Latest news with #Essayli
Los Angeles Times
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
L.A. activist indicted after handing out face shields to anti-ICE protesters
A local activist who handed out protective face shields to protesters last month during demonstrations against the Trump administration's chaotic immigration raids was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday. Alejandro Orellana, a 29-year-old member of the Boyle Heights-based community organization Centro CSO, faces charges of conspiracy and aiding and abetting civil disorder, court records show. According to the indictment, Orellana and at least two others drove around downtown L.A. in a pickup truck distributing Uvex Bionic face shields and other items to a crowd engaged in a protest near the federal building on Los Angeles Street on June 9. Prosecutors allege Orellana was helping protesters withstand less-lethal munitions being deployed by Los Angeles police officers and Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies after an unlawful assembly had been declared. . Orellana is due in court on Thursday morning. An e-mail to his federal public defender seeking comment was not immediately returned. U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, a former California Assemblyman appointed by President Trump, has promised to aggressively prosecute anyone who interferes with immigration enforcement operations or harms police during protests. Federal prosecutors have brought at least 14 cases related to last month's demonstrations and Essayli promised more people will be charged. Asked how handing out defensive equipment was a crime during a news conference last month, Essayli insisted Orellana was specifically handing out supplies to violent demonstrators. 'He wasn't handing masks out at the beach. ... They're covering their faces. They're wearing backpacks. These weren't peaceful protesters,' he said. 'They weren't holding up signs, with a political message. They came to do violence.' Essayli described anyone who remained at a protest scene after an unlawful assembly as a 'rioter' and said peaceful protesters 'don't need a face shield.' Orellana, who works for United Parcel Service, has no criminal record and previously served in the U.S. Marines, according to Carlos Montes, a fellow member of Centro CSO. Montes said he believes Essayli is specifically targeting Centro CSO for its pro-immigrant activism, noting FBI agents seized another member's cellphone last week as part of their investigation into Orellana. 'It's ridiculous charges. We're demanding they drop the charges now. They're insignificant, ridiculous,' Montes said. 'The most it amounts to is that he was passing out personal protective equipment, which includes boxes of water, hand sanitizer and snacks.' A spokesperson for the U.S. Marine Corps did not immediately respond to a request for Orellana's service record. Montes also challenged Essayli's argument that peaceful protesters have no need for protective equipment, pointing to myriad instances in which people have been seriously injured by Los Angeles police and county sheriff's deputies in recent years. A Times investigation last month highlighted incidents where protesters allege LAPD officers fired rubber rounds and other crowd control munitions without warning in recent weeks, causing demonstrators and members of the media to suffer broken bones, concussions and other forms of severe harm. Times staff writer Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.
The Intercept
24-06-2025
- Politics
- The Intercept
Trump Appointee Prosecuting LA Protesters Defended Jan. 6 Suspects
Support Us © THE INTERCEPT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Then-state Assembly Member Bill Essayli speaks at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., on June 1, 2023. Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo As an attorney , Bill Essayli represented two January 6 defendants, arguing that men accused of crimes outside the U.S. Capitol were merely expressing their First Amendment rights. Now that he's representing the Trump administration as the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, he has a very different perspective on some of the protesters opposing mass deportation. 'They are injuring our officers. It is out of control, and since the state of California, the governor, can't control his state, then yes, the federal government is going to step in. The National Guard is on its way, and we will have peace and order in Los Angeles,' said Essayli, who is serving as Donald Trump's interim U.S. attorney in Los Angeles. Elected in 2022 as a Republican state assembly member representing California's Inland Empire, the junior legislator rose quickly to a prized Justice Department post. Despite passing little legislation in his two terms in Sacramento, Essayli elevated his profile in the MAGA world by introducing bills seemingly designed to grab the attention of the far-right media world — and defending these extreme proposals loudly on Fox News. Now he represents Trump administration's interests in federal court in Los Angeles, where Essayli has hit demonstrators who took to the streets to protest Trump's deportation campaign with conspiracy charges that carry stiff sentences, while claiming that he supports the right to peaceful protest. Trump has yet to formally nominate anyone to serve as the U.S. attorney on a permanent basis. If he does tap Essayli, whose temporary appointment expires at the end of July, activists in California are calling on the state's two U.S. senators to block his confirmation using an obscure privilege known as the 'blue slip' process. 'This tradition was made for exactly these kinds of things, where an attorney is just not acceptable as an appointee. He's not there for justice but for partisan purposes,' said Jacob Daruvala, the director of the Stop Essayli campaign and a former constituent involved in LGBTQ+ advocacy. Essayli did not respond to a request for comment sent through his office. Essayli was sworn in as the interim U.S. attorney in Los Angeles on April 2, following his appointment by Attorney General Pam Bondi under a federal statute that allows him to stay in the post for 120 days. He brought to the post more experience than some of the administration's other interim appointments — such as Ed Martin in Washington, D.C. — having previously participated in the office's prosecutions of the 2015 San Bernardino mass shooting attack as an assistant U.S. attorney. Since his appointment, however, Essayli has quickly alienated career prosecutors, protesters in Los Angeles, and top politicians across the state. One of his first moves was to sign his name to a rare post-trial plea deal for a sheriff's deputy who had already been convicted of excessive force for pepper-spraying a woman outside a supermarket. Soon thereafter, several federal prosecutors withdrew from the case and resigned from the office, according to the Los Angeles Times. As the demonstrations over ICE raids in Los Angeles heated up over the past month, Essayli was out front on local media defending the administration's aggressive response. At one press conference, Essayli said the administration had 'no choice' but to send in the National Guard. 'Our agents and our law enforcements were overwhelmed,' he said. He also made charging decisions that riled up elected officials and grassroots protesters alike. His office slapped union leader David Huerta, the state SEIU chief, with charges that carry a six-year maximum for confronting federal agents at a worksite raid on June 6. The charges against Huerta galvanized state Democrats, including U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, who was briefly detained after attempting to question Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem at a June 12 press conference. Essayli was present as Secret Service agents ejected and handcuffed Padilla, who was released without being arrested. In an interview this week, Essayli accused Padilla of perpetrating a 'stunt' and blamed him for the incident. 'He's a very large person,' Essayli told Fox 11. 'He's very tall, he's got a big demeanor. And he started charging, pushing his way through the security, shouting. We didn't know he was here. We didn't know who he was at the time. And then he started shouting, and then he was dragged out.' Read our complete coverage Federal prosecutors have cast their eye well beyond powerbrokers such as Huerta. Another high-profile charge came against a member of a community organizing group called Centro CSO who was allegedly spotted on news cameras handing out face shields to demonstrators in downtown Los Angeles. The man, Alejandro Orellana, faces charges of conspiracy to commit civil disorders and aiding and abetting civil disorders that carry up to five years in prison. As Fox News and other outlets whipped up an online frenzy about the face shield distribution — seeing it as evidence of a well-funded conspiracy behind the immigration protests — FBI agents zeroed in on Orellana and raided his house. In a statement, a group supporting Orellana said he was guilty only of 'providing aid to the community being tear-gassed.' Essayli defended the charges in the same interview with Fox 11. 'He wasn't handing them out at the beach. He was there in downtown Los Angeles, and he's handing them out to people who are dressed and behaving similarly to the people who have been committing riots. These are people hiding their faces, wearing black from top to bottom,' Essayli said. 'Why would a peaceful protester need a face shield?' Seeking to diminish the popular outrage over ICE raids, national Republicans have floated claims that various groups are the hidden hand funding the protests. Essayli sounded a similar note in his interview, promising that prosecutors would go after protest funders. 'We'll get to the bottom of that,' he said. Essayli said last week that he has already brought about 20 charges. In a prior life as an attorney in private practice, Essayli espoused radically different views about the protesters who gathered around the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to block Congress from certifying Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election. For a time he represented Alan Hostetter, a former police chief who came to the Capitol with a hatchet in his backpack and joined protesters who pushed through a line of police officers defending the building. Essayli criticized prosecutors after Hostetter was charged, noting that the indictment did not directly accuse him of violence. 'He was there to support the objection to the election, which members of Congress did do. I am concerned because we are getting to a dangerous place where we're trying to criminalize political differences,' Essayli said. Hostetter would go on to represent himself at trial. He was convicted and sentenced to more than 11 years in prison. Essayli made similar arguments in defense of Brandon Straka, a social media influencer charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct in connection with the Capitol riot. 'Defendant and others present on January 6 were engaged in a protest to express their dissatisfaction with the manner in which the 2020 presidential election was conducted and certified,' he wrote in one legal brief. 'Doing so in a peaceful manner was well within their First Amendment rights.' Prosecutors never accused Straka of entering the Capitol, but they said he helped whip up the crowd with statements on social media and in person. In a sentencing memo, Essayli accused federal prosecutors of trying to load far too much responsibility for the breach of the Capitol onto his client's shoulders. 'There was no conspiracy. This was a demonstration that unfortunately spiraled out of control,' Essayli said. Straka and Hostetter would go on to receive pardons from Trump. Essayli served only two and a half years in the California State Assembly, where he represented Corona and other suburbs east of Los Angeles and became the body's first Muslim member. During his time in the state capitol, Essayli raised his public profile despite little legislative success. He recorded one of the highest rates in the Legislature for missed votes. Explaining his own meager track record of legislation, Essayli said he used his bills to 'communicate issues' and spark debate. His style, as much as his conservative beliefs, rankled colleagues across the aisle. He once called some Democrats in the state Legislature 'pedophile protectors' for blocking his bill to end sanctuary state protections for people convicted of sex crimes against minors. 'If he can use it for political theater, he is going to do it, no matter who it hurts.' In the Assembly, Essayli also pursed a forced outing bill for transgender students that had little chance of passing. When it went nowhere, he went on a tour of southern California school districts urging them to impose similar policies requiring staffers to inform parents if their children use names or pronouns that differ from their sex assigned at birth. It was during the debate over that bill that Essayli and another lawmaker, Democratic Assembly Member Corey Jackson, got into a verbal confrontation that resulted in another lawmaker physically preventing Jackson from moving toward Essayli, the Sacramento Bee reported. In an interview last week, Jackson said he had heard from some of Essayli's Republican colleagues that they were glad to have him gone. 'At the end of the day, this guy is an ideologue, and all of his decisions are based upon ideology,' Jackson said. 'It's based upon key MAGA principles. It is that that guides his actions, not the law.' 'If he can use it for political theater, he is going to do it, no matter who it hurts,' Jackson added. Lacking in power in the Democrat-controlled Assembly, Essayli turned to Fox News, where he became a frequent late-night guest. Weeks after Trump's election to a second term, he appeared in the 11 p.m. slot denouncing Democratic jurisdictions that were promising not to cooperate with mass deportations. Under Senate tradition, members of the home-state delegation are given an effective veto over U.S. attorney nominees via the 'blue slip' process. That means Essayli's chance of winning the nomination could rest on convincing Padilla and his fellow Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, according to University of Richmond law school professor Carl Tobias, an expert on the confirmation process. 'If either senator says no from California, it's over for this nominee. That may be the hardest obstacle,' Tobias said. 'That's what the White House has to work with: Padilla.' Padilla, Schiff, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. 'I think Donald Trump was trying to choose the most anti-California person he could, and that was Bill Essayli.' LGBTQ+ activists have been among those urging Padilla and Schiff to block Essayli if Trump formally nominates him for the job on a permanent basis. Daruvala, the Inland Empire resident mounting the Stop Essayli campaign, said he was motivated by Essayli's position on trans kids' rights. He believes Essayli received the interim appointment essentially to anger state Democrats. 'I think Donald Trump was trying to choose the most anti-California person he could, and that was Bill Essayli,' he said. Even if Essayli never receives Senate confirmation, however, he could find himself rewarded by Trump. Martin, the short-lived U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., received an appointment as the Justice Department's top pardon attorney after receiving pushback in the U.S. Senate. Join The Conversation
Politico
14-06-2025
- Politics
- Politico
Bill Essayli is out for revenge
Bill Essayli, the recently appointed 39-year-old U.S. attorney for California's central district, spent years in Sacramento angrily chafing at one-party rule — elected but impotent. Now he's ready to show the state's Democrats how it feels to be powerless. He has already charged David Huerta, one of California's most powerful union leaders, with felony conspiracy for allegedly impeding an ICE arrest by participating in a protest. On Thursday, he stood by as California Sen. Alex Padilla was handcuffed and forced to the ground at a press conference hosted by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Now, other Democratic politicians say they fear being seen at immigration protests, confident that Essayli will seize any chance to put former colleagues behind bars and revel in the fallout. 'As legislators, we know fully well that if he has an opportunity and can somehow connect us to any violence or any disruptions that are going on, he is going to try to arrest us,' Assemblymember Corey Jackson said in an interview. 'It makes me feel crazy that I have to say these things. But it's the truth.' Essayli is President Donald Trump's man on the immigration battlefield of Los Angeles — a rapid status shift for a politician who not long ago was a junior, little-liked Republican state lawmaker. As an agitator turned enforcer with an ax to grind and the full weight of federal law enforcement at his back, Essayli is animated by many of the same vengeful impulses that drive the president who appointed him. (Essayli did not respond to interview requests for this story.) 'The Democrats that bullied Bill Essayli should be very worried,' said Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, a Republican who worked to get Essayli elected before serving alongside him. 'They've never been held accountable. But life changes.' Any story about the arc of Bill Essayli's career should probably begin on April 10, 2002. While visiting the Wells Fargo branch where his mother worked, the 17-year-old Essayli witnessed a bank robber leaving the building. As Essayli tells it, he instinctively jumped in his car to follow the suspect, writing down the thief's license number so he could report the vehicle to federal investigators. His actions that day earned him a personal letter from then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, a man who would later go on to investigate Essayli's current boss, who praised the teenager's 'tremendous initiative.' Raised by Lebanese immigrant parents on the western edge of the Inland Empire, east of Los Angeles, Essayli was long drawn to law enforcement, serving as a volunteer in Corona's police department Explorer program. After becoming the first member of his family to graduate college, Essayli attended Chapman University School of Law, which has been home to prominent conservatives like John Eastman and Hugh Hewitt. Essayli went into private practice before two years as a Riverside County prosecutor and four as an assistant U.S. attorney. In that role he worked on the deadly 2015 shooting and attempted bombing by alleged homegrown extremists in San Bernardino. In 2018, Essayli became directly involved in politics, joining a campaign to repeal a gas-tax increase while mounting his own failed, somewhat moderate, candidacy for the state assembly. Four years later, after district lines were redrawn, Essayli ran again on a tough on crime and conservative school issues platform. He was the first Muslim elected to the California State Assembly, representing a diverse, semi-rural region in a district Trump won by 12 points in 2024. But when the clean-cut Essayli came to Sacramento in 2022, he made little effort to conform to the capital's hobnobby culture and was quite open about how much he detested it. Even fellow Republicans who agreed with his politics disagreed with his tactics and aggressive stance toward Democrats and his own party. His political life, as his friend DeMaio described it, was a 'lonely' one. Upon arriving in the capital he hung the 2002 letter from Mueller on his office wall. Essayli quickly made a name for himself by taking up red-meat conservative causes and authoring bills that would require school staff to notify parents if their children might be transgender and mandate government identification to vote. He raged against the state's Covid-19 restrictions and criticized critical race theory. None of his bills became law, but Essayli distinguished himself on the Assembly floor with his penchant for political theater. His pattern of outlandish outbursts and near-physical altercations were of the sort that largely disappeared from the legislative process in the nineteenth century (Jackson himself once had to be restrained from Essayli after the two clashed on the Assembly floor). Other lawmakers, staff and lobbyists traded accounts of their favorite Essayli episodes. In one, he called the speaker pro tempore a 'fucking liar' on the Assembly floor. In another he banged a fist on his desk in petulant fury, shouting into the void of his muted microphone as state lawmakers looked on. To like-minded conservatives, this presented a vision of how a disruptive, aggressive opposition party should function. DeMaio, who was elected to the Assembly two years after Essayli and has followed in his footsteps, said he showed how an opposition party could 'illustrate how the other side is wrong' even if you don't get 'drinks paid for at the bars.' Essayli wasn't worried about rubbing people the wrong way, according to his former chief of staff Shawn Lewis. On a personal level, he was kind and even funny. But Essayli, according to Lewis, was also driven by 'an unshakable sense of what is right and wrong.' The outbursts were no performance, but rather the outward projections of a true believer's frustrations. 'Bill Essayli sees things as they can and should be, not as they are,' Lewis said. But at least some political observers believe that Essayli's moves were calculated. There are few avenues to power for a hard-right Republican in Democrat-dominated California. Serving as an avatar for the Trump administration's talking points within the state Legislature was one of them. And the performances led to even bigger platforms: regular appearances on Fox News that won him a casual following nationally among the MAGA faithful. 'I think he's a very smart guy,' Anthony Rendon, a former Assembly speaker, said of Essayli. 'There's nothing Bill does that isn't very well thought-out.' In April 2025, Essayli announced that he would be leaving Sacramento to accept an interim appointment as the top federal prosecutor for seven Southern California counties with a population of nearly 20 million people. Elsewhere, Trump sought out personal confidants, longtime political allies and loyal defenders to fill U.S. attorney's offices. In his hometown of New York City, Trump named Jay Clayton, who had served as his appointee atop the Securities and Exchange Commission, to the post. Trump's former personal attorney Alina Habba was named the prosecutor in New Jersey, home to Trump's Bedminster golf course. In Washington, D.C., he has placed conservative legal activist Ed Martin, a former lawyer for Jan. 6 defendants, and Fox News host Jeanine Pirro into powerful prosecutorial positions. Essayli does not have the same direct connection to Trump's circle, but his appointment vindicated the way Essayli had spent his brief time in Sacramento. Upon being named to the post, he made clear he was ready to adopt Trump's ethos. 'I intend to implement the President's mission to restore trust in our justice system and pursue those who dare to cause harm to the United States and the People of our nation,' Essayli said. Newly backed by a small army of lawyers and special agents, Essayli is aiming at many of the same targets that eluded him as a politician. In April, he launched a task force to investigate fraud and corruption within homelessness funding sources administered by California's Democratic officials. In May, he threw his support behind a Justice Department investigation into Title IX violations in the state, alleging that transgender athletes were 'violating women's civil rights.' At the beginning of June, Essayli warned an air quality management district in Southern California to abandon plans to impose fees on gas appliances, threatening 'all appropriate action' to stop the regulations. But it is his role backing Trump's immigration enforcement actions that has given Essayli his biggest opportunity to flex his newfound power. Earlier this week, prominent conservative commentator Marc Thiessen suggested that Essayli may have found a workaround for sanctuary city laws, by charging migrants held on state charges with federal crimes in an effort to force local officials to turn them over to ICE. (Thiessen did not respond to a request to explain further.) In Los Angeles, his authority ran up against the most basic form of dissent: public protest. As immigration enforcement officials, aided by Essayli's search warrants and federal agents, launched targeted raids of migrant communities, they were met by demonstrators who intended to stand in the way. On Monday, Essayli announced that his prosecutors would use social media and video evidence to pursue protesters who threw objects at officers. Yesterday, two protesters were charged with possessing Molotov cocktails, which Essayli said would be punished by up to 10 years in prison. 'I don't care who you are — if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted,' Essayli wrote on X after Huerta's arrest on June 6. Immigrant advocacy and LGBTQ+ rights organizations allege that he intends to use that authority to 'prosecute his political opponents.' 'Bill Essayli spent his short career in the Legislature with a singular agenda: to attack the students and families he was supposed to serve,' said Kristi Hirst, the co-founder of Our Schools USA, an advocacy organization that pushes for LGBTQ-friendly school policies. 'Essayli is not interested in seeking justice.' Those concerns have now manifested in a political campaign called Stop Essayli run by Jacob Daruvala, a former constituent of Essayli's and a local LGBTQ+ advocate. The lobbying effort, which remains something of a hail Mary, is aimed at persuading Sens. Adam Schiff and Padilla to block Essayli's official confirmation, which would rid him of his interim title. If a permanent replacement is not confirmed within 120 days, the federal district court for his jurisdiction would instead appoint someone else to serve in the role until a Senate confirmation is successful. But without the votes to block his path, it is only a delicate historical courtesy, which Schiff and Padilla will have to ask the Senate to respect, that stands between Essayli and a permanent assignment. Daruvala is asking California's senators to withhold their 'blue slips,' a Senate tradition in which committees defer to a nominee's home-state senators for guidance on confirmation. There is something poetic in that question. After Essayli made his name defying the decorum of the California Legislature, it is only decorum that can halt his upward rise. Jeremy B. White contributed to this report.
Washington Post
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
How Trump is bypassing Los Angeles's sanctuary city hurdles
While the media has focused on President Donald Trump's deployment of the California National Guard to quell immigration riots in Los Angeles, there is a much more significant aspect of his crackdown on sanctuary cities and states. The Trump administration has found an innovative way to neutralize California's sanctuary policies, forcing local officials to hand over illegal migrants for deportation despite state and local sanctuary laws and policies that bar them from doing so. California law enforcement officials can refuse to cooperate with 'ICE detainers,' requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to transfer illegal migrants held in local jails to federal immigration officials. That is because ICE detainers are nonbinding and can be disregarded by the local agency. But Bill Essayli, Trump's recently appointed U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, has come up with a way to compel California's cooperation. Local officials can 'ignore detainers, but they can't ignore [federal criminal] warrants,' he told me in an interview. So, in his first weeks in office, Essayli launched Operation Guardian Angel, a federal task force that is scanning criminal databases every day to identify illegal migrants arrested in the Los Angeles area, and then checking their fingerprints against immigration records to see whether they have previously been deported. If they have, Essayli charges them with illegal reentry, a federal crime, and obtains an arrest warrant from a federal judge, which cannot be ignored by sanctuary jurisdictions. The operation has been underway for less than a month, but already California is being forced to hand over dozens of illegal migrants to ICE each week. Fox News's Bill Melugin reported on one of the first ICE detentions under Operation Guardian Angel of a previously deported illegal migrant, who had just been arrested in a robbery in the sanctuary jurisdiction of Los Angeles. Once the concept is proven there, the Justice Department can deploy Operation Guardian Angel across California — and then nationwide. 'It could be done in every sanctuary city,' Essayli told me. 'Every jurisdiction has access to these databases, and everyone who's booked in a jail has to be fingerprinted.' His pioneering effort will save lives. Indeed, if Operation Guardian Angel had been in place 10 years ago, Kate Steinle might still be alive today. In 2015, the young California woman was shot in the back on a San Francisco pier by an illegal migrant, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, who was free because the city refused to honor an ICE detainer. Zarate had been deported five times and thus could easily have been charged with the federal crime of illegal reentry, which would have compelled San Francisco to hand him over to ICE. According to police, in February an illegal migrant in the Los Angeles area named José Cristian Saravia-Sánchez shot and killed a 48-year-old father of two who interrupted him attempting to steal a neighbor's catalytic converter. Saravia-Sánchez had been arrested 11 times between June 2022 and August 2024, but Essayli says local law enforcement was prevented by state law from complying with an ICE detainer. Saravia-Sánchez was deported in 2013, so had Operation Guardian Angel been in effect, local police could have been forced to turn him over to ICE — and two Inglewood boys might still have their father. Stories such as this are why, Essayli said, most local sheriffs who have had their hands tied by sanctuary policies want to cooperate with ICE. 'We briefed the sheriffs. A lot of the sheriffs were excited. They were like, 'We've been waiting for this.'' Others, he said, were incredulous when presented with their first federal arrest warrants. 'They looked like they're having a heart attack,' he said. 'A lot of them were like, 'Well, what are these?' I said: 'It's a warrant. You deal with warrants every day. There's nothing different about this.'' So far, he has faced no resistance from local law enforcement, Essayli said. He cautions that anyone interfering with the federal warrants will face serious consequences. I asked him what can be done if the illegal migrants found in criminal databases have not been previously deported. They could be charged with other federal crimes, Essayli said. 'If they have a firearm, it could be possession of a firearm. If they have a drug offense, we can hit them with a drug offense. If they have fraud, we can charge fraud. There's a lot of charges we can take federally other than illegal reentry.' But gathering evidence for these crimes takes time, during which the suspects could be released. Charging migrants with illegal reentry is the fastest way to obtain a federal warrant. 'It's a very simple case. You're here, you've clearly committed an offense because you're not supposed to be here,' he says. Essayli says that the politicians behind California's sanctuary policies are not only putting the lives of American citizens at risk but also making things worse for the illegal migrants they are purporting to protect. 'If they had just complied or honored our ICE detainers, a lot of these people would just be processed administratively,' he said. But by forcing him to get federal criminal warrants, 'they are causing these illegal aliens to potentially have to serve prison time before their deportation.' This much is certain: The riots will be contained, and order will soon be restored to Los Angeles's streets. But Operation Guardian Angel is coming to a sanctuary city near you.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Yahoo
2 men charged with throwing Molotov cocktails at officers during protests
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney's Office on Wednesday announced charges against two men accused of attacking law enforcement with Molotov cocktails during recent immigration protests in the Los Angeles area. Emiliano Garduno Galvez, 23, of Paramount, and Wrackkie Quiogue, 27, of Long Beach, are each charged with possessing a destructive device. Both face a maximum of 10 years in federal prison if convicted. According to U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, Galvez hid behind a fence during a protest targeting an ICE raid in Paramount on Saturday and threw the explosive at a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy before running away. Deputies quickly chased and arrested him. On Sunday, police arrested Quiogue 'after spotting him with a Molotov cocktail in his hand,' Essayli said at a news conference. 'Officers witnessed him throw the device in the air and then arrested him with a lighter in his right hand.' No law enforcement officers were seriously injured. Both protests led to officers using tear gas, flash bang grenades and rubber bullets to disperse crowds of violent demonstrators, federal officials said. 'The last few days, we have seen vicious attacks on our agents and our properties here in the federal government. The escalation of violence by these rioters poses a serious threat to our agents and the safety of the public,' Essayli said. 'Throwing rocks, explosives, assaulting agents, and committing other acts of violence are extremely dangerous and will not be tolerated.' Officials said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department collaborated on the two cases. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
