By Pete Barry Chowka

A lawless insurrection is spreading to cities across the United States but the news is being almost totally ignored and blacked out by the mainstream media.

This ominous uprising is taking various forms but the most imminent, visible, and aggressive one involves “occupy” Antifa-style street mobs dedicated to taking down ICE – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal government law enforcement agency that is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security. The impetus for these actions has been the anti-President Trump Fake News psy-op meme that claims minor children of illegal immigrants arrested for crashing the U.S./Mexico border are being separated from their parents, sent to “Nazi”-like “concentration camps,” and mistreated.

Cities around the country too numerous to mention have seen waves of demonstrators assemble at local ICE headquarters in attempts to shut down the agency’s legal operations enforcing immigration laws, including processing deportation orders against illegal criminals. One of the largest such actions is well into its second week in Portland, Oregon, and it’s growing into a permanent tent city of hundreds of radicals dedicated not only to frustrating ICE’s work but to totally abolishing the agency. The official Twitter account of the Portland effort is titled “Abolish I.C.E. PDX” and its banner photo reads “ICE = GESTAPO.”

The radical street mobs are being egged on by a growing number of elected Democrat politicians and radical candidates running for office as Democrats this fall who are also demanding an end to ICE. An online story by NBC News on June 22 is headlined “’Abolish ICE!’ is the new rallying cry for progressive Democrats.”

Doing away with the immigration agency has become an issue left-wing insurgents can use to differentiate themselves from established party rivals in midterm primaries.

Fueled by outrage over the Trump administration’s immigration policies, a small but growing number of progressive Democratic candidates are signing onto a nascent effort to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

It’s a radical idea and one that was confined to the fringes just months ago in a party that has historically balanced calls for better treatment of migrants with support for stronger border security and enforcement.

But as an emboldened left challenges old assumptions about everything from health care to jobs, doing away with ICE has become the latest issue left-wing insurgents can use to differentiate themselves from more established rivals in Democratic primaries, especially as mainstream party candidates increasingly co-opt other contrast issues, like Medicare for All and a $15 minimum wage.

This week, as the crisis at the border intensified and dominated headlines, mentions of abolishing ICE shot up on Google searches and Twitter as new candidates and activists groups jumped onto the bandwagon.

And the protesters who disrupted Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s dinner at a Mexican restaurant this week in Washington yelled “abolish ICE!” and other slogans as they drove her from the eatery.

“I think we’ve come to a moment where we need to call for the abolishment of ICE,” actress Cynthia Nixon, who is challenging New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in next week’s Democratic primary, told an audience in Brooklyn on Tuesday, while acknowledging that governors have little influence over the federal agency.

Also in New York, at least three progressives challenging incumbent members of Congress have used the issue to differentiate themselves ahead of Tuesday’s vote.

Since the actions of street demonstrators targeting ICE are not being covered at all in the national media, it is necessary to search local media – television and print – for any reporting that may have been published or broadcast on the local level. It appears that the demonstrations in Portland, Oregon are the largest and are serving as a model for other radicals as the well-organized leftist forces hope their anti-law enforcement campaign catches fire, trends on social media, and spreads to other cities. A VICE headline about the Portland occupation is titled “The Protesters Who Shut Down an ICE Facility Are Just Getting Started.”

The shocking and obscene radical banner above about an ongoing occupy action in New York City is featured on the Portland Abolish I.C.E. PDX Twitter page. It calls for “no prisons no ICE no borders” and adds “chinga la migra” which translates as “f—k migra.” The word migra is a derogatory Spanish language slur for U.S. immigration officers.

In Portland, demonstrations began on Sunday June 17. Two days later, the crowds encamped outside the ICE building on 4310 SW Macadam Avenue were large enough to threaten federal government employees at the end of their work day as they tried to leave for home. That day, DHS officers were called in to escort employees safely from their facility as the mobs were threatening them and their cars. Since then, the building has remained closed as the crowds living in the tent city that has sprung up on the streets and sidewalks around it have grown in size and become more menacing. Meanwhile, the Democrat socialist mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, ordered Portland police to stand down and keep their distance from the mobs.

Abolish I.C.E. PDX’s Twitter account links to a daily multi-page Resources guide that reports on the goings-on as it requests that people come on down and join the occupiers living in the tent city. It also lists items that need to be brought or donated to support the occupiers (such as food, sleeping bags, tents, personal hygiene products, condoms, etc.). The effort is quite well-organized with WiFi access having been set up to provide occupiers with free Internet access so they can instantly share photos, videos, and reports of what’s happening via social media with other radicals around the country.

On Sunday June 24, the Portland tent city’s 6-page Resources guide included these two notices:

Today’s weather is sunny all day, with a high of 89°F. Wear sunscreen, drink water, take care of yourself.

Download the ACLU Mobile Justice app to record police, if they arrive. It will automatically upload the footage to the ACLU.

Meanwhile, neighborhood businesses, including restaurants, have had to hire private security because occupiers are stealing (or “borrowing”) everything that isn’t nailed down and trespassing on business’s parking lots, impeding commerce.

At a number of points, the mobs have literally taken over and closed down one or more streets as the police do nothing.

This wave of insurrection aimed at ICE is one element of a broader effort to frustrate law enforcement in many other areas. The big picture agenda is to tie the hands of law enforcement at every level. In a variety of major cities now, left wing mayors are instructing local police to ignore law breaking by illegal immigrants and people of color on the theory that to not enforce laws and hold illegals and “minority” lawbreakers accountable will reduce the number of illegals and people of color who are locked up for crimes, in numbers greatly disproportionate to – that is, much higher than – their percentage of the population (because they commit more crimes). The most recent example of this insidious policy is taking place in Austin Texas, the leftist political leaders of which have declared Austin the first “freedom city” in Texas.

The move is seen as a challenge to Texas’s state law passed last year that forbids localities from declaring themselves “sanctuary cities.”As the Los Angeles Times reported on June 19:

City Council members unanimously passed two resolutions last week that will restrict police attempts to question immigrants [sic] about their status and curtail arrests for nonviolent crimes.

One of the new city resolutions requires officers who question immigrants [sic] about status to also say that their questions about immigration need not be answered.  The other resolution directs police to avoid arrests for misdemeanors, including those for smoking marijuana, having drug paraphernalia, and taking part in petty theft – crimes that city data shows frequently end in arrests of black and Latino residents. [Emphasis added.]

While Austin is among the country’s first so-called freedom cities, it’s part of a wider movement around decriminalizing low-level offenses and decreasing arrests.  According to Local Progress, a national network of progressive city officials, some council members in El Paso and Dallas are also considering “freedom city” proposals.

“Poor people of color in our city are over-punished and over-incarcerated,” said Greg Casar, an Austin City Councilman who pushed for the resolutions.  “If people are being arrested less, we can also prevent people from being put in the deportation pipeline.”

As we have seen in recent years, law-breaking from the streets to the political suites no longer carries consequences for the preferred classes – whether they are entrenched Democrat politicians, high-level Deep State bureaucrats, professional leftist and anarchist agitators and their fellow travelers, or illegal alien invaders.  Just ask Kate Steinle’s (the young woman who was killed by an illegal immigrant brandishing a stolen hand gun in San Francisco) surviving relatives about that. The illegal who shot Steinle was acquitted of responsibility for her death two years later in a jury trial.

Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture.  He is a frequent contributor to American Thinker.  Follow Peter on Twitter at @pchowka.