00:02:11.260And in February, we talk a lot about showing love to other people, but you can show some love to yourself.
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00:02:41.140Now, I've had the opportunity to attend a few state of the unions now, both under President Biden and under President Trump.
00:02:47.500I have seen the performance with my own eyes.
00:02:50.280Last year, I sat in the gallery as Democrats held up their paddles.
00:02:54.060Maybe you can remember one side said lie on it or something to the effect.
00:02:58.840I remember last year, all of the women, the Democratic women, plus Tim McBride, Congressman Tim McBride, actually,
00:03:07.720showed up wearing pink to symbolize how they stand with women and for women's rights,
00:03:11.780which is, again, crazy considering these people don't even know how to define a woman.
00:03:16.160All of that being said, I have never been as absolutely gobsmacked as I was when President Trump asked this to the chamber earlier this week.
00:03:26.500So tonight, I'm inviting every legislator to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle.
00:03:34.440If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support.
00:03:39.060The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.
00:03:56.620That is the easiest applause line ever presented in American politics.
00:04:22.500Like, I don't know how that is not treasonous.
00:04:25.120It seems to me as if that is an act of betrayal.
00:04:29.020Anyways, Trump, he knew what he was doing in asking this.
00:04:32.500Really, it was a master class in political chess.
00:04:36.140The Democrats, they walked right into that trap.
00:04:39.520Which, that being said, I feel like we can often get wrapped up in who can score the most political points on things like this.
00:04:46.440But today's guests, and people like Joe Abraham, they live every single day understanding the destructive and deadly nature of the policies that the Democrats stand for.
00:04:58.200Or I guess in this case, that they do not stand for.
00:05:01.760Joe Abraham is an angel dad, meaning that he is the dad of a child killed by an illegal alien.
00:05:07.220Back in January of 2025, so just over a year ago, when his daughter Katie was only 20 years old, the car that she was riding in was rear-ended at nearly 80 miles an hour by a drunk driver.
00:05:31.720And so the driver fled from the state of Illinois and was later apprehended in Texas, where it was then discovered he was in this country illegally.
00:05:39.860I've had the honor of meeting Joe in person, and I will just say this, that he is such a fantastic steward of the legacy that Katie leaves behind.
00:05:50.900I hope you guys enjoy today's episode with angel dad, Joe Abraham.
00:05:56.040Well, Joe, thank you for joining the Rally Gaines show.
00:05:59.080I actually gave a little background on Katie and just the unthinkable horrors that your family has faced in the introduction.
00:06:06.620But before we talk about policy or State of the Union or any of that, can you just tell us about her?
00:07:32.160She loved people, music, just, you know, getting together with family.
00:07:37.780And it's such a devastating loss, at least for our family and her friends.
00:07:43.200She had all these different friend groups, but it's just life just does not feel the same anymore.
00:07:51.480It's completely without her and her spirit and her laughter and her wit.
00:07:57.280And she was one of these kids that could read a room all the way through, whether it was adults in the room or kids, she just could understand what was happening and just fit right in.
00:08:10.000It was kind of amazing to watch her sort of do that.
00:08:15.840And then my father died December 26, 2024.
00:08:21.300Three weeks later, Katie was killed, January 19, 2025.
00:08:25.040And those two were like huge characters in the family.
00:08:28.140So it was a really, really tough time.
00:08:31.520I, we talked a little bit prior to recording just about faith.
00:08:36.340And I hope you feel a level of comfort.
00:08:39.520Obviously, the situation and the circumstance is unimaginable, especially losing two people that you loved and cared for so very deeply.
00:08:46.880But hopefully there's a level of comfort in knowing that they're together and that one day you will certainly see them again.
00:08:55.900You mentioned that day in January of 2025.
00:08:59.740Would you be willing to share just a little bit of what happened and how ultimately you found out?
00:09:06.040Yeah, she was, her and her, this was a water polo group.
00:09:11.300So some of her friends were at University of Illinois in Urbana, Illinois.
00:09:16.440So her and a friend from up north, northern Illinois, went down to visit them and just get together.
00:09:23.740What 20-year-olds do, college students, right?
00:09:26.060They just get together, go visit with one another.
00:09:28.080They were just on the streets of Urbana, Illinois, J.B. Pritzker's Urbana, Illinois, you know, he tells us how safe everything is.
00:09:35.520They were at a stoplight, idle, and they were smashed in the rear, almost 80 miles an hour.
00:09:45.140Just, you know, things showed that there was no swerving or braking or trying to avoid it.
00:09:49.960Just barreled into the back of that car, decimated it, ruined five lives in that car.
00:09:56.260Katie, unfortunately, you know, first responders, when they got there, they kind of had to pry that car open.
00:10:04.280I believe she was already dead when they were pulling her out of the car.
00:10:08.120One of her friends that she went down with died the next day, and then there were three other injuries.
00:10:13.620So, you know, he was a illegal alien here illegally.
00:10:18.340He was a Guatemalan national, but he was using a Mexican national alias.
00:10:23.540Now, the federal enforcements knew this, but since the state of Illinois is sanctuary, they did no – and even if they did do a background check, they allowed him to roam around Illinois without any issues.
00:11:03.400And by the way, now that he's incarcerated, he's being treated – and this is through – I was at the federal court when they were talking about this.
00:11:18.240And I'm not making a moral judgment here.
00:11:20.060What I'm saying is Illinois mismanaged this whole – and consistently, not just our story, everybody's – mismanaged this system so severely, it failed everybody, right?
00:13:16.480Now, Katie's sister's in college, five and a half hours away.
00:13:19.900So, we have to pull ourselves together, get into a car in a snowstorm, and drive five and a half hours to go talk to her sister to tell her about her, you know, Katie's death.
00:13:29.820And what haunts me to this day, Riley, is the time we had to walk into her apartment and the reaction we got from her sister that will haunt me the rest of my life.
00:13:43.880Her reaction and her – you know, that day we held her, we spoke with her, we tried to comfort her, and it will never leave me.
00:14:00.360So, I think with the politicians and these, you know, I think uncaring or dismissive people say, well, you know, crime, whatever crime happens here and there.
00:14:10.400When it's so preventable, Riley, and it's so impactful that they dismiss us like that, it's so hurtful and it just rubs salt in the wound.
00:14:22.260These are people that don't have skin in the game, whose North Star is their ideology.
00:14:28.320And to see Donald Trump to at least step up and say, hey, they're real, they matter, and their lives shouldn't have ended was something that we really do appreciate.
00:14:38.200I try to put myself in your shoes, I guess, from two standpoints down.
00:14:46.520Number one, as a new mom, it's just unfathomable, truthfully, like it's unimaginable.
00:14:52.100And then also as a sister, having sisters myself, hearing that news and how it would just absolutely wreck and upend your life as you knew it, I just, I can't even, there's really no words for that.
00:15:08.580And, of course, you mentioned Governor Pritzker and this situation and others like yours being entirely mismanaged, which I think is to put it lightly.
00:15:15.760I understand you sent your governor, who has made Illinois Sanctuary State, a letter with some questions that you wanted answered.
00:15:27.300I saw an op-ed, actually, and Fox Digital.
00:15:30.400Can you highlight some of the questions that you had?
00:15:33.340And I think more importantly, if you ever received a response from Governor Pritzker or his office.
00:15:39.640So, yes, we sent the letter and it was not ideology.
00:15:44.340The ideology wasn't the main thrust of that letter.
00:15:47.420It was just factual questions that we were trying to ask the governor.
00:15:51.420Because, remember, the governor, you know, at one minute we're in Congress with the governor who completely avoided us, didn't talk to us, didn't spend two seconds, couldn't care less about victims like us.
00:16:02.540But he was in Congress telling the Republicans, immigration is the federal, you know, responsibility, the enforcement's a federal responsibility.
00:16:14.660My responsibility is the state of Illinois.
00:16:16.780But then he turns around and then he nullifies federal law.
00:16:20.480He just said, it's your responsibility.
00:16:22.340He nullifies it and clearly has put nothing in its place.
00:16:25.880He's just, this is a free-for-all in here in Illinois.
00:16:29.160He's got hundreds of thousands of people he doesn't even know that are roaming around our state.
00:16:33.600So, some of the questions I really wanted to know were, on both sides, was, what did you do for the people you're, you've kicked the side door open in the middle of the night and you're letting hundreds of thousands of people in.
00:17:16.620The other questions were simple, like, hey, how did this guy, by the way, in the police report, had a driver's license number?
00:17:22.840So, explain to me, just want to understand, a guy who's never, doesn't speak the language, doesn't know the culture, and never had a day of education, how did he pass that driver's test?
00:17:31.220I took the driver's test, I actually studied for it, right?
00:17:34.420So then, and then if he's on the road doing the driver's test, how is he understanding the signage and how is he understanding what to do?
00:17:54.420They don't really, they're not accountable to the voters.
00:17:57.880Somehow, Riley, there must be something happening.
00:18:00.380I don't know, maybe there's ballots tied to these illegals that they don't necessarily need the voters.
00:18:05.580They know certain voters are always going to be behind them due to ideology, and they just need some ballots here and there, and they don't really care about the people.
00:18:13.540But let's, let me get into something here, Riley, that I rarely talk about, just because I don't, Katie's biological mom was sort of against the operation of Midway Blitz that was named for Katie, which was a targeted operation to remove criminal illegal aliens out of Chicago.
00:18:32.100So, Katie's mom didn't necessarily agree with Katie's name being tied to that, and I did.
00:18:41.680So, Katie's mom did write an op-ed that said, I'm not real thrilled with this, that type of thing.
00:18:48.880So, the governor's office, the only response they gave was, you don't have the full story, Fox Digital, because they reached out to them for a comment.
00:18:57.420The mom, here's an op-ed the mom wrote.
00:19:00.120Now, the mom didn't write about immigration in general and the lack of responsible policies, nothing like that.
00:19:51.700I have simple questions and you need to respond to those.
00:19:56.000But as of today, I've got nothing back.
00:19:57.900It's a good point you make and it was something I thought of in watching the State of the Union where you had, I think, the most telling moment of any State of the Union in history when President Trump asked directly,
00:20:11.420if you agree with this statement stand, the American government's first priority is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens, and not a single, well, maybe Fetterman stood, but virtually the entirety of the Democratic Party sat down.
00:20:25.820And it was something I thought, you know, how could they do this?
00:20:30.860But the thought crossed my mind, maybe they don't want to disparage their voting base and who is their voting base, especially in states like California.
00:20:39.760We actually just had Nick Shirley on the last episode and talking about California voter fraud that's happening there.
00:20:44.860So maybe they don't want to disparage their voting base.
00:20:49.760I mean, is there really any other reason?
00:20:51.460Do you think these people, people like Pritzker, really believe this because they love words like compassion and empathy?
00:20:59.400But what happened to you and your family and other families like yours?
00:21:13.460To your point, they care about their new voting bloc, I guess, and the citizens are sort of left to, they're just being taken advantage of.
00:21:42.060You fail the victims and you continue to re-victimize them.
00:21:45.420And then you also fail the ones coming in.
00:21:48.020You don't, you know, there's no shame in vetting because your responsibility is the citizens of your state first.
00:21:53.800And you don't give special privileges or sacrifice one group of people for another, right?
00:22:01.220You don't give special privileges here because you think it's going to benefit you because you're politically self-interested while you sacrifice another group.
00:22:35.560And that's, that must be the reason why, Riley, that he has not responded to me as father-to-father, citizen-to-governor, because this would upset his voting base, I think.
00:22:47.740There's no real rational understanding why a governor of a state wouldn't speak to a citizen of his state.
00:22:54.260A lifelong Illinoisan, and I know how corrupt the state is, but they always had some kind of guardrails to it.
00:23:24.660Really cowards, I think, is what they are.
00:23:27.460I think if you were to ask them one-on-one, and I think this is probably why Governor Pritzker doesn't want to meet with you.
00:23:32.900Because maybe deep down, he agrees with you, but he's too much of a coward, or maybe there's too much money behind it, or he's too obsessed with his powerful position that he's in to actually be able to admit it to you.
00:23:45.040But I don't think he could look you in the eyes and tell you that he doesn't.
00:23:51.160But you said President Trump, he has been a fantastic advocate in carrying on the voices and the legacies and the stories of people like Katie.
00:23:59.120You were just at the White House for his angel family's remembrance ceremony.
00:24:05.020In that, have you been able to, events like this, the position that you're in, have you been able to connect with other families who have experienced similar loss?
00:24:19.580You know, the Democrats try to make it sound like this is not a real thing.
00:24:25.280And the number of angel families we have met along the way in this awful journey we're in is so heartbreaking, honestly.
00:24:34.860And even the survivors of some of these crimes, like these kids that are, you know, in wheelchairs now and all preventable, just with some rational policy and coherent policy and not radical extreme one-sided policies, you wouldn't have this, right?
00:24:55.940This isn't about, well, everyone drunk drives and, you know, citizens do this and, you know, citizens create more crime.
00:25:04.300This is, what you're saying is if you take it to the logical end, we have drunk drivers in America, so we should bring in more drunk drivers.
00:25:12.680We have crime in America, so we should bring in more crime.
00:25:16.060And to romanticize people from a third world country, we are immigrants.
00:25:19.940My parents came from a third world country.
00:25:22.860And they would be the first ones to tell you, you cannot romanticize.
00:25:26.460You cannot, there's not 100% purity in the people coming from third world countries.
00:25:31.580And this is just naive to believe that.
00:25:35.040And so, yes, you should have some amount of vetting and health screens and understand who's coming into the country.
00:25:43.240Are we, how it's become so immoral to be lawful and follow rules and it's moral to, you know, do the opposite.
00:25:54.680For example, really rushing the border with millions of people, a free-for-all people die.
00:26:00.000You know, where were the same people in Minnesota down at the border saying, wait a minute, children are being lost.
00:26:46.920They're missing so much by behaving in this way.
00:26:52.380Yeah, for even calling those things out, for drawing attention to the fact that over 300,000 children were missing under President Biden's open border policies.
00:27:02.180For even calling things like that out, you and I are called, like, right-wing extremists.
00:27:07.960And that's probably one of the kinder things that they call us.
00:27:11.780I guess with that being said, do you ever worry about Katie's name being used politically?
00:27:46.380You know, then we really assessed, at least I assessed, like, okay, what would Katie, Katie would absolutely have rejected the way she died.
00:27:57.320Now, she was a compassionate person, but she knew fair play.
00:28:01.960She didn't have a chance, right, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and someone being supported by the state that really should have, there should have been some guardrails there.
00:28:19.200And it's going to be unfortunate because people won't understand that there are lives and victims being saved here because it's not tangible.
00:28:32.260So that's always a tough thing to sell, right, because you're doing the right things.
00:28:37.520Now, the other thing was it's so disheartening.
00:28:40.260Not only were we, you know, erased or ignored, when we were in June 2025 at the Oversight Committee hearing, J.B. Pritzker's, his utter contempt and disrespect towards Katie changed my – that's the day, honestly, the light went on and said,
00:28:59.880oh, I get it, these people are awful, they're self-serving, they don't care, they want to be just – they're all power.
00:29:09.500That's the only thing they care about.
00:29:11.360And that's why I started speaking out.
00:29:12.940I'm like, Katie's name is better than this.
00:29:15.060And she should know – people should know who she is because she is way better than any of these folks.
00:29:23.940And I'm not out there always looking for it, but I'll certainly talk to anyone that wants to talk about Katie and the tragedy that happened to her.
00:29:31.880But honestly, I want to see some accountability.
00:29:34.980People like me, Orkis is of the world and the prior administration that orchestrated this type of chaos.
00:29:41.620Why are they not being held to account?
00:29:44.020Why do we have to – and all these angel families and victims – have to suffer while they sort of ride off in the sunset and live their great lives?
00:29:55.340Personally, I don't know how they sleep at night.
00:29:57.480There's clearly no conscience there with all the blood on their hands.
00:30:01.580But, you know, meanwhile, we don't sleep.
00:30:45.640And I've never seen her in my dreams since.
00:30:47.920It's just a psychological, the psychological warfare of that, that you and your family and families like yours are left to deal with is, is it shows how it extends beyond even just the victims to their families as well.
00:31:07.280And so I guess kind of wrapping up here is accountability.
00:31:12.500What does that look like and policies that you are advocating for on behalf of Katie and on behalf of American citizens, quite frankly?
00:31:22.180What do those two things look like to you?
00:31:25.400Well, I think first the sanctuary cities and states have to have to stop.
00:31:35.680Put in a front-end process to at least vet people and at least help them and then help the communities, right?
00:31:42.400And because what's happening now on the back end after you've completely messed up the front end, people like Donald Trump and Tom Holman and Todd Lyons, they have to clean up this mess and it will never look good.
00:31:56.400So I would like to see those policies revamped, got rid of, and have some kind of rational, not radical extreme policies that we have today.
00:32:05.920Accountability-wise, I would love to see why people like New York is, who is this insidious person, who did this on purpose.