FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino Says Agencies Have Arrested 700 Rioters

Federal agencies have arrested more than 700 people amid the riots against the enforcement of the nation’s popular immigration laws, according to Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI.

“We warned those violently acting out in the recent riots that we would not tolerate it, and we would not forget,” Bongino tweeted June 21, adding:

Over 700 arrests have been made in coordination with our federal and state partners. Many of those arrests are members of organized groups, and we are pouring through data in pursuit of more bad actors. We are not done. We are in the process of identifying and moving in on those who threw rocks at law enforcement officers and damaged property. I told you we would not forget. I wasn’t kidding.

Bongino provided no details about the charges — or the jail sentences — facing the rioters.

California’s pro-migration establishment media has provided some details of claimed crimes amid the very sympathetic coverage provided to the people who are trying to block enforcement of the nation’s border laws.

On June 21, for example, the Los Angeles Times picked for its lead story the provided comments from a protester named Job Garcia who filmed the arrest of two illegal migrants after Garcia was arrested and released:

In the video, a stunned man can be seen texting behind the wheel. He had apparently refused to open his door. It’s unclear from the footage what happened next, but Garcia said an agent lunged toward him and pushed him.

“My first reaction was to like push his [the agent’s] hand off,” [Garcia] recalled. Then, he said, the agent grabbed his left arm, twisted it behind his back and threw his phone. The agent brought him to the ground and three other agents jumped in, Garcia said.

“Get the f— down sir” and “give me your f— hand. You want it, you got it, sir, you f— got it. You want to go to jail, fine. You got it,” an agent can be heard saying in the video.

The agents returned his phone to him before transporting him to a holding cell.

@latimes

Border Patrol agents arrest U.S. citizen at Home Depot A 37-year-old U.S. citizen who was tackled to the ground and arrested after filming federal agents at Home Depot on Thursday said he was held for more than an hour near Dodger Stadium, where agents boasted about how many immigrants they arrested. “How many bodies did you guys grab today?” he said one agent asked. “Oh, we grabbed 31,“ the other replied. “That was a good day today,” the first agent responded. The two high-fived, as Garcia sat on the asphalt under the sun, he said. Job Garcia was released on Friday from a downtown federal detention center. No apparent criminal charges have yet to be filed. He is one of several U.S citizens arrested during enforcement operations in recent days. Department of Homeland Security officials say some have illegally interfered with agents’ jobs. In response to questions about why Garcia was arrested and if he’d been charged, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A. recommended a reporter contact the Department of Homeland Security. DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol did not respond to a request for comment “They call them ‘bodies,’ they reduce them to bodies,” he said. “My blood was boiling.” Garcia, a photographer and doctoral student Claremont Graduate University had been picking up a delivery at Home Depot, when someone approached the customer desk and said something was unfolding outside. “La migra, La migra,” he heard as he walked out. He quickly grabbed his phone and followed agents around the parking lot, telling them they were “f— useless” until he came to a group of them forming a half-circle around a box truck. A Border Patrol agent radioed someone and then slammed his baton against the passenger window, his video shows. Glass shattered. He unlocked the door as people shouted. In the video, a stunned man can be seen texting behind the wheel. He had apparently refused to open his door. It’s unclear from the footage what happened next, but Garcia said an agent lunged toward him and pushed him. “My first reaction was to like push his hand off,” he recalled. Then, he said, the agent grabbed his left arm, twisted it behind his back and threw his phone. The agent brought him to the ground and three other agents jumped in, Garcia said “Get the f— down sir” and “give me your f— hand. You want it, you got it, sir, you f— got it. You want to go to jail, fine. You got it,” an agent can be heard saying in the video. “You wanted it, you got it,” the man yelled. An agent handcuffed him so hard “that there was no circulation running to my fingers,” Garcia said. Pinned down, Garcia had difficulty breathing. “That moment, I thought I could probably die here,” he said. The agent put Garcia’s phone back in his pocket. The recording kept running. As Garcia was put into a vehicle, his video captured an agent twice saying: “I’ve got one back here.” “You got one what?” Garcia shot back. “You got one what?” He said an agent told him in broken Spanish to “wait here,’ though it could not be heard on the video. “I f— speak English, you f— dumbass,” he clearly shouts back. No agent asked if he was an American citizen, he said. Nobody asked for identification. “They assumed that I was undocumented,” he said later in an interview.

♬ original sound – The Los Angeles Times – The Los Angeles Times

Garcia has not been charged, but he told the Los Angeles Times that he had met Adrian Martinez, a citizen charged with impeding a federal officer during the arrest of an illegal migrant. “They were bullying this older guy,” Martinez told Garcia, according to the Los Angeles Times:  “I didn’t like that so I went and confronted them and they put their hands on me and I pushed their hands off,” Martinez told Garcia, the newspaper said.

A video of Martinez’s arrest is also online:

@latimes

U.S. citizen confronting agents during a sweep is arrested. A 20-year-old Walmart employee was returning from break on Tuesday when he saw Border Patrol trucks taking a maintenance worker in the parking lot, he jumped out of the car and wheeled the man’s trash can in front of the vehicle as other passersby gathered around the truck yelling, blaring their horns. Surveillance and other video captured at the scene and looped in social media feeds show an agent sprinting out of the truck and then pushing Adrian Martinez to the ground. He stands back up arguing and chaotic scuffle erupts. “What is he doing? He’s a f***king hard worker,” Martinez can be heard yelling as more armed agents arrive some in plain clothes, shoving him and forcibly arresting him.

♬ original sound – The Los Angeles Times – The Los Angeles Times

The arrests are being driven by a wave of semi-organized riots and blockages of federal agents in California. The state and local police forces in the state are doing little to prevent the Democrats’ massive resistance to federal enforcement, as local Democratic leaders ignore the problem of illegal migration and insist the street fighting is entirely caused by President Donald Trump’s decision to enforce the law.

Policing expert Heather Mac Donald wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

How much rioting is acceptable? A partial inventory of the recent activities now deemed consistent with overall public order: launching commercial grade fireworks loaded with nails and broken glass at police in the hope of blinding and maiming them; hurling Molotov cocktails at officers; stoning a squad car with a female officer inside it; dropping cement blocks, scooters and grocery carts from freeway overpasses onto California Highway Patrol officers; commandeering part of a freeway; blocking intersections with flaming dumpsters; defacing city landmarks with graffiti; smashing into and looting retailers including Adidas, Apple, CVS, T-Mobile, jewelry stores and a gasoline station.

…

Oh, but not all of Los Angeles was a war zone, the Democratic establishment argues; the majority of its neighborhoods weren’t undergoing a riot. The 1992 riots were much more extensive. Therefore, federal backup was unnecessary and authoritarian.

The Democrats’ defense of California’s illegal migrant population is rational for a political party built on high taxes, government spending, and enforced diversity. For example, Democrats in California rely on waves of poor illegal migrants to replace the middle-class Americans who are pushed out of the state by the Democrats’ mix of high taxes and corruption. That government damage is worsened by the mass legal migration and illegal migration and the resulting unaffordable housing, poor schools, low-wage jobs, crime, and degradation.

Those self-serving policies impose huge damage on local Americans and their communities. In April, for example, the Census Department reported that California in 2023 had the highest child poverty rates in the United States. It also has the highest level of adult poverty after Louisiana.

In contrast, Trump’s enforcement of migration laws is helping to raise Americans’ wages and productivity. On June 17, White House officials tweeted their boast of a two-percent wage gain for blue-collar workers amid their campaign against illegal migration.