The filthy, illegal “Occupy ICE” encampment in Portland, Ore., that spurred nationwide protests against immigration enforcement efforts may finally have been dismantled Wednesday but there is no indication that leftists are planning a de-escalation in their not-so-metaphorical war against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Occupy ICE protests are still in progress throughout the country.
In Louisville, Ky., several anti-ICE demonstrators were arrested Thursday at the Heyburn Building, the location of an immigration court. Police said nine individuals bound themselves together and then blocked the building’s elevators. Occupy ICE protesters were also thrown out of another illegal camp on West Chestnut Street downtown, WLKY reports. Police previously shut down a separate Occupy ICE encampment outside the ICE building on Seventh Street.
In Philadelphia, Penn., Mayor Jim Kenney agreed to meet with three Occupy ICE leaders Friday after they attempted a sit-in outside his office Wednesday. Activists are demanding that Philadelphia, a so-called sanctuary city, cease sharing arrest information with immigration officials.
Portland’s leftist mayor, Ted Wheeler (D), an ally of the activists, relented to political pressure and ordered the Third World-style garbage dump of a protest site near an ICE facility removed despite its presence in one of the most politically correct cities in America. Most campers left under threat of being arrested or ticketed.
But their stench remained.
Local police have referred to the Occupy ICE protest site, which was set up purportedly to protest the government’s policy of temporarily separating members of illegal alien families, as a biohazard, according to the Daily Caller.
“The protesters left the area strewn with plenty of garbage — including recyclable material like plastic containers and liquor bottles that the activists didn’t bother to place in the appropriate bins. They even built a latrine.”
The city has offered to cover some of the clean-up expenses, but critics say the demonstrators should have to pay their fair share.
“It was pretty disgusting that that’s how they were living back there,” local resident Frank Savage was quoted telling FOX 12.
Savage said he’s glad the protest is over. “Getting tired of waking up to the bullhorn and the sounds and the cussing,” he said.
On Tuesday evening members of the conservative group Patriot Prayer showed up to protest the occupiers.
“Just showing up to see what the hell’s going on down here and kind of show everyone the mess that they’ve made,” Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson said to KATU. “And calling out Ted Wheeler. Ted Wheeler is the one who encouraged all this to happen for five weeks. He said he’d protect them, the police won’t come in here, and now all of a sudden he wants to kick them out.”
As Gibson is probably aware, no one has ever accused anarchists or other leftists of being consistent or logical.
And in that vein, Daniel Greenfield pointed out the strange government-like structure that emerged among the self-described anarchists at the camp. Photography was banned in the anarchist red-and-black flag-draped camp that had defined borders enforced by its inhabitants. Reporter Andy C. Ngo went further, describing it as a “fortress society.”
Those opposed to the existence of ICE have been adopting in-your-face tactics in recent months.
In addition to occupying city halls and setting up Occupy ICE encampments, the leftists of Antifa have “doxxed” 1,600 ICE employees, publishing their personal information online. WikiLeaks doxxed another 9,000 supposed current and former ICE employees, claiming it did so because it was important for “increasing accountability.”
Antifa’s cousins in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) terrorized Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen into abandoning her dinner June 19 at Washington’s MXDC Cocina Mexicana restaurant. (DHS is ICE’s parent agency.) The disrupters shouted “shame!” and “end family separation!” at Nielsen, who left the eatery without acknowledging the demonstrators.
Trump White House officials associated with immigration policy have been stalked and taunted by left-wingers.
Immigration hardliner Stephen Miller has been screamed at in the capital city for doing his job. A set of “wanted” posters appeared near his downtown apartment. He famously discarded an $80 box of sushi after a chef heckled him as he left a restaurant (Miller said he feared his food had been spat on).
Presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway was accosted in a supermarket. Former chief strategist Stephen Bannon was harassed while he was quietly minding his own business in a bookstore.
The roots of the Occupy ICE movement go back at least to February.
The anarchist thugs of Antifa have been obstructing immigration law enforcement since at least the early part of this year. On Feb. 15 about 70 activists surrounded a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) van that was attempting to enter the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles. The anarchists chanted “no more deportations,” “Trump and Pence must go,” “f–k ICE,” as well as slogans in the Spanish language. Although the two ICE agents in the van at the time were unharmed and there were no arrests, the action was viewed by anarchists as a successful test of the tactic.
The Occupy ICE movement, which overlaps heavily with Antifa, is part of the Left’s increasingly violent campaign against immigration enforcement. This antisocial tantrum isn’t just a rejection of ICE – it is a wholesale repudiation of borders and immigration laws, that is, of the idea of the United States as a sovereign nation.
As Trump Derangement Syndrome drives the increasingly bold radical wing of the Democratic Party to flex its muscles, the abolition of ICE is well on its way to becoming part of the Democratic Party’s formal platform.
Democrat office-holders Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), along with Reps. Mark Pocan (Wisc.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Earl Blumenauer (Ore.), Jim McGovern (Mass.), Nydia Velazquez (N.Y.), Raul Grijalva (Ariz.), and Adriano Espaillat (N.Y.), have embraced this spectacularly boneheaded ICE-abolition movement in what can only be described as an act of suicidal ideation. They don’t care how many Kate Steinles get murdered in the future by illegal aliens.
While there may be plenty of Americans, even Republicans, generally sympathetic to the plight of illegal aliens, the wholesale destruction of the nation’s immigration enforcement apparatus certainly does not poll well. Americans don’t want to erase the nation’s borders and turn the country into a sprawling, anarchic neutral zone between Canada and Mexico where anything goes.
Sanctuary cities – and now sanctuary states – are a growing problem. The sanctuary movement gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans by, among other things, stigmatizing immigration enforcement. Some left-wingers call sanctuary jurisdictions “civil liberties safe zones.” The phrase blurs the distinction between citizens and non-citizens, implying illegal aliens somehow possess a civil right to be present in the U.S. These sanctuary cities really ought to be called traitor cities because they are in open rebellion against the United States.
Clearly, President Trump’s effort to bring true reform to America’s immigration system has a long way to go.
(photo by Matthew Vadum, July 16, 2018, Rock Creek Park, Washington, D.C.)
This article by Matthew Vadum first appeared July 27, 2018, at FrontPageMag.