Far-left Democratic public officials are continuing to dissemble and prevaricate about the nature of the targeted enforcement operations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies in Los Angeles.
Ventura Deputy Mayor Doug Halter called the enforcement “terrorism.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass claimed the city was peaceful until the Trump administration attempted to enforce immigration laws. The two appeared at a presser with more than three dozen other far-left mayors.
At the White House, spokesman Karoline Leavitt explained the simple truth. The Trump administration sent federal agents to Los Angeles to enforce immigration laws; leftists rioted and attacked law enforcement, some with Molotov cocktails, which led to a charge of attempted murder.
The False Claims
Halter’s bizarre mendacities far exceed those of Bass, and seemed to promise rebellion and insurrection against the federal government.
“This is absolutely unconscionable, what’s going on,” Halter tremulously began:
I have never thought in my life that I would be seeing this sort of disruption, and this sort of terrorism attack on our citizens, on our community, on our residents, our friends, our family, our neighbors, our workers, our employers.
Noting that his Italian grandparents raised him to love his country, Halter said that “this has got to stop”:
We’ve been asking for comprehensive immigration reform for at least 30 years. Now, if you really want to be a hero, get on it and get it done. And leave our people alone, because we will fight and we will defend them. They’re part of our community. They will always be a part of our community.
Halter didn’t explain what he meant by “we will fight and we will defend them,” but obstructing the arrest of an illegal alien is a federal crime. Organized obstruction might be construed as inciting a rebellion or insurrection, which is what rioters have perpetrated in Los Angeles.
If that’s what Halter meant, he won’t have been the first state or local official to promise such resistance.
The bloviations from Bass — once an operative for a Cuban intelligence front — were less threatening, but nonetheless far-fetched.
“A week ago, everything was peaceful in the city of Los Angeles and in all of the representatives’ behind me, in their cities as well,” Bass claimed:
Things began to be difficult on Friday when raids took place. And it’s important that I begin there because that is the cause of the problems that have happened in the city of Los Angeles and other cities. This was … provoked by the White House. The reason why, we don’t know.
Why the Enforcement?
Both officials are lying. The enforcement is not “terrorism,” a raid on peace-loving “migrants” — “undocumented” though they might be — just trying to earn a daily crust for their families. Nor did the administration cause the problems.
Los Angeles and California caused the problem by making the city and state a magnet for illegal immigration with outlandish taxpayer-funded benefits. The drain on taxpayers in providing Medicaid for illegals is so severe, for instance, that even Newsom wants to end it.
That truth aside, as The New American reported yesterday, border czar Tom Homan explained why ICE and other federal agents were in the city, and what happened before organized leftists began rioting.
“We served three criminal search warrants” in cases that involved “money laundering, tax evasion, and customs fraud,” he told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo:
We got a company that brought in over $87 million of goods … underdeclared, and they failed to pay $17 million in tariff taxes. And it’s part of a bigger overarching investigation [about] how some of the money of these companies is being funneled to Mexico and Colombia to fund cartel activity.
ICE served the warrants and collared 40 illegal aliens that worked for the company. ICE teams also arrested other illegals that day, including “several child sexual predators” and a thrice-convicted domestic abuser.
“We took a lot of bad people off the street that day,” Homan told Cuomo.
Anarchist-communist protesters “blocked the agents from leaving safely with the people we had in our custody … and the evidence we had in our custody,” Homan said. When ICE called for back-up from L.A. cops, Bass told them to “stand down.”
Thus Bass, not Trump, is the cause of the riots by refusing to help ICE.
Leavitt Explains
And it wasn’t ICE agents who lobbed rocks from bridges onto police cars, or hurled Molotov cocktails at law enforcement.
“Left-wing radicals waving foreign flags viciously attacked ICE and Border Patrol agents as well as Los Angeles police officers,” Leavitt said:
These criminals injured police, threw rocks at police cars and officers, burned vehicles, shut down freeways, and lobbed Molotov cocktails all because the Trump administration was removing violent criminal illegal aliens from the city.
But the target of the attack wasn’t just law enforcement, Leavitt added. Rather, the target was America itself. “Rioters burned American flags [and] chanted ‘Death to ICE.'” That slogan and worse appeared in graffiti.
“But President Trump will never allow mob rule to prevail in America,” Leavitt continued:
The most basic duty of government is to preserve law and order, and this administration embraces that sacred responsibility.
Democrats like Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass shamefully failed to meet their sworn obligations to their citizens. They didn’t have the courage to do the right thing and protect law-abiding Californians from rioters.
That’s why President Trump deployed the National Guard and mobilized Marines to end the chaos and restore law and order.
The mob violence is being stomped out. The criminals responsible will be swiftly brought to justice, and the Trump administration’s operations to arrest illegal aliens are continuing unabated.
Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security corrected the falsehoods that Newsom, Bass, and others are spreading with several photos and videos posted to X. The posts show burning cars, rioters tossing rocks at police, and rioters lighting fire to police cars from an overpass.
As Leavitt also noted, federal authorities have arrested 330 rioting illegals, 113 of whom had prior convictions; 157 people have been arrested for assault, obstruction, or obstruction-related charges.
One illegal, a previously deported Mexican, was arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail at officers.
