Cal State Professor Paints a Target on ICE Agent

AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File

Last New Year's Eve an ICE agent named Brian Palacios was involved in a shooting while he was off duty. The report at the time was that Palacios had engaged in a shootout with a man firing a gun at an apartment complex in Northridge.

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A New Year’s Eve confrontation between an off-duty ICE officer and a man who was firing a gun at an apartment complex has left the gunman dead and prompted an investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department, according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security.

“On December, 31st, an off duty ICE Officer bravely responded to an active shooter situation at his apartment complex. In order to protect his life and that of others, he was forced to defensively use his weapon and exchanged gunfire with the shooter,” read an emailed statement from Tricia McLaughlin, the department’s assistant secretary of public affairs. “Fortunately, our brave officer was not injured while protecting his community.”

The man he shot was Keith Porter Jr. and while there's no doubt he was firing a rifle, which was recovered at the scene, his family has claimed he was just celebrating New Year's Eve. The shooting happened about 20 minutes before midnight.

Police said a rifle was recovered from Porter on the night he was killed. Some of Porter’s friends have suggested he was shooting the weapon into the air to celebrate the new year. Federal authorities said in the immediate aftermath of the incident that the ICE agent was responding to a suspected “active shooter” when he opened fire. Palacios’ attorney has said he acted in self-defense.

After the shooting, the ex-husband of Palacios girlfriend, Omar Escorcia, filed a restraining order against Palacios

On May 21, Omar Escorcia, the ex-husband of Palacios’ girlfriend, filed a petition that sought to bar Palacios from being around two children with whom he had shared custody. Escorcia alleged in the restraining order petition that Palacios’ involvement in the shooting made him too dangerous to be around the kids.

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That led to a phone call in which Palacios warned that Escorcia might face charges for putting his name out in public. He specifically accused Escorcia of leaking his name to BLM Los Angeles.

According to the restraining order application, Palacios contacted Escorcia by phone on April 30 and told him ICE was starting a criminal investigation against him...

According to the call transcript, Palacios accused Escorcia of leaking his name to organizers with the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter, which has called for Palacios to be prosecuted for shooting Porter.

BLM LA was founded by Cal State University professor Melina Abdullah, who denied any contact with Escorcia and who denied knowing Palacios' name. In any case, Abdullah did call for his arrest and prosecution for the shooting of Keith Porter.

And that brings us to last weekend when Melina Abdullah was speaking at an event and seemed to come very close to inciting violence against Brian Palacios.

“Brian Palacios may be staying at the Hilton Garden Inn at 2000 Solar Drive… f*** him up.”

She later urges the crowd to read Blood in My Eye and “study guerrilla warfare.”

Abdullah later tried to broaden the meaning of “f*** him up,” saying it can include exposing agents or making them uncomfortable.

But that qualification comes only after she names a specific person, gives a possible location and street address, and repeatedly tells the crowd to “f*** him up.”

You can argue about the legal threshold. It is much harder to argue that this sequence would not reasonably be understood as putting a specific person in danger.

And yes, this all happened at yesterday’s PSL-affiliated La Defensa del Pueblo summit.

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I'm not an attorney, so I won't speculate as to whether this crosses a legal line that could result in charges. I will say that the mention of the book on guerrilla warfare seems to take this well beyond just a routine call for protests outside a hotel. The book she mentions is from 1971 and here's how Wikipedia describes it. [emphasis added]

In 1961, George Jackson was sentenced to one year to life in San Quentin State Prison for armed robbery. In 1966, he befriended fellow inmate W. L. Nolen, who introduced Jackson to Marxist–Leninist political thought; this would later form the ideological basis of the Black Guerrilla Family. While incarcerated, Jackson educated himself on history, literature and Marxist economics...

Jackson devotes a large portion of the book to urban guerrilla warfare strategies to be used against the police and military. For example, he describes a makeshift armored vehicle which is equipped with flamethrowers, machine guns and rocket launchers. He attributes this idea to his brother Jonathan Jackson. Furthermore, he advocates for the assassination of reactionary leaders.

Jackson writes: "Our whole question is: just what level of consciousness will support the violent revolutionary activity necessary to achieve our ends? And how will we know when this level is reached? Recall: our Mao teaches that when revolution fails it isn't the fault of the people, it's the fault of the vanguard party. The people will never come to us and say, "Let's fight." There have never been any spontaneous revolutions. They were all staged, manufactured, by people who went to the head of the masses and directed them."

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So the book Abdullah referenced is about fomenting an actual, violent revolution. It's about killing people and about leaders who direct regular people to become killers. With that as part of the context, I don't see how Abdullah can reasonably claim she was just talking about prayer and protests. She's clearly referencing violence as she gives out the agent's name and current address.

Editor’s Note: Democrat politicians and their radical supporters will do everything they can to interfere with and threaten ICE agents enforcing our immigration laws.

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