Courage, as they say, is not the absence of fear but the willingness to stand firm when the storm comes howling at your door. Mark Fitzpatrick, owner of the Old State Saloon in Idaho, is learning that lesson in real time.
His establishment has become ground zero in America’s ongoing immigration debate after posting a promotion on social media that offered free beer to patrons who assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in identifying and deporting illegal immigrants. The post, published in late November, has been viewed nearly eight million times and sparked a firestorm that would make a prairie wildfire look tame by comparison.
The Department of Homeland Security amplified the message by reposting it, and that is when things got serious. Fitzpatrick reports receiving death threats, promises to burn down his business, and messages so vile they would make a sailor blush. His family has been threatened. His livelihood has been targeted. All for exercising his First Amendment rights and supporting law enforcement.
“At Old State Saloon, we really are not strangers to speaking out boldly about conservative Christian values and truth and putting the truth out there,” Fitzpatrick explained. He acknowledged that speaking plainly in a world he describes as filled with “deception” and “evil” tends to upset people.
This is not the first time Fitzpatrick has stirred the pot. In 2024, his saloon launched “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month” during June, offering discounts and free beer for heterosexual men, women, and couples as a direct counter-programming to Pride Month. That promotion also generated controversy, though apparently not on the scale of his current predicament.
Fitzpatrick traces his latest promotional idea to what he calls four years of immigration policy disaster under the previous administration. He describes those policies as having incentivized “some of the worst of the worst people in the world to come into this country.” His promotion, he insists, was designed to support law enforcement and ICE officers who are doing difficult and dangerous work.
The response has been swift and, in many cases, vicious. The saloon has been documenting social media exchanges with critics who vehemently oppose its conservative stance. “What liberals want to do is they attack you,” Fitzpatrick observed. “They go on attack and they start calling you names.”
The threats have escalated beyond name-calling. Fitzpatrick has received what he describes as “disgusting” messages and voicemails, including explicit threats to torch his establishment. “People are just outright saying I should die for this,” he said. “It’s really, really despicable.”
Despite the vitriol, Fitzpatrick extends an olive branch of sorts. He urges his critics to visit the saloon in person, asserting that “if any of those liberals actually came in and were willing to talk,” they would find someone “who would sit down with them and talk and listen to what they have to say.”
The question worth asking is this: When did supporting law enforcement become grounds for death threats? When did exercising free speech warrant promises of arson and violence? These are not rhetorical questions but rather markers of where we are as a nation.
The Department of Homeland Security has reported an unprecedented surge in threats against ICE officers, with death threats soaring by eight thousand percent. That statistic alone should give every American pause, regardless of political persuasion.
Fitzpatrick’s story is about more than free beer or immigration policy. It is about whether Americans can still speak their minds without fearing for their lives and livelihoods. The answer to that question will tell us much about the country we have become.
Related: Charlotte Stabbing Suspect Had Been Deported Before Open Border Policies Let Him Return
