The death of Renee Nicole Good — presented as a “murder” by an ICE agent — has shown the American Left for what it truly is: a corrupt re-writer of facts and history, more dangerous in 2026 than ever before.
That 2026 will be a contentious year, I have no doubt. For the first time since the Civil War, we have state and city officials calling for open resistance to the federal government (ICE) when it comes to rounding up illegal aliens. Minnesota recently threatened to call up its own National Guard to act as a force against ICE. In Philadelphia, DA Larry Krasner, ever ready for a new fight, issued his own threats to ICE, warning that agents will be watched closely and will be subject to arrest if they violate what Krasner believes to be the law.
Joining the chorus of outraged leftists was Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal, who slammed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “made up, fake, wannabe law enforcement,’ while adding that the actions of ICE violated both “legal law” and “moral law.”
Bilal also declared, “So I’m with the DA. You don’t want this smoke. Cause we will bring it to you.” She referred to Trump as “the criminal in the White House” who would not be able to fight Krasner and the Sheriff’s Department from sending ICE agents to jail.
Tough words from a tough-looking woman who looks like she grew up in the wilds of North Philadelphia (she did). But let’s not criticize the way she speaks (embarrassing), or the penciled-in eyebrows (we all aim for beauty), or the gruffness of her demeanor. She could have all of these and still be beautiful. The fact is, she is not beautiful and she should be fired.
Sworn into office on January 6, 2020, four months before a man named George Floyd died, Bilal made history as the first elected African American woman sheriff in the 343-history of the Sheriff’s Office. Prior to that election, she spent 27 years as a city police officer serving in units focusing on sex crimes and drug trafficking. Her resume also includes a stint as secretary of the Philadelphia Chapter of the NAACP. Like her mentor, Larry Krasner, she’s been an advocate for criminal justice reform and “community engagement,” except, of course, when it comes to ICE.
Bilal wants no community engagement with ICE.
The history of the Sheriff’s Department can be traced to William Penn when he adopted his 1682 “Frame of Government” in every county in the Commonwealth. The idea was that each county would have an elected Sheriff who would serve for four years. The Pennsylvania State Constitution, however, exempts counties from this required county office if they have a Home Rule Charter.
Philadelphia’s Home Rule Charter exempts the city from having an elected sheriff.
When Bilal says, “ICE is fake law enforcement,” she might also add that the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Department is a bureaucratic paper tiger with zero police power except when it comes to sheriff sales for tax delinquent properties. Sheriffs who deal with unpaid back taxes are paper clip collators who shouldn’t be calling President Trump “the criminal in the White House.”
For all of this taxing paperwork, Bilal is paid something like $114k a year.
We might ask why this paper-pusher in a police uniform was on a stage with Larry Krasner unless it was to condemn ICE and insult the president. It should be noted that leftist journalist Ernest Owens (who wrote a book praising cancel culture) called for Bilal’s resignation in a Philadelphia magazine opinion piece in 2021.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, not noted for its conservative sympathies, also called for the abolition of the sheriff’s office in an editorial in March 2024.
Owens, a voice on the left I usually find distasteful, wrote,
“Since her election in 2019, Sheriff Rochelle Bilal has brought more shame and disgrace to her office than the reform she promised. Bilal, who became the first woman in the city to hold the position, ran a campaign that vowed to end ‘scandal after scandal after scandal’ and ‘remove the dark cloud’ that had defined the Sheriff’s Office for more than a decade. In a heated three-candidate primary that saw her go up against an embattled incumbent who was hit with sexual harassment allegations, Bilal appeared to be the change we were waiting for, given her background calling out law enforcement for retaliation, corruption and discrimination…..Now, her office is being accused of similar transgressions…”
Perhaps Philadelphia magazine felt a responsibility to backtrack its endorsement of Bilal in a 2017 piece praising her as a hero “retired black cop who became a whistleblower” on malfeasance. The magazine reported then that Bilal initiated a class-action lawsuit against the PPD for allowing officers to post racist and offensive content to Domelights.com, a now-defunct message board popular among PPD officers. “My life was threatened,” the magazine quoted Bilal as saying.
Then we have the Committee of Seventy that also called for the abolition of the Sheriff’s Office:
“Dysfunction in the Sheriff’s Office is nothing new — it’s a longstanding cycle of failure passed down from one Sheriff to the next. Recently the Sheriff’s Office functions and duties have come into focus as the office’s dysfunction has made headline after headline. The Committee quoted the Inquirer’s editorial:
“Over 40 years, the Sheriff’s Office has seen many of the same types of challenges and scandals repeat. Contracts are awarded to political allies. Programs are mismanaged. Lax staff oversight allows for corruption. Investigations are launched. People are charged with crimes. There are calls for reform. Candidates run for office promising change and then when elected, problems repeat or new problems emerge…. Prior to being elected, Bilal was a former police officer and head of the Guardian Civic League. Since being sworn in for her first term, the culture of mismanagement and scandal in the office has continued. Despite this, she was reelected in the 2023 Democratic Primary and subsequent General Election.”
The New English Review reported in 2021that Philadelphia’s corruption problem even extended to local law enforcement. Bilal is mentioned in the piece as having campaigned “on a promise to rid the office of previous bribery and sexual harassment scandals,” yet she nevertheless fired her office’s Chief Financial Officer Brett Mandel, “for daring to question her six figure ‘off budget’ payments to four contractors who worked on her campaign.
This was obviously contrary to her commitment to “operate the office with transparency and integrity on behalf of all of the citizens of our city.”
When Bilal – she happens to be Muslim so it is possible she identifies with the Muslim Somali population in Minneapolis, hence her added contempt for ICE – announced that she would not allow any ICE agents to come into “her city” and violate the law, she was in effect grabbing a property that’s technically not hers.
That “property” is the city, since it’s not her city anymore than it is yours or mine, at least in the way that Bilal frames it.
Bilal has proven to be immensely unpopular with both progressives and conservatives, but her latest stunt, coming out the way she did and threatening the federal government with police and legal action, should certainly be the last straw.
Sheriff Rochelle Bilal needs to be barred from the Gates of City Hall.
I capitalize the word ‘Gates’ to remind readers that in ‘Paradise Lost,’ poet John Milton noted that Belial was the last demon to fall and that he was the vilest of demons – the demon of impurity and lies.
Belial, it is also said, is a demon that not even Aleister Crowley would dare summon more than once.
