Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

The mayor of Los Angeles is imposing a nighttime curfew to curtail the continuing anti-ICE riots and combat looting and vandalism amid the chaos.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass (D.) announced a curfew beginning at 8 p.m. Pacific time in downtown Los Angeles and lifting at 6 a.m. She warned violators that law-enforcement officers would arrest them.

“I issued a curfew starting tonight at 8pm for Downtown Los Angeles to stop bad actors who are taking advantage of the President’s chaotic escalation,” Bass said.

“If you do not live or work in Downtown L.A., avoid the area. Law enforcement will arrest individuals who break the curfew, and you will be prosecuted.”

Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom (D.) have faced criticism for allowing the riots against Immigration and Customs Enforcement to get out of hand and for taking a soft-handed approach. Both Democrats have attacked President Trump and his administration for quickly sending in the National Guard to quell the violence after local law enforcement was overwhelmed.

“If I didn’t ‘SEND IN THE TROOPS’ to Los Angeles the last three nights, that once beautiful and great City would be burning to the ground right now,” Trump said Tuesday morning on Truth Social.

Trump and Newsom have exchanged heated rhetoric over Newsom’s handling of the rioting and Trump’s decision to quickly intervene. Newsom has cast Trump as an authoritarian, wannabe dictator for mobilizing the National Guard to stop the violence.

How dare Trump enforce public order and deport illegal alien felons?

In the coming days, you’re going to see an enormous effort by the Democrats and large swaths of the media to declare that if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had never tried to enforce immigration law in Los Angeles, the city would not be beset by so much widespread violence and unrest this past weekend. Implicit in that argument is the idea that Los Angeles city and county are so primed for violence, such a powder keg of anarchic malcontents, that the U.S. government must simply throw up its hands and concede that it cannot enforce immigration law there. You see, this reflects how the likes of Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass approach governing — when a task is too difficult, they just don’t even make the attempt.

In the minds of the progressive Democrats who run the city and county of Los Angeles and the state of California, ICE efforts to arrest and deport those who have entered the country illegally are unpopular among their constituents and, therefore, must be illegitimate.

That is not how it works, of course.

I sometimes think that news organizations in Los Angeles don’t want to give their audiences and readers a clear picture of what’s actually happening in their city. Here’s the opening sentence of an article published online by the Los Angeles NBC affiliate Friday afternoon: “A group of people were seen outside of a business named Ambiance in the Fashion District of downtown Los Angeles.”

Hey, remember those basics of journalism, the who, the what, the when, the where, the why, and sometimes the how? Are we just not doing any of that anymore?

The next sentence reads, “Essayli tells NBC4 that the FBI was working along with other federal agencies to serve a search warrant, which were [sic] signed by a judge, because they have probable cause to believe this employer is using fictitious documents for some of its workers.”

There’s nothing indicating to readers that “Essayli” is Bilal A. “Bill” Essayli, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, the chief federal prosecutor for the region.

Mayor Karen Bass issued a statement Friday afternoon declaring, “We received reports of federal immigration enforcement actions in multiple locations in Los Angeles. As mayor of a proud city of immigrants, who contribute to our city in so many ways, I am deeply angered by what has taken place. These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city. My office is in close coordination with immigrant rights community organizations. We will not stand for this.”

Throughout the day, Bass issued one statement after another that kept referring to “immigrants” — refusing to even acknowledge the distinction between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants.

California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a statement Friday contending, “continued chaotic federal sweeps, across California, to meet an arbitrary arrest quota are as reckless as they are cruel. Donald Trump’s chaos is eroding trust, tearing families apart, and undermining the workers and industries that power America’s economy.”

What makes these law enforcement actions “chaotic” and “reckless”?

The following morning, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons contended that an angry crowd of Los Angeles residents had assaulted federal agents, and the Los Angeles Police Department had an inexplicably delayed response:

As rioters attacked federal ICE and law enforcement officers on the L.A. streets, Mayor Bass took the side of chaos and lawlessness over law enforcement.

Our brave officers were vastly outnumbered, as over 1,000 rioters surrounded and attacked a federal building. It took over two hours for the Los Angeles Police Department to respond, despite being called multiple times. The brave men and women of ICE were in Los Angeles arresting criminal illegal aliens including gang members, drug traffickers and those with a history of assault, cruelty to children, domestic violence, robbery, and smuggling.

The protest was outside the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building. The headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department is three-tenths of a mile away, an eight-minute walk.

• Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights (CHIRLA)
  

  If you are a Californian, the current LA riots are an example of your tax dollars hard at work.

  The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Right—CHIRLA—is one of the key players in fomenting the violent response to immigration enforcement actions. It’s an LA-based nonprofit with a… pic.twitter.com/PSzSsdu0hg

  — Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) June 9, 2025

• Party for Socialism and Liberation
• International ANSWER
• Billionaire socialist Neville Roy Singham
• People’s Forum
• SEIU

Unión del Barrio and Centro CSO

Another downtown Los Angeles press conference on Friday featured speakers from Unión del Barrio and Centro CSO, Facebook video shows. Unión del Barrio’s Ron Gochez told his audience about the need to resist ICE “by any means necessary.”

“If we organize, we can kick their asses out of every single ghetto, every single barrio, anywhere where our people are,” Gochez said, drawing applause.

“Who gives a damn about legality, when these people have their boot to our neck,” Gochez said, referencing immigration law. “We have … every single obligation, moral, historical, we have every reason to defend our people, to defend our community, to defend our families by whatever means necessary.”

Unión del Barrio describes itself as “entirely self-financed through membership dues, community contributions, and local fundraising” on its website, while Centro CSO says it is a member-funded grassroots group. The organizations did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

The Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) helped spread SEIU’s graphic about CHIRLA’s Friday press conference on X. “Citizens who know their rights can disrupt and slow ICE incursions, as well as pressure local authorities to take action,” another Friday X post from the group reads. The DSA chapter did not respond to a request for comment.

Snip.

The 50501 Movement, formed in response to the second Trump administration, promoted the protests on Bluesky throughout the weekend, including the Friday 4 p.m. gathering. 50501 National Press Coordinator Hunter Dunn posted about being personally among the protesters.

(Hat tip: Director Blue.)

Voters elected Donald Trump for a reason, and if Chris Van Hollen, Will Bunch or anyone else thinks they’re going to fool the electorate into sharing their sympathy for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, they’re simply delusional. But we have often seen the Left enthralled by such delusions.

Jan Myrdal, Marita Wikander, Gunnar Bergström and Hedvig Ekerwald were Swedish socialists who enthusiastically supported Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, a widespread sentiment in Sweden at the time:

The Indochinese revolutionary movements enjoyed widespread support in Swedish society, particularly among supporters of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. When the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh [in April 1975] and expelled its inhabitants, 15,000 Swedes greeted their victory by spontaneously celebrating in the center of Stockholm.

The arrival of Year Zero in Democratic Kampuchea was, as we now know, the beginning of one of the most murderous tyrannies in all human history. The best estimates are that Pol Pot’s communist regime killed about 1.5 million people, nearly 25% of the country’s population.

The first widely noticed account of the ongoing massacre in Cambodia was published by the Reader’s Digest in February 1977, and immediately sparked widespread controversy. The Left, having embraced the Communist regime in Cambodia, denounced the Reader’s Digest account as “propaganda.” To quote Wikipedia:

According to Joel Brinkley, “Khmer Rouge apologists [among Western academics] easily outnumbered those who believed a tragedy was under way.” . . .
[H]uman-rights activist David Hawk . . . claimed that the West was indifferent to the atrocities taking place in Cambodia due to “the influence of anti-war academics on the American left who obfuscated Khmer Rouge behavior, denigrated the post-1975 refugee reports, and denounced the journalists who got those stories.”

In the prevailing worldview of the intelligentsia, the Communists must be good, because America was bad. Therefore, reports about atrocities in Cambodia (based on accounts from those who had escaped) must be false or exaggerated. Such was the background of the August 1978 trip to Cambodia by Myrdal, Wikander, Bergström and Ekerwald as a delegation from the Sweden-Kampuchea Friendship Association (SKFA). They spent two weeks as guests of the Khmer Rouge, even having dinner with Pol Pot, and “returned to Sweden where they undertook a speaking tour and wrote articles in support of the Democratic Kampuchea regime.” Bergström expressed the belief that, under the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia could become “a very special model for the third world … an ideal society with no oppressors.” And this, keep in mind, was a brutal regime that killed a higher percentage of their national population than any known dictatorship in all human history. Among the victims were Marita Wikander’s husband. She had married a Khmer Rouge diplomat, who returned to Cambodia in 1977. During the SKFA trip to Phnom Penh in 1978, she asked to see her husband. The request was denied. It wasn’t until years later that she learned he had been executed by the regime shortly after his return to Cambodia. Such an “ideal society“!

The analogy to current liberal politics is obvious enough. Viewing Trump as the Sum of All Evils, liberals reflexively attack any policy advocated by Trump. Therefore, if Trump wishes to deport criminal illegal aliens, liberals must defend criminal illegal aliens: “Free Kilmar!”

Los Angeles is grappling with a wave of violence and destruction that has left local business owners reeling, as captured in a viral TikTok video from NewsNationNow, posted on 10 June 2025.

The video features a furious LA business owner, Monty, owner of Bargain2Perfumes, whose store was ransacked during protests against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. ‘This is ridiculous.

This doesn’t look like they’re protesting ICE or anything… Just looting the stores,’ he told NewsNation, echoing sentiments shared across X posts.

Yet, California Governor Gavin Newsom has repeatedly called these events ‘peaceful protests,’ a stark contrast to the reported £80 million ($107 million) in property damage since 6 June 2025, including looted stores, torched vehicles, and vandalised buildings.

So President Trump chose criminal deportation, law and order, and tough on crime.

California Democrats Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass chose lawsuits and states’ rights.

Who do you think won this latest round? I’d say Mr. Trump 10, Democrats zero.

It’s just hard to believe that removing illegal alien criminals who have committed sexual assault and murders would be attacked by one of our two major political parties.

But that’s the state of play among Democrats. Shame on Governor Newsom in particular.

And good for Senator Fetterman for being just about the only Democrat to stand up and say that peaceful free speech is good, but violent protest is not. And Democrats should not be defending violent protests.

And Mr. Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, is absolutely right that Mr. Newsom and Ms. Bass should be thanking ICE for making California a safer place.

In an interview with Greta Van Susteren, Mr. Homan said, “What angers me the most” is that “people aren’t looking at the facts. ICE arrested significant public safety threats in the last few days in L.A. We arrested a murderer — a Vietnamese national who murdered teenagers at a graduation party.”

He added that “we arrested several sexual predators — child sexual predators — we arrested people convicted of armed robbery, arrested people for domestic violence and all sorts of public safety threats.”

And as protesters and trouble makers turn to violence to oppose ICE’s safety actions, remarkably the Democrats chose to support the rioters committing arson, and looting, smashing police cars, throwing rocks at ICE agents, spitting on the American flag and setting it on fire, and spray-painting “Death to America” graffiti on government buildings.

Mr. Trump’s rapid action to protect public safety and avoid a truly vast insurrection by bringing in the National Guard and Marines was a stroke of genius.

The chaotic anti-ICE riots aren’t just confined to California; anti-ICE agitators have taken their lawlessness to the East Coast. On Saturday, New York City joined Los Angeles in becoming a flashpoint for radical protests, as demonstrators clashed with law enforcement after a mob of nearly 150 people tried to block federal officials from conducting an immigration raid in Manhattan.

More than 20 anti-ICE protestors were arrested after interfering with immigration authorities trying to carry out lawful operations. The activists were actively obstructing the removal of criminal illegal immigrants. At one point, the mob attempted to block a white van from exiting the area. It successfully forced it back into the building’s parking garage after agitators threw themselves at the vehicle. The New York Police Department (NYPD) arrived and started pushing protesters back onto the other side of the street. Authorities warned protestors to disperse or get arrested

While the Austin protest was largely peaceful, it ended with a dozen arrests and a standoff between demonstrators and state and local police who deployed tear gas and pepper ball projectiles against a smaller group of protesters after they graffitied a federal building and threw rocks at officers.

Snip.

Laiba Khan, an organizer with the Austin chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, said the group organized the protest specifically because of the Trump administration’s response to the LA demonstrations.

Quoting that not because it’s important, but just so I have the tags ready the next time these Austin commies burn something else down.

“If the goal is to lose elections in perpetuity, they have devised the perfect plan.”