Generally, once I get most of the headline ducks in a row early Saturday morning, major dad and I like to use the day to get out of the house and maybe wander a bit. Perhaps even grab a lovely lunch complete with adult beverages.
It’s pretty much our one day of the week to chill.
One of the things we’ll do every month or so is take a ride over to Magnolia Springs, AL, to a restaurant we love. It’s nestled in what was an old country store, and doing some wicked good food. Helluva wine list, too.
What’s really nice about it is the drive. I love it. Thirty-five miles of still mostly Alabama farm country and pecan orchards with a couple of unique little burgs scattered along the way. There’s tiny Elberta’s charming main drag, complete with the Road Kill Cafe (Meat ‘n three!), and then in Foley, the intersection of US 98 and US 59. The buildings are turn-of-the-century, the flower baskets and street corner landscaping are stunning, and the Foley City Park, running alongside one corner, is eyepoppingly gorgeous. If it’s a weekend, it even has a miniature train hauling wee ones and grandparents around, who always seem to add that shrieky, happy kid sparkle to the shade of the big, old live oaks. It doesn’t matter how hot the day is.
Downtown Foley has faced its challenges, even as areas north and south have flourished with outlet malls, a local Porch Creek Indian owned amusement park, and subdivisions booming. The storefronts along the main drag have had their fits and starts, often with long periods of remaining vacant.
So, the last few times we’ve been through on our way west, we were interested to see one of the corner spots that had already been several restaurants over the decades gussying itself up once again. This time it looked as if someone was really dropping some money into the renovations, as what looked to be all new bar furniture, cowhides – all sorts of higher-end finishes could be seen briefly through the windows as we drove by.
It was intriguing, and, for sure, different.
This past Saturday, people were finally coming and going, and there were butts in seats, so we looked the place up to check out the menu when we got home – The Colt Grill.
This morning, one of my bestest Marine Corps girlfriends sent me a Facebook message with a link to her local paper’s page.
It contained an update from her Arizona Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office, expanding on a statement from the Arizona US District Attorney’s Office, and thanked their partners in what turned out to be a three-year-long investigation.
“I want to provide the community with an update on yesterday’s joint law enforcement operation involving our local and federal partners. The arrests and search warrants carried out were the result of a years-long investigation into a criminal enterprise operating in both Yavapai County and Alabama.
I want to thank the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors, the Arizona Legislature, and Governors Ducey and Hobbs for their continued support of the Local Border Security Fund, which makes operations like this possible.” – Sheriff Rhodes
It took me a minute to get into reading it because I was kind of surprised that daffy Katie Hobbs would allow her local law enforcement to actually assist federal immigration vice actively working to impede it like the lunatics in California (It turns out, she has nothing to say about it, thanks to the Arizona legislature and the statute gets pretty specific.).
But he didn’t say what – the District Attorney’s press release had that and, good gravy goodness.
PHOENIX, Ariz. – Yesterday, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and other law enforcement agencies executed federal search warrants at five Colt Grill restaurants and 12 residences in two states after a three-year labor exploitation investigation and a five-count federal indictment against four individuals in Arizona.
On May 27, 2025, a grand jury in Phoenix returned an indictment against Robert and Brenda Clouston, both 61, of northern Arizona, and Luis Pedro Rogel-Jaimes, age 33, and Iris Romero-Molina, age 29, both Mexican nationals illegally present in the United States and residing in Cottonwood, Arizona, for Conspiracy to Transport Illegal Aliens, Conspiracy to Harbor Illegal Aliens, Conspiracy to Encourage and Induce an Alien to Unlawfully Enter the United States, and Pattern and Practice of Knowingly Employing Unauthorized Aliens.
The indictment alleges that Robert and Brenda Clouston operated four Colt Grill restaurants in the northern Arizona cities of Cottonwood, Prescott, Prescott Valley, and Sedona, and one Colt Grill in Foley, Alabama. In September of 2022, the Cloustons, along with Rogel-Jaimes and Romero-Molina, made a plan that Romero-Molina would create a cleaning company, R&R AZ Cleaning, that would operate as a staffing company for the Colt Grill restaurants. Rogel-Jaimes and Romero-Molina would then find undocumented workers to work at the restaurants, paying them through R&R AZ Cleaning with funds from Colt Grill. The undocumented workers were paid below minimum wage and were not compensated for overtime. The Cloustons, Rogel-Jaimes, and Romero-Molina benefited financially from the plan and did not pay proper employment taxes for the workers.
Wait.
Isn’t that the place in Foley, ALABAMA, that just ope…why, yes. Yes, it was.
… A popular barbecue restaurant in downtown Foley is now under a federal investigation for alleged illicit money laundering, human smuggling, and labor exploitation.
Police and federal agents surrounded the Colt Grill off of West Laurel Avenue and Alston Street in Downtown Foley around 12:45 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon.
This restaurant is one of several locations tied to Colt Grill, a barbecue chain based in Arizona. The chain is now the focus of a complex criminal investigation, according to deputies with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona.
HOLY SMOKED MACKEREL
What the owners of the restaurant chain are accused of is so dastardly, it blows the average American mind. Particularly when you realize this is probably happening everywhere, and each operation can’t be contained within any given city or state.
…Starting in 2022, a plan was allegedly put in place whereby Romero-Molina and Rogel-Jaimes would allegedly “acquire” undocumented workers from Mexico to work at Colt locations. Robert Clouston allegedly signed leases for properties to house the undocumented workers and provided transportation for them to get to work, according to the indictment.
The document alleges Robert Clouston instructed managers of a Colt location to fire employees to “create employment opportunities for undocumented Mexican nationals for the purpose of having less expensive labor costs.”
Federal investigators claim the undocumented workers were allegedly paid compensation below the legal minimum wage and weren’t given overtime wages.
The indictment states the Cloustons allegedly “avoided paying an accurate minimum wage, time and a half wage, and required taxes in an amount beneficial to them between at least approximately September 27, 2022, and June 2024.”
According to the indictment, the Cloustons deliberately avoided using E-Verify, the federally mandated system used by employers to confirm an individual’s legal authorization to work in the U.S. Instead, investigators say the couple recruited Mexican nationals to work in their restaurants.
“The owners of this business, according to the indictment, recruited aliens, that is, you know, Mexican citizens, to come across the border for a financial purpose,” former federal prosecutor Josh Kolsrud explained. “The businesses won’t have to pay the appropriate taxes on those wages. So they’re saving money in two different fronts, one with payroll and the second with taxes with the U.S. and state governments, so that there’s a lot of financial incentives to try to cheat the government in this aspect.”
Golly Nell, the lengths they supposedly went to.
…The indictment further alleges that the Cloustons established a fake cleaning company—R&R AZ Cleaning LLC—as a shell entity to funnel under-the-table cash payments to some employees, bypassing wage laws and shielding the transactions from Colt Grill’s official accounting.
In January, when Mrs Clouston first started working with the City of Foley to renovate the building, I’m sure they were thrilled with her humane and altruistic impulses at the time. No doubt they were delighted to not only have a new business with deep pockets on the Laurel Avenue block, but such forward thinkers as owners to boot.
…GCM reported in January that Brenda Clouston worked with the City of Foley and Foley Main Street to bring new life to the old Foley Bakery building at the corner of North Alston Street and West Laurel Avenue, which was built in 1925.
The building renovation included “adding several apartments and a restaurant office on the second floor.”
“We’re going to provide employee housing upstairs. As we all know who are in small business, it’s difficult to find employees. So that’s one of the investments for us. To use those apartments,” Clouston said at a Foley Main Street meeting in June 2024 when the restaurant was announced for the first time.
“I believe in using my gifts to help other people, first and foremost,” Clouston said at the time. “It’s an advantage to build something in the center of town where you can be a light and you can share your gifts with other people. We chose [the location] so that people who came into the restaurant would not only have a good experience, but that they would use their resources on the menu.”
Now, I’ll bet the horror is off the charts when it turns out the ’employee housing’ could have been basically trafficked slave labor quarters.
Right in the heart of their little downtown.
There were also arrests made at the Foley location, even if the local media didn’t see any in progress, according to Homeland Security Investigations Southwest Deputy Communications Chief Yasmeen Pitts O’Keefe.
…O’Keefe wrote in an email to Gulf Coast Media July 16 that five people “were arrested yesterday in Foley, AL, but that number is subject to change as the investigation is ongoing.”
There isn’t anywhere in this country that the criminal conduct of the Biden administration in allowing the unrestricted flood of illegals over our border doesn’t reach its tentacles.
It’s not only the cheap labor for gardeners, processing plants, and pot farmers.
Or local Mexican restaurants.
FBI officials in Mobile confirm eight employees at El Patron restaurant in Robertsdale were arrested Tuesday on immigration charges during the execution of more than a dozen search warrants in six counties in Alabama.
Literally, they are right next door. You just don’t know it yet. Or maybe you’ve got a good idea.
The scale of the invasion is staggering and increasingly apparent with every single raid.
They all need to go and thank God someone’s finally on it.
In the meantime, Colt Grill competitors are feeling a bit chipper and having some fun over the current difficulties faced by their disgraced cheater-cheater pants rival.
Colt’s, a BBQ restaurant chain was raided by multiple federal L.E agencies related to illicit money laundering, labor exploitation and human smuggling.
A local restaurant/liquor store decided to take advantage of their competitor’s situation. LMAO pic.twitter.com/ibqnu3PLbO
— SOAR Save Our Amer. Republic 🇺🇸❤️🙏🏻 (@Lapleopards) July 16, 2025
…No raids. No cuffs. Just ridiculously good BBQ.
Come get yours before someone mistakes our flavor for a felony.
THAT, my friends, is a 100% all-American ribbing.
SOLD!
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