Image CreditPhoto Courtesy of Mike Howell and Ryan Neuhaus
Amid the flood of anti-ICE messaging inundating social media feeds and classrooms, leftists are teaching kids to demonize federal agents who enforce America’s immigration laws. Now children’s book authors Mike Howell and Ryan Neuhaus are pushing back on this messaging that seeks to “indoctrinate kids into open borders ideology.”
Howell and Neuhaus’ new picture book — Diego the Dingo Finds His Way Home — follows the story of an immigrant family of dingos that is illegally smuggled over the border and ultimately deported. Unlike many other children’s books about the subject, this one positively portrays migrants returning home instead of painting ICE agents as moral monsters.
The book details the dingos’ long journey to America as a family of coyotes smuggles them in. Diego, one of the dingo children, realizes quickly that he doesn’t speak the language and is unable to assimilate. He and his family begin wishing they could return home. ICE agents eventually pick up the family, explain the deportation process, and send them back to their home country. As Diego sits on the airplane to leave America, he realizes that “home is where they belonged.” The story ends with Diego reuniting with his grandparents.
“Diego spends most of the story learning that breaking the rules isn’t fun and comes with consequences, but also that those consequences can lead him back to where he knows he belongs: home,” Neuhaus said. “Fortunately, Iggy from ICE is there to help.”
Howell said many children’s books about immigration have “terrible messaging,” which inspired him to create his own children’s book to “demystify the issue for children.” I Wish You Knew and Something Happened to My Dad are children’s picture books that depict ICE and its actions negatively. Both of these books are about young girls whose fathers face detention or deportation because they came to the United States illegally. Until Someone Listens is about a girl who advocates against ICE after they detain her family.
“I think it’s meant to scare children to demonize ICE, even from a young age,” Howell said. “We really thought that kids should learn values from the books that are read to them.”
The authors dedicated the book to children of ICE agents because of the scrutiny and demonization immigration officers face, according to Howell.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like to be the child of an ICE officer,” Howell said. “There’s a bunch of really angry and bad people who want to convince children that their parents are evil. They should feel pride in what their parents do, just like the son of a police officer or firefighter. I grew up playing with fire trucks and police cars, and maybe they should be playing with ICE vehicles.”
Anti-ICE rhetoric from the corporate media and politicians has had serious consequences. Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., and Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., compared ICE to the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. A host of other Democrats have attacked ICE with similar smears. ICE agents have also been the targets of numerous violent attacks, including one attack on an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas, where agitators fired shots at agents. Nearly a dozen were arrested and charged with domestic terrorism in this incident.
The authors plan to get their book into ICE family detention centers after the initial Amazon release. Howell said he hopes to visit a detention facility and read the books to children of illegal aliens in the same situation as the fictional dingo. In addition, they hope to get the book into school classrooms and libraries.
“Children need more stories that teach them not only compassion, but also the importance of family and respect for the rule of law,” Neuhaus said.
Skye Graham is an intern at The Federalist. She is a senior History major at Hillsdale College and serves as the assistant features editor for the Hillsdale Collegian.
