A San Diego city councilman drew the ire of viewers on social media and condemnation from the White House after posting a photo of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents with the word “terrorists” written in red.
In doing so, councilman Sean Elo-Rivera upped his attacks on ICE agents from his previous name-calling, which included epithets such as “cowards,” “criminals,” and “jackbooted thugs.”
On Saturday he took to Instagram with the show-and-tell version, claiming ICE is a purveyor of “state sponsored terrorism.” The photo was accompanied by the Rage Against the Machine song “Bulls On Parade.”
“Look at this photo. This isn’t a war zone — it’s a neighborhood in our city,” Elo-Rivera wrote in the post. “In San Diego, they’ve targeted parents dropping off their kids at school, people following the law inside courthouses, and workers just doing their jobs at local restaurants.”
Stephen Miller, firebrand White House aide, hit back with a post on X, showing the councilman’s doctored photo and stating the real terrorism was coming from the left wing.
We are living in the age of leftwing domestic terrorism. They are openly encouraging violence against law enforcement to aid and abet the invasion of America. https://t.co/ncyd85cvDG
— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) May 31, 2025
The raids are part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on alien criminals who have rap sheets ranging from rape to murder, Homeland Security authorities have said. Elo-Rivera disagreed.
“These are federal agents carrying out raids under the false pretense of ‘safety,'” he said. “This isn’t safety. It’s state-sponsored terrorism. And anyone who cares about freedom — and true safety — should be fighting back.”
Prior to the post Friday night, Elo-Rivera shared a series of Instagram stories criticizing ICE action in the city. Fox News quoted one of them:
They’ve targeted parents outside schools in my district. They’ve targeted people following the law at courthouses. Tonight, they targeted hard working folks in South Park and tomorrow it could be anyone in any neighborhood in San Diego. The only way we put a stop to it is by not looking away and demanding that it end.
After the councilman’s most recent rant was shared by Los Angeles-based Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin on Saturday afternoon, Elo-Rivera doubled down on his photo post.
WATCH — ICE Agent: Biden Administration Immigration Policies Put the Public at Risk:
“A Fox ‘News’ correspondent has called attention to my choice of words,” Elo-Rivera wrote. “I said what I meant and meant what I said.”
He followed with a screenshot from Cornell Law School’s website that lists the “common elements” of terrorism, before calling dozens of critical Instagram users “fascists.”
The posts came not long after Patricia Hyde, the head of ICE Boston, said sanctuary city officials are escalating their activities against immigration enforcement, and an ICE spokesman told Fox News there has been a 413-percent increase in assaults against agents.
“I think the lack of cooperation is getting worse and worse, and it’s putting law enforcement lives in danger,” Hyde told Fox.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
