One might have thought that the summer's assorted anarchists and agitators, those self-appointed guardians of the oppressed who fancy themselves revolutionaries in the mould of some half-remembered
fever dream, would have learned a simple lesson by now: FAFO, because actions have consequences. But no, apparently not.
It began in the wee hours of Wednesday, when officers from the Department of Homeland Security apprehended a gentleman in Ventura County, California, linked to the infamous July raid on the Glass House marijuana farm. There, ICE and their colleagues had the temerity to uncover underage laborers and round up over 300 individuals, only to find themselves set upon by a swarm of ideologically inflamed interlopers. Before the operation could even unfold on 10 July, a social media cabal had sniffed out the drama and converged en masse, some with hardware more suited to a siege than a sit-in.
The
U.S. Attorney's Office in Central California has now laid bare the extent of this little syndicate: an organized cadre explicitly formed to assault and obstruct officers in the midst of detaining criminal aliens. Amid the fray, a motley crew of protesters—many affiliated with "
VC Defensa," that charming volunteer outfit whose enthusiasts make a hobby of tailing, harrying, and hamstringing federal agents in the execution of immigration law, materialized like extras from a dystopian film set. Members of VC Defensa's "
Rapid Response Network" (one shudders at the nomenclature) make a point of staking out DHS offices and piping alerts to their comrades about any sighting of agents in the vicinity. On this occasion, the rabble, VC Defensa included, improvised a roadblock from farm machinery at the farm's chief ingress and egress.
One enterprising anarchist even produced a handgun and fired at the officers. Another, nabbed on Wednesday, was captured on footage lobbing boulders at federal vehicles along a secondary thoroughfare, where the protesters had fashioned yet another chokepoint for their ambush.
The authorities maintain that
Isai Carrillo, collared that morning in Oxnard, was in cahoots with
Virginia Reyes, herself a fugitive, skulking from justice, for pelting rocks at the agents' cars. Though Reyes remains at large, the pair stand accused of conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, an indictment that carries a potential five-year stretch in the federal slammer. Nor was California the sole theatre of folly. Officers have since rounded up several scumcrumpets in Los Angeles and
Las Vegas for the crime of raining down rocks, bicycles, scooters, and incendiary fluids upon
California Highway Patrolmen endeavoring to prevent a full-scale takeover of the freeway by their confrères. Ten souls now face charges of "obstructing, impeding, and interfering with law enforcement during a civil disorder," with the same five-year penalty looming.
It may come as a mild astonishment to the more woolly-headed denizens of the left, those low-information optimists (or 'lofos', as they are quaintly termed), that erecting barricades, bombarding constables with projectiles, and taking potshots at the federals falls somewhat short of the
First Amendment's remit.
"While the Constitution protects the freedom of speech and the freedom to peaceably assemble, it does not provide for the freedom to assault federal officers, impede or obstruct federal officers or conspire to do so, or destroy government property," observed
HSI Los Angeles Special Agent in Charge Eddy Wang, with the weary patience of one addressing perpetual adolescents.
Evidently, a great many souls remain blissfully ignorant of the fine print: time, place, and manner restrictions, not to mention the small matter of incitement, are not mere suggestions for the bien-pensant. (The Portland Police Bureau's own confusions on this score must await another post.)
In the Ventura melee orchestrated by VC Defensa, the toll included one injured officer and four vandalized government vehicles, reduced to so much scrap in the name of solidarity. And as if to underscore the transcontinental reach of such idiocy, another arrest has materialised in the Texas theatre of operations.
On Independence Day, no less, how poetically apt, elements of the
Socialist Rifle Association and
John Brown Gun Club, in unholy alliance with an Antifa cadre from
Dallas and
Fort Worth, orchestrated a trap at the
Prairieland ICE facility in Alvarado. Detonations lured the officers out, whereupon snipers from the gun club, a term that conjures less a sporting fellowship than a paramilitary cosplay society, plugged a policeman in the neck. By some miracle, the victim endured.
Of the 18 nabbed in this scheme to storm the facility, two have been slapped with terrorism counts, as chronicled in the annals of Antifa's Texas escapades tied to the 'No Kings' protest. But fresh tidings bring word of a female Antifa affiliate's capture. As
Andy Ngo discloses, "
Anarchy Marie," the nom de guerre of
Janette Goering, 35, a software engineer from
Carrollton, Texas, lent material aid to the plot against the ICE outpost. She furnished a
Faraday bag to the ringleader, a figure redolent of some messianic cult chieftain.
Goering now grapples with state charges of "aiding the commission of terrorism."
The cell's principals hailed from the John Brown Gun Club and Socialist Rifle Association—pair of anarchist armouries with Antifa sinews—and reprised gambits once essayed at the Tacoma, Washington, ICE site, in a pattern as predictable as it is perilous. One can only marvel at the ingenuity: from app-summoned mobs to sniper nests, all in service of a cause whose champions seem perpetually astonished when the state, that very 'system' they decry, declines to applaud their theatrics. It is, in the end, a find-out day of the most emphatic variety, a salutary reminder that even the most fervent ideologues cannot outrun the rule of law forever.
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