With all the chaos ensuing from the recent protests and riots across the country, some anti-ICE demonstrators are starting to be confused about what is ICE activity and what isn’t. A group of protestors in Tucson, Arizona, made such a mistake thinking that a drug investigation was immigrants getting arrested. Even though the police tried to explain that it was a drug-related arrest, people still gathered and protested against it. One county sheriff wasn’t too happy about the incident and publicly called the protestors “idiots.”
“These idiots came out and protested us getting 5 million fentanyl pills off the streets,” Pinal County Sheriff Ross Teeple told 13 News. “They don’t have individual thought, they have group think.” The sheriff wasn’t exaggerating, as the anti-ICE demonstrators were disrupting quite the drug bust. Authorities seized a whopping “120 pounds of fentanyl, 20 pounds of meth, 35 pounds of cocaine,” along with four guns from the drug smuggler. Despite a dangerous former cartel member being taken off the Arizona county streets by the cops, the people refused to believe it was a criminal and insisted ICE was arresting an immigrant.
“Even when it was explained to them that this was a criminal case, where we were taking a criminal drug smuggler, a known felon off the street and keeping the community safe, they still sat there and protested because they don’t have an independent thought,” Teeple continued, criticizing the gatherers. Plenty of comments on YouTube agreed with the sheriff’s sentiment. “How dumb can you be?” remarked one. “What protesters don’t know Police Vehicles from an ICE Vehicle?” added another. However, Reddit users reacting to the Arizona news story pondered if this ridiculous drug bust protest was the result of ICE’s unjust actions over the past several months.
“It appears that there is a reason we don’t use law enforcement in masks and no badges. Who could have predicted this?” reads a post’s top comment. “Yup, unfortunate but they’ve managed to create their own problem,” agrees another Redditor. “Now you have citizens calling out raids and protecting people who might actually be criminals, all because they treat everyone like criminals.” One person put it best in simple terms:
“When you start sending in unmarked thugs to arrest innocent people for being the wrong color, People stop being able to tell when something is an official action or not. That’s the point, of course, but that’s why things like this happen.”
