Anti-ICE Protesters Riot in San Francisco; No ‘Escalation’ by Trump Needed
A protest in San Francisco in solidarity with riots against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Los Angeles turned into a riot — and it needed no supposed provocation from the National Guard.
Democrats, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, have tried to blame President Donald Trump for the violence that has gripped downtown L.A. for three days, saying that his decision to federalize 2,000 California National Guard troops to quell anti-ICE riots escalated the situation.
But the San Francisco riot showed that anti-ICE activists need no further provocation to use violence.
The San Francisco Chroniclereported:
At about 7:30 p.m., two demonstrators smashed sledgehammers into doors and windows on the Sansome Street building where the ICE office is located. The exterior of the building was defaced with graffiti that read “F— ICE,” “ACAB” and other messages.
San Francisco police later ordered hundreds of demonstrators gathered near Sansome and Jackson streets to disperse, and officers then advanced in a line toward the crowd, which held its ground. Eventually the two sides pushed each other as they tussled over a metal barricade they held between their bodies. Officers pushed the group back about half a block. The crowd, which had dwindled to about 200 people, chanted “abolish ICE.”
The New York Timesadded:
At least one protester hurled an egg in the officers’ direction. Another threw a glass bottle that shattered on the ground just behind the officers. The group chanted, “Fascist pigs, off our streets!” and “Why are you in riot gear? We don’t see a riot here.”
…
Protesters picked up metal barricades and pushed them toward the officers who pushed them back, both sides grasping the same blockades and ramming them at each other. Soon, it appeared both sides were brawling.
The riots were the most serious in California since the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, which Democratic public officials did little to control, and which led to a crime wave whose effects are still being felt in the state.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
