Joe Ceballos
Joe Ceballos is the Mayor of Coldwater, Kansas (pop. 700). He voted for Trump — the MAGA racist who promised to make America great again by cracking down on people who look like Joe. His neighbors voted likewise. Comanche County, home to Coldwater, voted for Trump over Harris by almost 70%.
Now Ceballos is eating the bitter fruit of his selection. Trump’s anti-immigrant machine has sucked him into its maw and may well expel him back to Mexico. Why? Because, despite being a fixture in the community for half a century, Ceballos is not a citizen. When he voted for Trump, he did so illegally. And the state has charged him with six election crimes.
How Ceballos got where he is
Joe arrived in the US from Mexico as a toddler. His family settled in Kansas. He went to school there. To put the civics theory into practice, the seniors at the high school Ceballos attended took a trip to City Hall. They saw where they paid their taxes and other things. In addition, any student who was over 18 was given the opportunity to register to vote.
Which Joe did.
However, federal and state laws require that voters be US citizens, and Kansans must check a box confirming their citizenship when they register. Ceballos was not, and is not, a citizen. But despite his disqualification, he signed the form. And then proceeded to vote in multiple elections.
At least this is Joe’s version of events.
Consequences
Years later, the reckoning came. Kansas state authorities charged Ceballos with three counts of election perjury and three counts of voting without being qualified. Joe made it easy for them. He confessed. In a recent interview inside the City Council chamber, where he once presided over meetings, he said:
“Nobody ever told me that I couldn’t vote or register to vote. And so, as a young man, yeah, I did it. I registered.”
However, Joe‘s memory does not jibe with official records. County clerk Bri Uhl said her office had no record of Mr. Ceballos’s registering to vote before 1999, when he would have been in his late 20s. Mr. Ceballos’s lawyer, Jess Hoeme, said that:
“Joe is confident he was registered and had voted prior to the renewal or re-registration in 1999, but I’m having a hard time proving it.”
Regardless, while Joe’s version may give him an excuse, neither version entitles him to vote.
The community rallies around
In a classic case of “We didn’t know you meant our Hispanics,” Coldwater’s Anglo community has embraced its non-native son. This is how the NY Times reported their reaction:
Yet inside Coldwater — home to 700 people, zero stoplights and vanishingly few Democrats — the prosecution was widely seen as a personal attack on a pillar of the town. Most of them, Mr. Ceballos included, had voted for President Trump, and some said they supported his immigration policies. But they knew Joe, a fixture in Coldwater since he was a teenager. And they wanted the government to back off.
In addition, a day before his court appearance, an advertisement in The Western Star, Coldwater’s newspaper, urged readers to attend the hearing: “Please Find the Time to Show Support for Joe Ceballos!” They came in droves.
The courtroom was packed as Mr. Ceballos made his first appearance.
They are like children. You can tell a kid not to climb a tree. You can explain the pain that would follow a fall. But until they climb a tree and personally experience the power of gravity, they won’t believe you.
The administration piles on
The Trump administration cared not that Ceballos was a Trump lover. Their aim is the eviction of anyone non-white who can be framed as deportable.
They announced their satisfaction with Joe’s arrest and charges. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a news release that included a photo of Mr. Ceballos and of his signature on a voter registration form:
“This alien committed a felony by voting in American elections.”
The dehumanisation is in full force. No “Mr. Ceballos” or other individual identifier. Joe is now no more than an amorphous “alien” to the man he voted for.
Joe clings to his bad choices
But even now, Ceballos is staying true to the man who wants him evicted from his long-term home. He may have to return to the country of his birth, a place he hasn’t seen in over 50 years, but Trump is still OK by Joe. In his words:
“I still strongly believe in Trump’s immigration laws, about ‘Let’s get the bad guys out of here.’ You know, they’re murderers, they killed people, they molested people, let’s get them out of here. But I feel like I don’t fit that category. And I feel like that’s how they’re treating me.”
Making it worse, Ceballos is not the innocent victim he thinks he is. Court records show he was arrested in 1994 and convicted of misdemeanor battery for his role in a fight involving several people, one of whom was shot and wounded. He was also convicted of misdemeanor criminal damage to property in 1995 as his first marriage ended.
In addition, Joe is not ignorant of his potential future. He says:
“You wake up, like, ‘Are they going to deport me now? It’s always in your thoughts.”
And yet he still supports Trump?
I have no words. It’s like the chicken absolving the fox because, despite the predator's teeth at its neck, the benighted bird still believes the fox’s promise that it would eat only the misbehaving chickens.
Every accusation is a confession
Republicans have long accused the Left of rigging elections. They have warned that the Democratic Party is encouraging the undocumented to flood the US and vote them into a permanent and unassailable majority. Yet they have shown no evidence for the former. And now we have proof that illegal voters in the US will vote Republican.
