Antifa, radical leftists try to shut down 'straight pride' event. But cops in riot gear fire pepper-spray bullets at enraged, retreating counter-protesters.



Antifa and radical leftists descended upon a "straight pride" event in Modesto, California, over the weekend in an attempt to shut it down — but cops in riot gear also showed up and reportedly fired pepper-spray bullets and beanbags at the enraged counter-protesters who were forced to retreat from their "unlawful assembly."

Image source: Twitter video screenshot via @Medgirl320

Here's a video montage showing in part what went down:

\u201cI would love to see what @benshapiro or @MattWalshBlog would say about the far left at the straight pride parade outside planned parenthood in Modesto. As a conservative, it doesn\u2019t surprise me that the left use violence despite being against violence.\u201d
— \ud835\udcdc\ud835\udcf2\ud835\udcfc\ud835\udcfc. \ud835\udcdc\ud835\udcea\ud835\udced\ud835\udcee\ud835\udcf5\ud835\udcf2\ud835\udcf7\ud835\udcee\u2122 (@\ud835\udcdc\ud835\udcf2\ud835\udcfc\ud835\udcfc. \ud835\udcdc\ud835\udcea\ud835\udced\ud835\udcee\ud835\udcf5\ud835\udcf2\ud835\udcf7\ud835\udcee\u2122) 1661684424

What are the details?

Interestingly, police estimated the straight pride crowd at “30-ish” people and their opponents at 125 to 150, according to the Modesto Bee.

No surprise as local Antifa got itself into a lather, gleefully tweeting about how to "shut down straight pride!" prior to the event:

\u201c\ud83c\udf08 It's almost time! \ud83d\udce2 Here's more info on how to counter "Straight Pride," the upcoming homophobic, anti-abortion hate rally in Modesto. \ud83e\udd2e Let's get ready to drown them out and shut them down! \u270a\ud83c\udffb\u270a\ud83c\udffd\u270a\ud83c\udfff No tolerance for hate and bigotry - we'll see you in the streets.\ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\u26a7\ufe0f\ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\ud83c\udf08\u201d
— Antifa Sacramento (@Antifa Sacramento) 1661483596

It was the fourth consecutive year that straight pride demonstrators gathered in front of the Planned Parenthood building on McHenry Avenue, the Bee said — adding that like last year, violence broke out.

In fact, the paper said things got physical nearly two hours before the event, which was scheduled for noon Saturday.

The Bee reported that a scuffle broke out when a Proud Boy tried pushing past police, citing a straight pride supporter named Richard who didn't identify as a Proud Boy. Counter-protesters threw water bottles in retaliation, the Bee said, adding that a blast and fireworks went off.

Modesto Police Department spokeswoman Sharon Bear told the paper a smoke bomb caused a bush to catch fire, leading cops to declare the event an unlawful gathering.

More than 25 officers in tactical gear soon arrived, the Bee said:

Image source: Twitter video screenshot via @Medgirl320

Image source: Twitter video screenshot via @Medgirl320

Police fired pepper-spray bullets at counter-protesters, reportedly injuring at least two people, the paper said, adding that cops also used beanbag guns, which looked like orange shotguns:

\u201cModesto, California, Earlier today: Pepper Balls deployed against Antifa protesters who are countering a "Straight Pride" rally\u201d
— Tony (@Tony) 1661632669

Three people were arrested as of Saturday afternoon for “failure to disperse,” Bear told the Bee, adding that two were aligned with straight pride and one was a counter-protester.

None of the arrestees are local to Stanislaus County, the paper added.

“They came at us with batons, they jabbed us, they hit the crap out of out us,” according to one counter-protester who got nailed by a pepper-spray bullet, declining to give his name to the Bee and continuing to wheeze even after volunteers flushed his eyes with water.

The presence of Modesto police and Stanislaus County sheriff’s personnel grew, the paper said, adding that officers formed a line and pushed counter-protesters back, while the police force's armadillo — a black SWAT-style truck equipped with cameras — pulled up.

\u201cLeftists and Antifa show up at a Straight Pride Event. Harrass anyone who showed up in support of the rally they were completely outnumbered by the counter protestors. Why isn't Instagram and Meta deleting hateful terrorist Antifa members? Modesto Ca\u201d
— Duncan Maclachlan (@Duncan Maclachlan) 1661655092

Straight pride supporters moved behind the police line and stood in a Wendy’s parking lot, the Bee reported, adding that one nearby person was loaded into an ambulance.

'We have to deal with the cops attacking us'

Naomi Bingham Walker and Odette Zapata arrived from Sacramento in the morning as part of a caravan of supporters of LGBTQ and women’s issues, the paper said, adding that Bingham Walker — a queer black woman — said she wanted to fight against “the increase in white supremacy and hatred in our country.”

Zapata — wearing a bulletproof vest — added to the Bee that "we have two armies to go up against when we stand for our rights: We have to deal with the cops attacking us and we’re about to get a second wave of right-wing extremists. We’re fearful of them attacking us as well.”

The straight pride supporter named Richard confronted police, the paper said, yelling at cops to "remember me" and "see what the repercussions were when they protected Antifa."

Richard also displayed a flyer for the straight pride event, the Bee reported, which called it a celebration of heterosexuality, masculinity, femininity, babies born and unborn, Western civilization, Christianity, and “our wonderful country."

Annual Modesto straight pride event met with backlashyoutu.be

Horowitz: Air travel from Europe to US to shut down over coronavirus. But what about our southern border?

Our entire nation dodged a bullet late yesterday when the Supreme Court stayed a Ninth Circuit injunction that would have caused a mass rush of caravans at our border. But had SCOTUS declined to intervene, would our government really have opened our borders during an official global pandemic just because of an illegal lower court opinion?

Here’s a rule of thumb: If the fallout from a court ruling requires the president to send troops to an international border to stem the tide of foreign nationals rushing in, that is clearly an issue over which the court has no jurisdiction.

Last Friday, following the Ninth Circuit’s announced injunction on the DHS’ “remain in Mexico” policy, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced the deployment of 160 troops to the border. According to the press release, CBP would deploy 80 active-duty troops to San Diego's San Ysidro border crossing and 80 to El Paso's Paso del Norte bridge to assist agents with repelling a potential rush at the border. Warning of the “amassment of large groups in Mexico with the potential to forcibly enter the United States,” the statement said the troops would provide "military police support, engineer, and aviation support" to the customs agents manning those two ports.

According to local news in Texas, the troops have already arrived in El Paso.

This is all because of one circuit court that believes judges, not the political branches, get to decide who comes into the country, contrary to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Hawaii. The court would have re-implemented its injunction on Wednesday if not for the intervention of the Supreme Court hours before the injunction was to take effect.

It’s self-evident that there is an eager crowd of illegal aliens waiting to rush the border in anticipation of these court rulings. It’s likely why, for the first time in 10 months, border apprehensions rose slightly in February. The numbers from Tucson are already rising as the Ninth Circuit ruled that the “remain in Mexico” policy be halted for those who will now purposely come to Arizona or California. Will this administration really allow the Ninth Circuit to restart the border crisis? Remember, the open-borders groups have many more lawsuits in the pipeline. Are we really required to open our borders until the Supreme Court steps in at each stage of this game of lawsuit whack-a-mole?

And what about the coronavirus? At a time when we are shutting off legal travel from many places, are we really going to bring in thousands from Central America and even other countries through our land border and expose our border officials to a pandemic? Is there no limit to judicial power whatsoever?

Breitbart reported in February that 1,155 Chinese nationals were caught entering illegally at our border during the first four months of the fiscal year. While CBP does follow protocols to screen them, CBP declined to answer whether these aliens are held for the duration of the incubation period to rule out that they are carrying coronavirus.

“Consistent with these existing procedures to prevent the spread of communicable disease, individuals identified with symptoms of illness are referred to CDC or local health officials for additional health screening,” said a CBP official in a statement to CR on February 26. “Border Patrol agents are reminded of proper precautionary measures to protect against communicable diseases as recommended by the CDC.”

Thus, CBP was able to confirm that these immigrants are being screened at the border, but has not answered my follow-up as to whether they are being held for the 14-day incubation period before being released with a notice to appear in court.

As Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies reports, unlike with the Central Americans, extra-continental migrants are waived into the country pending adjudication of their asylum claims. In light of Trump’s shutoff of air travel from Europe, this might change, but clearly, weeks into this epidemic, the land border was not closed to immigration requests, even from Chinese nationals.

Chinese nationals coming to our border pose numerous potential security threats. As one border agent told me last year, he never saw a Chinese national at the border who did not run from him, but upon apprehension, they almost always claim asylum. Clearly, security and espionage concerns do not trump open-borders policies, but one would think a health epidemic coming from China itself would. One would hope that, by now, these people are being turned away from entering the same way Europeans are barred from traveling here.

Aside from the concern of losing the ground Trump took in deterring Central American families, the border data shows that there is already in increase in single adult Mexicans and Central American teens traveling alone, known as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs). These were two loopholes that were not closed under the new policies, because UACs are still waived in and Mexican nationals are obviously not a part of Mexico’s agreement to hold asylum seekers from other countries. But Trump’s complete power to shut down immigration applies to them as well. Aside from the security problems we have with UACs joining gangs, it is sheer lunacy to invite cross-border migration when our economy is melting down over coronavirus.

The amalgamation of all these factors makes this the most auspicious time for Trump to publicly and categorically vouch for his inherent authority to shut off immigration and to do so completely at the southern border. He should deploy even more soldiers and state unambiguously that no court can compel such a suicidal outcome, even if the courts had jurisdiction and were right on the merits. New caravans are already forming.

Trump is rightly shutting off travel to U.S. airports from Europe. Shouldn’t it be a no-brainer that all illegal immigration, even dressed up as asylum and “unaccompanied minors,” will be suspended at our land border as well?

It’s time for Trump to use his trump card on immigration

When you have a flooding basement, the first thing any sane person would do is immediately work to stop the flow of new water before figuring out a strategy to deal with the water that already got in. That’s exactly how we should handle our flooded border. The president has a trump card, rooted in Article II of the Constitution to control foreign affairs, and reiterated as delegated congressional authority under 8 U.S.C. §1182(f) (Sec. 212(f) of the INA) to shut down all immigration. It’s time for him to pull the trigger and shut down all forms of border migration once and for all.

On Sunday, Trump tweeted out a very succinct point that cuts to the heart of the border problem:

The president is absolutely right. As long as the cartels and the migrants know that they have the ability to come here and tie up our legal system for years, they will continue coming. Not only does this saddle our communities with crushing costs, dangerous drugs, and high crime, it is terrible for the migrants themselves. Everyone should agree that this must stop. Yet Congress refuses to act.

In order to leverage Congress to act on a long-term solution to adjudicate all asylum claims off our soil (listen to my podcast, where I explain the plan), he should immediately invoke §1182(f) and announce a six-month moratorium on all acceptance of any claims at the border.

The president’s power to shut down all forms of immigration is unquestionable

Let’s take a look at the language of the statute granting the president at-will plenary authority to shut down even legal immigration:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

There are three important observations to be made here:

  1. The criteria for exclusion is not based on “national security concerns” or “terrorism.” It’s anything that, in the determination of the president, would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” That includes public welfare, health concerns, values, attitudes, etc. Thus, in this case, where the surge has already created the worst drug and gang crisis in the history of the country, the president would be justified in invoking this power.

  2. Just like the president has the authority to completely shut off immigration, he may impose any restrictions on entry even if he chooses to continue various forms of immigration. Thus, in order to abide by the Geneva Conventions on asylum, the president can condition any asylum claims on applying at a U.S. consulate in Mexico, not at the border – or turn them back immediately.

  3. This is not the type of provision in which a court can demand evidence that the condition of “detrimental to the interests of the United States” was met. The delegation of authority was designed as plenary power. The courts have absolutely no authority to second-guess the president’s determination. That is up to Congress and the electorate. As a recent Congressional Research Service report observes, from the House report on the 1952 immigration bill that granted this authority: “The bill vests in the President the authority to suspend the entry of all aliens if he finds that their entry would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, for such period as he shall deem necessary” (H.R.RPT.1365, 82d Cong.,2d Sess., at 53 (Feb. 14, 1952)).

Section 212(f) has been invoked 43 times since 1981, 19 of which were by President Obama. The one major Supreme Court case covering 212(f) was Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, Inc. (1993), which dealt with a policy established by Bush 41 and Clinton to apprehend Haitians traveling by sea to our shores. The policy was designed to return these Haitians to their home country before they could land in the United States and apply for asylum. In a clear 8-1 decision authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, the court fully upheld the act and made it clear that there are no limitations on 212(f) authority.

Similarly, the few lower court decisions on this matter clearly affirmed long-standing settled law. Any alien who enters the country without lawful status or against the president’s 212(f) proclamation is considered to be outside our borders and has no right to apply the due process of deportation procedures to his predicament.

In one of the few cases on 212(f) (Encuentro del Canto Popular v. Christopher, 1996), a district judge in California made it clear that not only does the president have the delegated authority from the legislature to cut off visas, but he also has his own powers to conduct foreign affairs:

The exclusion of aliens is a fundamental act of sovereignty. The right to do so stems not alone from legislative power but is inherent in the executive power to control the foreign affairs of the nation. * * * When Congress prescribes a procedure concerning the admissibility of aliens, it is not dealing alone with a legislative power. It is implementing an inherent executive power” [930 F. Supp. 1360, 1365 (N.D. Cal. 1996)].

If a president can’t put a temporary halt on asylum requests when over 90 percent of them are bogus and they serve as the impetus for empowering drug cartels, which pose the most imminent national security threat to our homeland, then a president has no power over foreign affairs whatsoever without asking permission of a court.

America’s security always comes before a migrant’s claim

In addition to INA 212(f), there is another section — INA 215(a)(1) — that grants the president an almost equal level of authority to regulate entry of all aliens, which includes both immigrant and non-immigrant visas:

Unless otherwise ordered by the President, it shall be unlawful--

(1) for any alien to depart from or enter or attempt to depart from or enter the United States except under such reasonable rules, regulations, and orders, and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may prescribe;

If demanding that all immigrants enter legally or apply for asylum in a safe and controlled environment at a consulate rather than at a border controlled by some of the most dangerous people in the world is not a “reasonable rule,” I’m not sure what is. According to the Congressional Research Service, President Carter used 215(a)(1) authority to suspend immigrant and non-immigrant visas from Iran following the Iran hostage crisis. Bill Clinton also used it to prevent Haitians from landing on our shores. These regulations clearly cover even legal permanent residents; they therefore certainly cover people who have no ties to our country and are seeking entry at our border for the first time.

The point is that nobody ever has a claim to land on our shores without the consent of the president, and the president can block such entry using both his inherent Article II powers and these two sections of the INA. As the Supreme Court said in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company v. Sawyer, “When the president acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum, for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate.”

Also, let us not forget that even if individuals find a way onto our soil, that does not give them any affirmative rights. Constitutional rights on our soil only apply to a person who comes here with consent. That is deeply rooted in social compact theory and settled law. As the court said long ago in United States v. Ju Toy, a person who comes to the country illegally is “to be regarded as if he had stopped at the limit of its jurisdiction, although physically he may be within its boundaries.”

Trump is reportedly looking for a way to go big on immigration using executive authority. He already has the ultimate authority to shut off the migration completely. And that is all the leverage he needs over Congress.

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