actual lack of humanity.

I say that after having viewed a video that was made, clearly for PR purposes, with Noem standing in front of a notorious jail in El Salvador that houses hardened gang members.

It is also the new home to a bunch of people that President Donald Trump just managed to deport, with the cooperation of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.

I am not a fan of gang members. I hate tattoos, I hate evil men who prey on innocents, I hate the drug trafficking and the human trafficking and the horrific things that most gang members do to their women.

I often handle the asylum cases of men and women who are the victims of gangs, so to see them rot in jail is actually quite a lovely site.

However, when there is a suggestion that not everyone in that jail is a gang member, and some of them were not afforded due process of law, I am not as gleeful at the sight of the new Secretary of Homeland Security pretending to be all tough infront of the iron bars and saying things like “this is what happens when you break our laws” or variations thereof.

That sort of photo op is really off-putting, for a variety of reasons.

One, we don’t know that everyone in that jail should be in that jail.

Two, we don’t need the optics of an American official standing in front of men who have been clearly rounded up for the PR to tell us that she’s doing something to keep us safe.

Maybe, Kristi, just do your actual job in a sober and respectful way, and leave the TikTok clips for the kids.

And speaking of respect, try clothes that are your actual size, and not several sizes too small that accentuate things other than your resume.

Try not to look like Rapunzel with your hair extensions.

There is a limit beyond which Botox approaches the Joker level.

Be better, be respectful of the office. Don’t turn the DHS into a reality show.

I know that this will anger a lot of supporters of Trump and his cabinet choices. I am opening myself up to attacks on my own physical appearance as well, although I’ve been dealing with that ever since I entered the semi-public eye.

My mom used to tell me after she’d see me on TV to “get your hair out of your face” and ignored all of my pithy political observations.

It’s okay, I’m a big girl. I’m guessing Kristi is, too.

And it’s my hope that she starts realizing she’s got an actual job to do, one that is impacting millions of lives both “legal” and “illegal” and to maybe buy a nice double-breasted suit and some sensible shoes to do it in.

–

Copyright 2025 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

As I was watching another “Dateline” episode about a husband killing his wife and feeling happy to be a single immigration lawyer, Donald Trump issued a hit on me. ‘

Last week, in a late Friday night dump, the White House issued a memo directing the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to go after my colleagues in the immigration bar.

Entitled “Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and of Federal Court,” it is couched as an attempt to curtail significant fraud in the asylum field. But it’s absolutely no surprise why this memo – likely authored by Stephen Miller, the notorious author of the child separation policy – targets asylum and refugee law. That’s because this field is almost uniquely covered by international treaty and prohibits in most cases the “refoulement” or return of individuals who fear persecution in their home countries. And that makes it less susceptible to executive order than other areas of immigration law. President

Trump likes to exercise unitary authority over many things, including and especially immigration. With asylum, he can’t do that. And Stephen Miller knows it.

So do immigration lawyers. And that’s why we’re dangerous these days. We may appear to be gumming up the works for Trump’s efforts to deport criminals and terrorists, but most of us are simply following the laws and increasingly complicated regulations to provide our clients with the best legal counsel possible.

If that means, as I recently did, spending five hours in a windowless courtroom trying to get a judge to agree that being buried in a vertical grave and exposed to equatorial heat for eight hours by your captors is torture, I’ll do it. If that means trying to convince a judge that gay men in Pakistan are being killed because they’re gay, I’ll do it (I’ve done it.) If that means begging a judge to grant asylum to a woman whose Salvadoran grandfather repeatedly raped her while adult women in the family looked away, I’ll do it (I’ve done it).

The fact is, most asylum cases are legitimate. You will of course find applicants who lie and people who are economic refugees. The former are easily detected, given the stringent corroboration requirements of the Real ID Act, while the latter are not eligible for relief.

Yes, there are bad lawyers. There are, in fact, very bad lawyers who make up stories for their clients who, for the most part, are completely oblivious to the chicanery. The true victims of these cheaters and frauds are the immigrants themselves who usually end up getting deported or caught up, against their will or intention, in removal proceedings.

And yes, there are some bad people who should not be granted relief. But they are an infinitesimally small number of applicants, while the vast majority are either worthy of asylum or, in many cases, denied because they come before incredulous judges. I have appeared before judges who deny 95% of the cases brought before them. That means there are people with legitimate claims who are being denied their right to refuge.

Just one example of the random injustice of the system. Twenty years ago, I had the case of two siblings, a brother and sister from Kenya. They were politically active and had been persecuted by the government. Their cases, almost identical except for the gender element, were heard before two different judges in Philadelphia. The woman was granted asylum. The man was denied.

We filed an appeal, and while it was pending the brother got tired and went home, essentially self-deporting. A week later, he was murdered by the government agents he said were threatening him. I will never forget what he told me before he left: “I’m tired of trying to convince them I’m telling the truth.” I’m haunted by that.

So the idea President Trump is pointing a finger at me and my colleagues as being inherently fraudulent makes my blood boil, particularly since the immigration bar is one of the most active in trying to keep the bad practitioners from preying on the innocent. We are the ones fighting against the fake lawyers, the lying lawyers and the notarios. We don’t need people like Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi and Donald Trump singling us out for punishment.

Shakespeare was being facetious when he wrote the iconic line, “Let’s kill all the lawyers.” It’s sad that the White House is taking him literally.

–

Copyright 2025 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I had a slight fever, some chills, nausea, and a killer sore throat.

I downed some chicken soup, heated up my water bottle, and took a long nap. While I’m still under the weather, and look like “death warmed over” — one of my mother’s favorite phrases along with “go play in traffic” when she was annoyed with her kids — I’m not afraid of dying. I didn’t even reach for my Vick’s Vapo Rub.

It’s a cold, a garden variety medicate-with-gelato cold.

The irony is that five years ago this week, had I experienced the same symptoms, they would have rushed me to the quarantine unit.

In March 2020, we were just beginning our long national and international nightmare, something that none of us could have imagined outside of a science fiction film.

People dying around us, dozens and then hundreds and then thousands, because of a virus that no one understood and whose origins are to this day uncertain.

Family members forced to take their last breaths in isolation while grieving spouses, children and parents were trapped behind windows. My own boss was forced to watch his father’s funeral streamed on social media.

Churchgoers blocked from attending services, with the threat of arrest. The Orwellian tweaks to our language, with innocuous phrases like “social distancing” and “masking” taking on sinister connotations.

That this was only five years ago now seems impossible, as if it happened in another century. I wonder if people remember what it was like to wait in line outside the grocery store since only two or three customers were allowed inside at any given time.

I wonder if they recall the eerie silence of the streets, and the suspicious-bordering-on-hostile looks that you’d get if you coughed in public.

I wonder if these people with faces I can see so clearly, have flashbacks about the mandatory masks, and the crazy folk who drove around in their cars with the windows up and their faces veiled.

I wonder if they remember the desperation of those who had pre-existing conditions like diabetes, asthma and heart conditions, or those who were scheduled for cancer treatment and were forced to take a backseat to the men, women and children suffocating todeath in emergency wards.

I wonder if they were related to, or were themselves, health care professionals who spent the better part of their days saving lives, and then not being able to come home and hug the people they loved the most.

And then I think of the vaccines, and that small pinpoint of light that glimmered at the end of the black tunnel, as we realized there might be a way to survive this pandemic. That pinpoint of light became brighter as the efficacy of the vaccines became more and more apparent, and we began to believe that we’d found the silver bullet.

That, of course, causes me to immediately reflect on the politicization of the salvation process, where conspiracy theories started seeping in and people began to wonder if the government was trying to control us through the mandates.

I still think the idea that kids needed to get vaccines and boosters and that they were barred from school if they didn’t was a vestige of Stalinism. But overall, we were in the middle of a war, and sometimes you can’t worry about civil rights under those circumstances. The ACLU types can take a seat.

Sometimes, the niceties of due process have to be suspended when you’re fighting for your life, in much the same way that Lincoln suspended habeas during the Civil War.

So, in retrospect, I forgive the people who closed the churches and made me wait in long lines and forced me to wear those ridiculous masks, even though the experts said they were useless. They were trying to survive.

I don’t forgive the people who went all Amish, shunning their friends who refused to get the vaccine, because they thought that the only time a person had the right to control their bodies was if they wanted to kill their babies.

I forgive the people who disinvited me to social events because I refused to wear a designer mask while trying to sip my Chablis.

I don’t forgive the people who lied, on both sides.

And as I take my Sudafed and sip my tea, I thank God that I survived, when so many are now in His arms.

–

Copyright 2025 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I write this from my hotel room, a two-minute walk from the Colosseum.

My trip to Rome has been planned for months, and I looked forward to it with anticipation since well before Christmas.

But after the election, I knew that I’d need to prepare myself for foreigners who tend to ask questions like “why did you Americans vote for the candidate who hates Europe?”

I’d already experienced that reaction when I traveled during the first Trump administration.

I’d also suffered through the raised noses of Frenchmen when, in 1982, I lived in Paris during the Reagan administration.

The patronizing attitude of our Gallic cousins was exacerbated by the fact that their then president, Francois Mitterrand, was a communist-turned-socialist whose Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, had outlawed the use of English phrases like “le weekend” and “le hot dog.”

And two decades later, I had to deal with Europeans who hated George W. Bush and blamed him — not Muslim fundamentalists —for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Let’s face it.

Despite the fact that we’ve fought together in war, traded liberally with each other and commingled blood and culture through generations of immigration, there has always been a latent bit of hostility towards the USA from the conquerors and colonizers across the seas.

We are a brasher race, a less contemplative and impulsive sort of creature, often abandoning diplomacy for more aggressive tactics. We literally, and figuratively, do not speak the same language. Whether it’s disapproval or a vague sense of envy, Europe is usually just not that into US.

So I wasn’t expecting much support for Trump when I visited my ancestral land. But I was wrong.

At least anecdotally, based on my personal interactions with Italians, they are intrigued by this president who pulls no punches and speaks with an uncomfortable and uncompromising clarity that is rare on the international scene.

This is a man who breaks balls and paradigms. And there is, based on the people I spoke to, a grudging respect for that attitude.

It could be a vestige of the Mussolini years, because unlike the Germans who distanced themselves with a vengeance from Hitler, Italians have not entirely disavowed the history of Mussolini.

In fact, they elected his granddaughter Alessandra as a congressional deputy for numerous terms in office.

They also turned another millionaire businessman with sharp elbows and a penchant for nepotism and authoritarianism into their leader: Silvio Berlusconi.

And of all the European leaders who are currently licking their wounds about Trump’s rhetorical attacks, it is Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni who has — in the words of Janis Joplin — taken “another piece of [his] heart.”

So the irony is that Italians seem to like Trump better than the sort of American who goes to an official event, the president’s address to Congress, and heckle him.

Who refuses to stand and applaud the release of a Russian prisoner, Putin’s hostage.

Who looks the other way when a young boy suffering from brain cancer is given a huge honor, deputized as a law enforcement officer.

Who sits on their hands when a 13-year-old who was raped and murdered by noncitizens is honored by an executive order renaming a wildlife preserve after her.

Who keeps raising signs that say “lies” and “not true” during a speech as if they were participants in a macabre auction at Sotheby’s?

Who refuses to acknowledge any of the objectively good things the president had done since January?

Even reliable leftists were upset at the petty, whining, infantile attitude of far too many Democrats.

U.S. Rep Al Green waves his cane and screams incoherently like a senile street person, and they decry censorship when he’s escorted out of the building.

Any sane person would agree that a president who survived two attempts on his life should not be subjected to the maniacal ravings of an angry man. Emphasis on “sane.”

It’s fine to disagree with Trump. I do. I’m not on board with his immigration policies. I wish he’d curb the “Pocahontas” comments, and act like a big boy.

But disagreement with his policy and distaste for his style doesn’t mean I get to disrespect him, and in doing so disrespect other Americans he’s honored at a public event, especially not a little boy suffering from brain cancer.

The American left could take lessons from our neighbors across the ocean, especially Meloni, who knows when to accommodate the flaws in the name of a greater good.

–

Copyright 2025 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I was talking to a friend the other day about another friend, who has been going through a difficult period ever since Hamas massacred peaceful Jews in Gaza a year and a half ago.

Our common friend is a quiet woman, someone who keeps her sorrows to herself.

For that reason, I was pained to hear of the friend’s increasing depression and darkness. The person I was speaking to mentioned that she’d made it a point to call her Jewish friends every few days, just to let them know that they were in her thoughts.

That got to me. That simple but profound act of kindness.

I have written columns, spoken about Hamas’ evil acts on the radio, raised prayers in my church for the victims, and commented about the repellent moral relativism of those who seek to equate Israel’s defense initiatives with the barbarism of terrorists.

But really, none of this is truly enough.

My friend, this good woman who understands the power of one-on-one human contact, has engaged in a righteous mission to reach out to the people she has broken bread with, danced Zumba with, shared drinks with, attended services with, and even butted heads with over politics, to let them know they are not alone in this sterile world of politically correct double-speak.

There is only one set of victims in this scenario, and they are Jewish.

That was brought home with brutal clarity last week, when the bodies of two flame-haired little boys and their lioness mother were released by the monsters who had taken them hostage.

Kfir, 9 months into this world before he was ripped from it, and his brother Ariel, a 4-year-old with an angel’s name, were laid to rest beside their mother, Shiri, a woman whose last image is imprinted on my brain: clutching her children, using her arms and body as a human shield against the hell they would inevitably suffer.

The evil committed by Hamas in the name of the children of Gaza that makes it almost impossible for me to mourn the deaths of those who were caught up in the collateral damage of Israel’s defensive campaign.

At some point, peace cannot be the end game, if it is unconditional and rewards the brutal warriors.

The sight of healthy, triumphant Palestinians being handed over in exchange for emaciated Israelis with the eyes like the suffering in a Goya painting or the men and women captured in the concentration camp photos makes me nauseous.

I can only imagine the reaction it provokes in my Jewish friends. For that reason, I pledge to start emulating my friend. I will be calling those in my extended circle to see how they are.

Ironically, the moral equivalency I have seen regarding the Hamas tragedy has given me a bit more insight into the Black Lives Matter era of a few years ago.

At that time, I was among the people who clung to the catch phrase, “All Lives Matter” in response to those who insisted on putting black squares in their profile photos, or raised angry fists of defiance.

I still do believe that all lives matter, including those of unborn children, of police officers, of wrongfully accused men, etc.

But when I hear people talk about the children of Gaza without blinking an eye at the execution of two little redheaded boys, and when I see the equivalence being made between a government’s attempt to target only terrorist outposts and terrorists targeting only innocent human beings, I understand why some in the BLM movement were angered when we said “All Lives Matter.”

In this moment, I don’t have time for kumbaya.

The lives that matter, now, are the lives of my friends who are suffering and who might not have the desire or ability to express that openly.

I’m going to check in on them. Maybe you should, too.

–

Copyright 2025 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

If you listen to some right-wing pundits, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is running a smuggling ring across the southern border.

Far be it from me to defend La Cortez, but I find the misrepresentations from those who think there is a Constitution-free zone in this country to be annoying. It evinces ignorance at best, and at its worst, a desire to simply pretend that due process is discretionary. It’s not.

It’s the backbone of our legal system and if you decide that it’s OK to deprive immigrants of those established rights, it’s a shortstep to denying other groups.

Tom Homan, the new director of ICE director, recently called AOC one of the “dumbest congresswomen in DC” and slyly suggested that counseling immigrants on how to avoid arrest was illegal.

Homan knows this is a crock of frijoles and arroz. What AOC and other immigration advocates are doing is trying to explain what immigrants can demand, and what they cannot, under the current laws of this country.

Everyone who lives in the United States has the right to due process. The Supreme Court has made clear that your immigration status does not deprive you of those rights.

In Reno vs. Flores, in a majority opinion written by the great Antonin Scalia, the court held “it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.”

He does not write “legal aliens.”

Scalia was a very smart man, and knew the Constitution did not limit the gamut of legal protections to those who had “permission” to be in this country.

As the Fifth Amendment clearly provides, “no person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

It says “person.” It doesn’t say “person with a U.S. passport.”

So we can dispense with the idea that advising people how to exercise their rights is anything other than a tribute to the grandeur of the U.S. Constitution, the genius of the founders, and the integrity of a great Italian American jurist.

Scalia was as conservative as they come, but he wasn’t about to play games with that sacred document simply to score political points.

For that same reason, I’m not about to criticize AOC for insisting on telling immigrants they don’t have to let ICE agents into their homes without first presenting a signed warrant, they don’t have to say anything without first consulting with an attorney, and they don’t need to give up and stop fighting removal simply because some overpaid, blow-dried cable news host says they have to.

It’s disturbing to hear otherwise lovely people insist I don’t know anything about due process because Jesse Watters told them “illegals” don’t have any rights, and the guy who cheated on his wife but pretends to be a fountain of wisdom must be correct.

He is not. Many of the others who are mocking the often-mockable AOC are also wrong.

In this, she is being courageous and much more American than people who wrap themselves in the flag, but would do better spending some time immersed in the Bill of Rights.

Imagine how difficult it is for me to have to defend the woman who I once called “the Bartender” and underestimated when she was whining about her fears about Jan. 6, when she was over a mile from the action.

Imagine how difficult it is for me to find more in common with the gal who took nice PR shots at the border fence, in her adorable white suit, than with Republican politicos.

Imagine me, defending the lady who thinks “Latinx” is actually a thing, when pretty much every Latina I know is insulted by this Waspy colonization of language.

But guess what? She’s right. Even though she’s on the left. Even Scalia would agree.

–

Copyright 2025 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Pope Francis and I are not often on the same page about the world.

Since his elevation over a decade ago, I have been a very vocal critic of what I saw – and in many ways still do see – as his political and progressive view of Catholicism. For example, I am not the kind of Catholic who thinks that we should abolish the death penalty, because I do not believe that people who rape women, murder children and terrorize the elderly have anything to contribute to society beyond their nicely-written obituaries.

And Francis doesn’t judge, as we all know from his notorious comments about gays and lesbians in the church. Some of his juiciest sound bites came while he was cruising at an altitude of 20,000 feet, close enough to touch the scandalized angels.

I judge. I am proud of judging. I am as judgey as they come. But I am also not the leader of several million Catholics worldwide, so I don’t have to worry too much about job security.

In other words, if I were to describe our relationship in my social media profile, I’d have to write “It’s Complicated.”

One thing, though, on which we both agree is the inviolable dignity of the human being, whether in utero or fleeing persecution. As an aside, we will be excluding from this discussion of human dignity the aforementioned rapists, murderers and terrorists because they have, by their own actions, erased whatever value they carried into the world at the moment of conception.

But unborn children, innocent and filled with the fire of potential, deserve respect. Beyond that, they deserve our protection, and an understanding they are not the property of their unwilling hosts. In fact, that is what the pregnant woman is in the most sacred of terms – the host of the most precious entity, a nascent human being.

Many women don’t like to see themselves that way, pretending that it reduces them to incubators. But the Pope, and I, see it differently. We see pregnant women as the refuge, the protectors, the life-giving receptacles for the future.

The Pope and I agree on something else, as well. We both recoil at the language and hostility of those who view immigrants as interlopers, criminals, and sinners. I will not use the term “illegal” here, to distinguish the so-called “good” people from the “bad.” I will not separate the human wheat from the inhuman chaff. People are people, and the fact that they may have been born across a border from you does not make them any less human. That is particularly so when they are born into blight, war, and poverty, and you have been privileged to see the light of day in a land of affluence.

These are not the words of a socialist. I am as conservative as they come, because I cling to the principles upon which our country was founded: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and a recognition that slavery is evil.

The Pope and I both understand that laws exist for a reason. I think I might even understand that better than he does, since I am a lawyer. But laws need to be based in reality, not in the fantasy created by our biases and desires. We need to establish legitimate processes by which people who were born on the wrong side of the wall between light and darkness have a way to pass over that wall, into the light.

I am not saying that we have to make it easy. Laws exist to stop people from committing crimes, and even a hungry, desperate man cannot be excused for committing crimes. But crossing over borders without permission in an attempt to flee from the man who has held a gun to your head, raped your mother, killed your father and forced you to carry drugs is not a criminal act. It is a race towards freedom, and dignity.

The Pope and I disagree on so many things. But on the two things that define our conception of the world as it should be, a place where neither class, nor race, nor national origin, nor the opinion of the lady with the womb, determine our worth, we are one.

Every Catholic who professes our faith should be in that same circle with us.

–

Copyright 2025 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

When President Donald Trump signed an executive order preventing trans girls and women from competing in women’s sports, I wrote a post on Facebook which I thought was fairly simple and straightforward: “I will no longer use the phrase ‘biological woman.’ It’s redundant.”

Most of my friends agreed with me, as I suspected they would.

But one woman who I otherwise like and very much respect took me to task for what she considered to be the cruelty of my words.

I suppose I could have just let it rest, move on and realize that this was not an issue in which passionate people could be persuaded to the other side.

But there was something that angered me about the suggestion that holding this fundamental view, one informed by my morals and experience, was an attack on strangers.

What’s funny about the whole thing is I am not a crusading Joan of Arc on trans issues.

I learned my lesson with my opposition to same-sex marriage over a decade ago. My series of columns supporting Defense of Marriage Act and challenging the legality of same-sex unions was based more on what I saw as the manipulation of constitutional principle and less on any religious or moral opposition.

It seemed as if LGBT advocates were engaging in constitutional cosplay to advance a societal goal. It was very, very different from my hatred of abortion and my decades-long lobbying for the overturning of Roe.

Men marrying men didn’t really bother me at all. It was the parsing of equal protection principles that angered me, and arguments that would have gotten an F on any law school exam.

Abortion was much different.

It was, and is, a barbarism, an assault against the dignity of human beings. My opposition to calling men “women” is more aligned with my abortion stance. That is because I see the desire to make biology irrelevant exactly the same as … making biology irrelevant.

Refusing to accept that abortion is the deliberate destruction of an innocent human life is similar to the desire to accept trans women — who are biologically men — as my biological equals. They are not. They will never have the power to give life.

There are women who are barren, and those who choose not to have children, but the single most important identifying factor of womanhood is the potential to nurture life in the womb, and feed it from and with our bodies, in our arms.

That is a woman. It is not all women. But without that, there is no foundation for the idea that you are female.

To accept the idea that there is no functional distinction between the psychological and cosmetic affect of a trans woman and a biological woman is to accept that the unborn child is a clump of cells. I reject both premises.

Sadly, this is now considered cruelty. I would love to make a Venn Diagram — as a Catholic school lifer I loved them before Kamala — and isolate that common ground where accepting trans as biologically sound and rejecting unborn children as biologically sound are equally valid principles.

I think it’s probably quite large.

As for me, I’ll stand outside of the circle with my morals in one hand and my science in the other and call women and babies by their actual names.

–

Copyright 2025 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Coming to within one game, one fanatical cheer, one breath of the Super Bowl is normally a beautiful thing. Especially for a Philadelphian.

But after I learned of the tragic death of Tyler, the young Temple student who was fatally injured while celebrating the Eagles’ NFC Championship win, I went from euphoria at our victory to devastation at this senseless, immense loss.

It is of course a tragedy for his family, the inexplicable twist of fate that robbed parents of their child. But it is also a gut punch for the rest of us who shared in the crazy exhilaration of the moment, some of us in real time in the frantic atmosphere on Broad Street, and others from comfortable seats in front of the television.

How can we go from such joy to such sorrow in the infinitesimally small fraction of time that it took for a flag to detach from its pole, sending the young man hurtling to the ground? What horrible, ironic and cruel hand directed that shift in momentum and emotion?

And of course I know the proximate cause: the unbridled euphoria of youth.

When you are on the sun-splashed side of life with decades in the distance and infinite opportunity in your line of vision, casual risks are part of daily life. You don’t do the rash things like jump in front of speeding trains or play Russian roulette, unless you truly are suicidal.

But your conception of risk is distorted, inversely proportionate to your conception of invincibility. You do crazy things because you have faith in that youthful armor that will protect you from harm.

Until, with tragic frequency, it doesn’t anymore.

I once knew a young man who, at my teen age, went for a joy ride with friends.

I don’t know the exact circumstances, whether it was excessive speed or excessive alcohol or a combination of both, but the car in which he was a passenger crashed into a wall. He suffered permanent and debilitating brain damage.

I remember seeing his mother take him for walks around the neighborhood in his wheelchair. He was so handsome, and forever frozen in a state of suspended childhood. A life, cut in two because of a moment of recklessness.

All of us have similar stories, some even closer to home.

We think “if only he hadn’t taken that dare” or “if only she had said no to that last drink,” and mourn the consequences of irresponsibility. I am not a parent, but I fully understand the fear each mother has when she sends her son off to college, hoping that 18 years of care-and-feeding, of tending lovingly to this human treasure, will insulate him from harm.

I understand the frustration and the sense of impotence a father has, praying that his daughter will not be influenced by people he doesn’t know and can’t control.

And I can imagine, in the smallest of degrees, the pain of Tyler’s family as they bring their beloved boy home for the last time.

Actually, I can’t imagine it. It’s a suffering too large to encompass in a brain that hasn’t experienced the loss firsthand. But if I multiply my sorrow by a million degrees, I can arrive at an approximation of their agony.

On social media, I announced that I don’t know if I can celebrate the Super Bowl in the shadow of this death.

Many friends, trying to be supportive, said things like “Life goes on” and “Tyler would have wanted us to celebrate as he did” and “he’ll be watching the game from heaven.”

These are good people who say these things, but they have no idea how callous they sound. A life is infinitely more important than a game, even one as important as the Super Bowl.

Their hearts might be in the right places, but their ears are deaf to the cruelty of their words. There are no celebrations in cemeteries.

I suppose I will be able to muster some enthusiasm in the next few days.

I am an Eagles fan, after all, and this is a sort of thing that doesn’t happen very often. After all, it took almost five decades before I experienced my first — and so far only — championship. I truly bleed green. My team, my life.

Except that’s not as true, now. My team, sure.

But life is much more precious than Vince’s trophy.

And if we do win, and I hope we do, my heart will be caught in a vice of sorrow, limiting my joy by the memory of what was lost.

–

Copyright 2025 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].