We watched what happens when good intentions become violent theater and when mobs are allowed to replace law and order. Frontline reports from the anti-ICE riots make it clear: this wasn’t merely a spontaneous street demonstration — it was organized chaos that threatened everyday Americans and the rule of law. Patriots who work for a living saw their cities trashed while elites and celebrities cheered from safe distance.

What began as protests against federal immigration enforcement in Los Angeles in June 2025 quickly metastasized into widespread unrest, with clashes around federal facilities, property destruction, and dangerous blockades of public roadways. Those scenes weren’t abstract — they were nightly images of a city under siege, and ordinary citizens paid the price for the failure of leadership in many of our largest media outlets.

The federal response was decisive because it had to be: the White House ordered thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines to the area to protect federal personnel and property. Critics will squawk about optics, but when local law enforcement is overwhelmed and federal facilities are under attack, commanders must act to restore order and safeguard innocent lives.

Democratic governors and mayors predictably tried to turn the story into a political cudgel, decrying the federal deployment while many civilian neighborhoods were being exposed to the danger those protests created. California officials called the move illegal and inflammatory, even as officers and federal agents were being targeted and infrastructure was threatened — a stunning inversion of priorities that rewards disorder.

While the hard-left and much of the legacy media insisted on framing these scenes as “peaceful” or “understandable,” video and eyewitness accounts tell a bluntly different story: cars burned, riots erupted, and public servants were assaulted on duty. That disconnect between what Americans saw with their own eyes and what cable anchors told them is not benign bias — it’s an enabling of violence that would be shameful in any free society.

Worse still, federal investigators have flagged the movement behind these attacks as more than mere protest activity, with domestic terrorism and criminal probes opened into coordinated anti-ICE operations in multiple regions. If law enforcement is looking into networks that plan, fund, and supply violent confrontations, that should be welcomed by every American who values safety over spectacle.

Let’s be blunt: there is nothing noble about cheering when a federal facility is besieged or when officers are hurt. The brave journalists who stood on those frontlines and called out the ugliness deserve our respect, and their reporting should force a national reckoning about who is funding and orchestrating these disruptions. We must insist on accountability — not platitudes.

Now is the time for lawmakers to stop appeasing the chaos merchants and start defending citizens. Support for lawful immigration enforcement, respect for local businesses and homeowners, and clear consequences for violent agitators are not radical positions — they are basic obligations of government. Americans who pay taxes and keep this country running deserve the protection of their leaders.

We will not be silenced by insults from coastal elites or by a media class that prefers narratives to facts. The frontline reporting from the anti-ICE riots exposed something ugly, and every patriotic American should demand that our institutions follow the evidence, protect our communities, and punish those who seek to turn protest into an excuse for rioting.