The Bullets Follow the Bullhorns: Democrats Own the Assaults on ICE

posted by Charleton Allen at American Thinker 

The slogans were there, scrawled on concrete in black spray paint—graffiti of the obscene, vulgar, and unmistakably ideological sort. “F[**]K ICE,” one read. Another declared “Traitor,” while others were marked with anarchist symbols and far-left slogans like “Resist Fascism, Fight Oligarchy.”

Yet, the situation is far more grave than the graffiti suggests.

This is a crime scene. Here, a planned ambush was unleashed: fireworks used as bait, spent rifle casings, gas masks, tactical vests, and the blood of a wounded law enforcement officer.

This is Alvarado, Texas, in the year 2025.

It was here, just south of Fort Worth, that ten heavily armed left-wing militants launched a highly coordinated attack on law enforcement outside the Prairieland ICE Detention Center.

Their objective was unmistakable: lure, target, and execute federal officers. When officers on the scene responded to a disturbance—initially believing it was fireworks—gunmen opened fire. An Alvarado police officer was shot in the neck. Federal agents returned fire and made multiple arrests. It was political terrorism.

And just days later, in McAllen, Texas, Border Patrol agents were fired upon in another ambush attack. The shooter was armed with a rifle and wearing tactical gear—another warning sign that ideologically motivated violence against immigration enforcement is spiraling. As in Alvarado, a local police officer was wounded.

These are the inevitable consequences of a political movement that has spent the better part of a decade demonizing the very people sworn to enforce our immigration laws.

What was once violence on the fringe of political debate has been normalized by one of America's two main political parties.

It’s past time to say it plainly: The Democrat party bears responsibility for these acts of political terrorism. Of course, the perpetrators bear ultimate responsibility for their actions. But the fault for creating this cauldron of violence is shared.

For years, leading Democrats and their activist auxiliaries have waged rhetorical warfare against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, particularly when Donald Trump has served as president.

They have called ICE agents “terrorists,” “fascists,” and “white supremacists in uniform.” Some have demanded that the agency be abolished outright.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once likened ICE detention facilities to “concentration camps.” Rep. Ilhan Omar, meanwhile, has brazenly warned Americans that the nation is being transformed into “one of the worst countries in the world,” citing the presence of masked, armed agents, and military deployments in U.S. streets.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—a man who would be Speaker of the House—declared his intent to “unmask” and expose the identities of ICE agents. Jeffries vowed, “No matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes, [they] will of course be identified.”

In the same breath, he compared ICE officers to Nazis and Soviet secret police—a grotesque smear seemingly designed to dehumanize and delegitimize the very concept of immigration enforcement.

This rhetoric does not exist in a vacuum. It sets in motion a chain of events—results that should shock no one grounded in history or attuned to this political moment.

Assaults on ICE officers have spiked by over 400%, according to Director Todd Lyons. Agents’ families are easy targets. One man in New York was recently charged with threatening to “kill them all—including their kids.”

So when politicians beat the drum to strip those agents of anonymity—inciting mobs to see them as monsters—the result is tragically predictable.

The suspects in the Alvarado ambush are reportedly tied to a broader web of far-left agitation. Flyers, riot gear, surveillance tools, assault weapons, detailed anarchic how-to manuals, and a red-and-black resistance flag were recovered at the scene.

This was an armed insurrection—intending not only to disrupt federal law enforcement, but to maim and kill. When political rhetoric dehumanizes law enforcement and hurls twisted epithets at men and women doing their job, it is a dog whistle to those on the lunatic fringe.

Is there a greater danger to a constitutional republic than an armed phalanx of nihilists, activated by the words of the leaders of the minority party, attempting to maim and kill government officials?

For all their sanctimony about “protecting democracy” and “upholding the rule of law,” today’s Democrats have built a movement that selectively nullifies both. When they’re in power, they ignore the law, declining to enforce statutes they dislike, gutting immigration courts, and instructing executive agencies to slow-walk deportations.

When out of power, they attempt to nullify the exercise of executive power through venue shopping, nationwide injunctions, institutional sabotage, and now, through ideological violence.

It’s the same pattern every time:

If voters elect someone they oppose, they launch impeachment proceedings or shop for a judge to block authority.

If ICE agents do their jobs, they are branded as racists.

If a president uses Article II powers to enforce the border, they call it fascism.

It’s nullification by any means necessary—ballots, bench, or bullets. The difference between the Democrat party and the Jacobins is increasingly that of wardrobe and weaponry.

The Democrats have spent years stoking this fire. They wrap their bombast in the language of compassion—but it’s calculated sabotage, and they know it.

There are more than enough words in the English language for legitimate dissent, debate, and discourse. Embracing the language of violence lays the foundation for violence to unfold. One leads directly, even inexorably, to the other.

This should be a moment for a reckoning, a reset. But so was Harpers Ferry.

Alvarado and McAllen didn’t just happen. Each was incubated by years of demagoguery, fueled by slogans, funded by activist nonprofits, sanitized by academia, amplified by the media, and enabled by politicians too craven to admit they had lost control of the beast—and worse, they now depend on it for power.

I strongly believe in freedom of speech, expression, association, and the press. But these freedoms are not freedoms from responsibility.

You stoke the fires of Jacobin rage—you should expect the burn that follows. Those who peddle incitement behind the thin veil of “activism” or “speech” do not deserve immunity from political consequence.

They deserve exposure, and voters must demand that those responsible be held to account.

Sadly, the Democrat voices of reason and genuine commitment to the rule of law have been silenced and sidelined—first by those who stoke the Jacobin fringe, and then by the Jacobins themselves, who have gained greater control over the party with each passing election cycle.

And the modern-day Girondists—the establishment enablers who think they can ride the tiger—are fanning the flames of a nihilist fervor they cannot control.

These are no longer voices America can safely trust with power.

There is a consequence to the rhetoric of the Democrats—and it led directly to Alvarado and McAllen. The consequences of this escalation—from violent hyperbole to violent acts—must flow from the ballot box to the political class.

If Democrats cannot or will not grasp the gravity of this moment, they risk becoming a rump party for a generation—or worse, the party that helped unravel the Republic itself.