Dateline, Paris. Illinois.
This reporting comes from the Chicago Tribune, which used to be a reliably Republican newspaper famous for a crazed Colonel and an editorial staff of conservative editors:1
PARIS, Ill. – In his dreams, Jose Fiscal Belli is still living an all-American life with his all-American family.
Each day, he comes home to his wife, a hazel-eyed, small-town preacher’s daughter. Together, they raise four children and run the Main Street Cafe, where they serve country fried chicken and eggs to a feisty bunch of regulars. He also co-owns a Mexican restaurant just across the state line in Clinton, Indiana.
Everyone knows Jose in Paris, Illinois, located about 165 miles south of Chicago. He coaches Little League. Police officers ask for his help as a volunteer Spanish translator. He is known to donate whole meals to the local soup kitchen. When 8-year old Crosby Allen needed a new bat but didn’t have the money, Jose gave him one.
He fits right into the mostly white town of roughly 8,000 people where a laundromat offers free laundry day for those who can’t afford it and a local group builds wheelchair ramps for disabled residents.
Now, Jose is in an ICE concentration camp in Louisiana.
This, after being moved out of one of the makeshift ICE concentration camps that rural county sheriffs are providing to ICE. ICE sent Jose to Oldham County Jail in La Grange, Kentucky, by way of Clay County, Illinois, because I guess Oldham County sheriff deputies ran out of meth users to lock up.
Even more insidious: Jose was pulled over by Indiana State Police after, and I kid you not, he parked in the wrong spot at a government building. From there he went to a county lockup in Clay County, Indiana, then to Oldham County Jail, then to Louisiana.
According to Paris Mayor Craig Smith, “They had him in Clay County and moved him in the middle of the night to Louisiana,” Smith said. “That’s what they do. We’re living it. It’s happened here.”2
His wife Courtney posted on social media that amidst rampant violence, Jose’s Louisiana concentration camp has one bathroom for 147 detainees, the lights are on 24/7, he is perpetually stalked by surrounding inmate violence ignored by Gestapo guards, and that he was transported through Louisiana’s stifling heat in a metal van without air conditioning.
Indiana. Kentucky. Louisiana. Three beet-red states happy to be of service to Stephen Miller’s Gestapo.
Paris is a town of about 8,000, the vast majority of them white and Trumpy.
When Miller’s ICEStapo snatched one of their own, they suddenly were not so sure anymore that they signed up for all this.
You can yell at them all you want, but it won’t change any of the facts on the ground. They were brainwashed by a combination of Fox News and Vladimir Putin’s social media propaganda troll farm in St. Petersburg, Russia, with a big assist from Elon Musk’s Apartheid Twitter hate box.
You weren’t brainwashed. I understand that. But some people were, and that’s the hand we’ve been dealt. The propaganda effort on behalf of the regime is so extant that not even viable rumors that the man in the Oval Office is a pedophile have been enough to destroy his 30% forever wall of support.
Since then, prices have soared. The national debt has reached obscene levels. Data centers are sucking up farmland. Tariffs are destroying small businesses. The presidency has become an endless carousel of grift. Diesel is driving farmers into bankruptcy from a crazy, lost war. Trump has sold out to Russia and can’t blather out one paragraph of words without sounding like he just fell off a tomato truck.
Most of these can’t be covered up by the brainwashing machine.
Conservatives in rural towns across America are wondering what the fuck is happening because it’s all in their faces, every single day.
The Prairie Press, Paris’ local paper, ran a front-page cover story reflecting the town’s mood after Jose was snatched by Stephen Miller’s ICEstapo:
I would like to suggest to the fine editors of the Prairie Press that all immigrants are one of ours, but I’m going to try to stick with empathy for now until I see how Paris votes in eleven days.
In the meantime, I’ll let the Prairie Press pick up where the Chicago Tribune left off:3
By Victoria Leitch vleitch@prairiepress.net
For years, Jose Fiscal Belli has been known around Paris as the man who showed up.
He coached Little League games, sponsored youth athletics, helped feed local teams, supported community fundraisers and recently opened Main Street Cafe in downtown Paris with his wife, Courtney.
Now, as the husband and father of four sits in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana, it is his family, friends and city leaders who are asking the community to show up for him.
The call came Monday, July 27, during the Paris City Council meeting, where a resident stood before city leaders not to debate an ordinance or ask about city services, but to ask how an entire community could help one of its own.
“I am here as a citizen of this community, and I would like to find out about one of our citizens who is in trouble,” the resident said. “I’d really like to help and gather other people together who might like to help, but I don’t want to do that if it’s not in the best interest of the family at this time.”
Mayor Craig Smith responded by explaining that the City of Paris has already reached out to federal officials but has little authority in an immigration case.
Instead, he said, the family needs the community’s voice.
“If you want to do something, call,” Smith said. “Get your friends to call. The calls seem to work better than anything else. It shows them that he is an active person in the community. He’s a good person.”
The online version of the article then lists numbers to call. Wouldn’t it be great if a call-in effort went national?
Hint, hint.
Here are the numbers suggested by Prairie Press:
Who do I call to show support for Jose Fiscal Belli?
Mary Miller, U.S. Representative (R-IL-15)
•D.C.: (202) 225-5271
•Quincy: (217) 640-6210
•Mahomet: (217) 703-6104
•Highland: (217) 703-6100
Senator Dick Durbin
•D.C.: (202) 224-2152
•Springfield: (217) 492-4062
•Carbondale: (618) 351-1122
•Chicago: (312) 353-4952
Senator Tammy Duckworth
•D.C.: (202) 224-2854
•Springfield: (217) 528-6124
•Carbondale: (618) 677-7000
•Chicago: (312) 886-3506
Important Information
Name: Jose Fiscal-Belli
Place of Residence: Paris, Illinois, 61944
Case number: 094-070-601.
More from the small Paris newspaper:
Family friend Nick Conner, who organized a fundraiser to help the Fiscal Belli family, said Jose was brought to the United States from Mexico as a minor by his father, who came seeking work to support relatives back home. After immigration officers conducted a raid on the apartment building where they were living in Minnesota, Jose and his father were detained and later released because they had committed no crime and were not the intended targets of the operation.
Soon afterward, the family relocated to Indiana for work.
According to Conner, an immigration court notice was mailed to the family’s former Minnesota address after they had already moved. Because neither Jose nor his father knew about the hearing, they missed it, and a removal order was entered against Jose in 2011 while he was still a minor.
Conner said neither the family nor Jose’s immigration attorney knew that order existed for years.
Despite that, Jose continued building a life.
He married Courtney in 2021, and together they began the legal process for him to obtain permanent residency through a marriage-based green card.
According to Conner, every step of that process had been approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Smith likewise told the council that Jose had been working with an immigration attorney for approximately four years and had already advanced to the second stage of naturalization, with a required family interview even being waived because he had no criminal record.
Then, last week, everything changed.
Smith said Jose traveled to Indianapolis on restaurant business.
“He made a mistake,” Smith said. “He went to Indianapolis to get a license for the restaurant in Clinton. He parked in a 10-minute meter area. He exceeded the 10 minutes. They gave him a ticket, ran the plates, bingo! ICE was contacted. Just a crazy, crazy deal.”
Because of the years-old removal order, Jose was taken into ICE custody.
Townsfolk consider Jose to be a community leader. He coaches Little League, mentors kids, and, through his restaurant, feeds those who can’t afford it. The town is heartbroken.
One article about Rural America after another is showing up, even in the corporate media, reporting on how rural voters feel betrayed. This is one of the more visceral, punch-to-the-gut stories.
And I feel for them, I really do.
But I’ll be watching the results of the election in Paris very closely on November 3. Because they might not understand that Jose is a fairly typical example of the Mexican culture the regime is trying to drive out of the country.
Let’s see if they mean what they say about Jose. Paris Mayor Smith told a crowd of Illinois Parisians who gathered recently to see what they could do, “This is not political. This is what’s right and what’s wrong.”
Elections have consequences. And actions speak louder than words. I’m watching you, Paris. We’ll see how much you care soon enough.
Footnotes (and full articles relating to this)
Pratt, Gregory Royal. “In Paris, Illinois, Trump’s ICE Raids Came Home ‘When It Happened to Jose.’” Chicago Tribune, October 18, 2026.
Ruminato Gift Link 🎁
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/10/18/paris-trump-ice-arrest/.
The stop in Kentucky was likely a detention point after he left Clay County on his way to the concentration camp in Louisiana.
Leitch, Victoria. “This Is One of Ours.” The Prairie Press, July 29, 2026. https://prairiepress.net/stories/this-is-one-of-ours,156836.
Today’s music isn’t white and Trumpy, it’s White and Nerdy, by Weird Al
Let’s finish by lightening the mood a little. And, as always, thanks for reading!
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Amazing that he can get so far along with the naturalization process yet the second his registered vehicle pings he's flagged for an event from years prior.