LA Protesters Arrested for Throwing Molotov Cocktails
Today the Trump administration gleefully announced the arrest of “an illegal alien from Mexico” named Emiliano Garduno Galvez, for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at law enforcement in Los Angeles.
It’s not hard to see why they’re highlighting the arrest, which is red meat for the President and his followers.
By citing his immigration status, the White House and the homeland security department in Washington are trying to portray the protests not as grassroots opposition to it and its immigration policies, but as an astroturf operation stoked by foreign forces. In other words, an “invasion” (the word Trump keeps using) that justifies the use of the armed forces.
To be fair, I was genuinely surprised that Garduno Galvez was not an American, having reported Monday on how so many of the LA protesters were clearly U.S. citizens. Had I gotten the story wrong?
I decided to investigate, and exclusively obtained Garduno Galvez’s resume, as well as that of a second individual also indicted today for throwing a Molotov, a man named Wrackkie Quiogue (a Filipino name, apparently).
The U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles issued a straightforward press release detailing the charges against Garduno Galvez and Quiogue. The immigration status of neither is mentioned. But that didn’t stop the Department of Homeland Security from highlighting Garduno Galvez’s status and taking credit for the arrest in an inflammatory tweet.
All of this follows continual statements by President Trump that protesters are professionals being paid, or that they are radical left interlopers from out of state, or that they are foreign financed.
The resumes tell a different story.
Contrary to the idea that these are otherwise unemployed flunkies of some foreign power, both men, 23 and 27, have been employed in the food industry their entire adult life. Both have also lived in California for years.
Whatever Garduno Galvez’s actual immigration status, his resume says he graduated the Gardena-Alta Vista Innovation High School in Gardena, California, in 2018 — when Trump was president, not Biden. He has been working in the food industry ever since.
As for Quiogue, his resume says he holds an Associate’s degree in Culinary Arts from the HTA hospitality academy in Los Angeles. He has worked mostly in the food industry but also says that he was a “creative consultant” managing social media accounts for several years, also going back to 2018.
Both are doing the menial work often carried out by immigrants and minorities, without which, frankly, Donald Trump couldn’t construct a building or run anything in the hospitality industry. Both undoubtedly have friends and colleagues in the restaurant world who are affected by the deportations. So there’s every reason to believe their motives were sincere, not some foreign plot.
I’m not, of course, defending either of them. But the idea that the protesters — even, allegedly, the most violent among them — are some kind of army of unemployed people picketing for a paycheck just isn’t true.
Ironically, the background of both men resembles that of the working class young men that Donald Trump went on podcasts like Joe Rogan’s to try to reach (even if they represent the flip side of America, of the young men that didn’t vote for Trump and don’t support him).
A recurring theme of the Trump administration seems to be its insistence that opposition to its policies is fake and can therefore be disregarded.
President Trump has accused Democratic officials like California Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass of having “paid troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists” to take part in the protests.
That doesn’t appear to be empty rhetoric, as homeland security, the FBI and the IRS are already investigating to prove the point.
“I think that there's major questions right now about who is financially backing these protests,”Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said today. “There's some activity on the ground that it seems that is highly coordinated, and that there might be a financial backer that could be even a foreign adversary. We are having … the IRS and the FBI, look further into who might be backing these protests.”
Crazy as that may sound, it’s a recurring theme for the administration. Following the spate of vandalism incidents against Tesla vehicles, Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed to prosecute those “operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.”
The same sorts of claims are breezily thrown around about protesters against the war in Gaza. It’s as if no one in power wants to accept that maybe people just aren’t happy with them or the system. The news media goes along with this by neglecting to simply report on what the protesters actually believe. Of all the reporting on the LA protests, how many stories quote them in their own words?
Instead the administration just dismisses the genuine anger by chalking it all up to “illegals” — a word that seems to serve the same function as “communist” in the Civil Rights Era.
Good luck with that.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
Thanks Ken for the in depth reporting. I'm ok with giving this guy his hearing and deporting him. He made a bad choice. This one or two arrests do not justify the disappearance of countless family members without criminal records that were swept up by ICE raids in recent months. The Admin is throwing the baby out with the bathwater because of Xenophobia. We need rule of law.
"“I think that there's major questions right now about who is financially backing these protests,”Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said today. “There's some activity on the ground that it seems that is highly coordinated, and that there might be a financial backer that could be even a foreign adversary. We are having … the IRS and the FBI, look further into who might be backing these protests.”"
In the internet age all it takes to be "highly coordinated" is a social media or other online presence.
No foreign financial backers are required.