The pro-immigration protests that erupted last week in Los Angeles have now spread across the United States. On Tuesday there were confrontations between police and demonstrators in Atlanta, Chicago and Denver, where tear gas was used to disperse a crowd. Police in New York City arrested 45 people as they came under attack from a variety of projectiles thrown by a mob that numbered several hundred. Demonstrators shouted ‘shame, shame’; one local councillor, Shahana Hanif, accused the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of ‘attacking our communities’.
The anti-ICE protestors are in the minority
The protests began in L.A. last Friday when ICE officers began rounding up suspected illegal immigrants in the Hispanic districts of Westlake and Paramount. In one raid ICE arrested 44 unauthorised immigrants at a job site.
Donald Trump promptly despatched 700 Marines to L.A., and doubled the National Guard’s presence to 4,000 in an attempt to restore order to a city where so far 23 businesses have been looted by demonstrators. A curfew was imposed on parts of downtown L.A. on Tuesday evening.
The anti-ICE protestors are in the minority. Opinion polls in the USA consistently find that the majority of Americans support strict border controls and endorse Trump’s deportation policy. One such poll published on Monday by CBS revealed that 54 per cent of respondents approve of Trump’s policy.
European polls return similar results, whether in Britain, Germany or France. A YouGov poll last August asked Britons if they ‘support or oppose a move to increase the number of deportations of illegal immigrants from the UK’. Sixty-seven per cent voiced their support and 19 per cent expressed their opposition.
Yet the will of the silent majority is ignored by the political class and challenged by an aggressive minority.
It is said that what starts in America usually makes its way to Europe, so the Old Continent should brace itself for similar events in the coming months.
Large (peaceful) pro-immigration demonstrations have already occurred in cities such as Rome and Berlin, but in Paris earlier this year there was what Le Monde described as ‘chaotic and turbulent scenes’ as police and protestors clashed. The demonstrators had gathered to try and prevent police evicting hundreds of migrants who had been squatting in a theatre for three months.
There has also been disorder in Britain. In May 2021, immigration officials in Glasgow were surrounded by a 200-strong mob as they attempted to detain two men. The pair were taken to a nearby mosque and later released back into the community by Police Scotland in order, as they said in a statement, ‘to protect the safety, public health and wellbeing of those involved in the detention and subsequent protest.
Last year masked protestors in south London blocked a coach that was taking asylum seekers to the Bibby Stockholm barge in Dorset. The protestor’s leader declared through a megaphone that the ‘Government wants to make it illegal to protect our friends’. There were violent scuffles as the police cleared the road of protestors and made several arrests.
There have also been incidences of passengers on commercial aircraft intervening to prevent foreign criminals from being deported; the most notorious case was in 2018 when holidaymakers on a Turkish Airlines flight at Heathrow came to the aid of a Somalian rapist and prevented his deportation. It took the Home Office another five years before the man was expelled.
The violence exhibited by some pro-immigration supporters is emboldened by virtue. They believe they are good people acting in a good cause, and therefore the end justifies the means.
How will Europe’s small but powerful pro-migrant minority respond if the EU makes good on its pledge to introduce ‘return hubs’ in an effort to stem the continent’s migrant crisis? The initiative was outlined in March this year: those arriving illegally in Europe will be sent to countries outside the EU where their asylum claims will be processed.
Amnesty International savaged the plan, declaring it ‘a new low for Europe’ because migrants will ‘languish in detention centres, with little credible guarantees that their rights will be upheld’.
This argument won’t wash with the majority of Europeans who for years have been demanding that their governments restore order to their borders. They have been ignored by a political elite which has consistently sided with the minority in favour of mass immigration.
Trump, on the other hand, is acting in the interest of the majority and deporting those who are in America illegally. The liberal minority is tasting defeat and, like all bad losers, their rage knows no bounds.
Comments