Category: Riot
Minnesota police FINALLY fight back: Cops hit violent anti-ICE mob with tear gas, arrests outside hotel supposedly housing feds
Radicals swarmed a hotel in Maple Grove, Minnesota, on Monday night, working under the presumption that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino was inside. While some in the mob appeared keen at the outset to simply scream, bang their pans, and impotently blow whistles in protest of CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, others decided to get violent.
The Maple Grove Police Department, which responded around 8 p.m. to reports of a protest at the SpringHill Suites by Marriott, demonstrated that it has a lower tolerance for attacks on law enforcement than their local counterparts in Minneapolis — and the proof manifested in tear gas and arrests.
‘These violent anarchists will not deter ICE from carrying out the American people’s mandate.’
“The situation escalated when individuals in the crowd engaged in unlawful behavior,” the MGPD said in a statement. “Property damage occurred, and objects were thrown at officers. At that point, the activity was no longer considered peaceful.”
After declaring the mob action an unlawful assembly, police issued a dispersal order. Footage shows police securing the area around the hotel, standing off with radicals, then systematically driving away the mob.
In addition to using pepper balls, Maple Grove police — who were assisted by the Minnesota State Patrol, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office hours after President Donald Trump had positive calls with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) — apparently utilized tear gas to drive away rioters.
RELATED: Democrats threaten to shut down government over ICE funding: ‘We are not powerless’
Law enforcement stands ready outside the Spring Hill Suites on Jan. 26. Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images.
Police told CNN that approximately 26 people were arrested outside the hotel.
Radicals advertised the anti-Border Patrol rally as a “Goodbye Bovino Noise Demo.”
Blaze News has reached out to the hotel and Marriott for comment.
The evening before the riot in Maple Grove, leftists stormed a hotel in Minneapolis where they believed federal immigration agents were staying. Radicals vandalized the Home2 Suites by Hilton Hotel late Sunday, smashing windows and throwing debris into the lobby.
Footage shows a solitary, bloody federal agent holding his ground at one stage in the evening while radicals assembled in front of the hotel. According to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, federal agents successfully cleared that group with the help of chemical irritants.
The Department of Homeland Security indicated that the Sunday hotel attack was “part of a coordinated campaign of violence against law enforcement.”
“These violent anarchists will not deter ICE from carrying out the American people’s mandate to arrest and deport the worst of the worst,” added the DHS.
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Riot, repeat: How America’s unrest became a bad rerun
History doesn’t just move forward — it echoes. Karl Marx once said history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, second as farce.” He meant it as a jab at 19th-century France, where Napoleon’s nephew attempted to replicate his uncle’s revolutionary drama not on the battlefield but rather through bureaucratic spectacle. Nevertheless, Marx’s insight fits modern America. Our cycles of unrest and outrage have become predictable theater — each act beginning with moral panic and ending in absurdity.
The summer of 2020 was a national trauma. The killing of George Floyd was a tragedy that radicals turned into revolution. Riots swept through more than 2,000 cities, torching businesses, destroying neighborhoods, and leaving dozens dead. Egged on by the race-baiting activists at Black Lives Matter, mobs looted stores, assaulted police, and terrorized communities.
The line between tragedy and farce is thinner than ever — and this time, we can’t afford to play the fool.
Media outlets downplayed the carnage as “fiery but mostly peaceful.” Political leaders joined the chorus, afraid to confront the mob. Corporate America rushed to signal its virtue by taking the knee, pouring billions into “racial equity” schemes that enriched activists but divided the country.
The real tragedy wasn’t just the damage — it was the betrayal. Spineless mayors and governors surrendered their cities. Police were handcuffed, budgets gutted, and criminals emboldened. The riots hollowed out public trust, replacing civic order with cultural resentment. America’s guardians became scapegoats, and justice itself became negotiable.
From riot to parody
Five years on, the rebellion has devolved into a pathetic sideshow. Antifa’s latest “resistance” — a handful of masked agitators harassing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as they carry out long-overdue deportations — feels less like revolution and more like performance art.
Their vandalism is designed for TikTok, not for change: laser pointers at officers, graffiti on walls, choreographed scuffles for social media. It’s a boutique insurgency — staged in deep-blue enclaves, broadcast for dopamine hits, and forgotten the next day.
The chaos of 2020 burned cities. The tantrums of 2025 barely dent a precinct wall. The tragedy has become farce.
Still, both movements spring from the same poisoned root: a left-wing ideology that despises America’s foundations. BLM targeted police as enforcers of “white supremacy.” Antifa brands border agents as fascists for upholding immigration law.
Both rely on the same tactics — decentralized mobs, anonymous online organizing, and emotional manipulation amplified by social media. Both seek power through grievance, not through persuasion. And both reveal how progressive rage, unmoored from reality, becomes self-parody.
In 2020, rioters burned precincts and seized city blocks. They demanded “defund the police” and got it — along with record crime rates and broken neighborhoods. In 2025, their heirs spray-paint slogans and livestream tantrums. Their only victory is visibility.
The digital theater of rage
Social media turned riots into content. In 2020, doctored clips of “police brutality” fueled nationwide hysteria, empowered anti-cop lunatics, and enriched grifters. Today, the same algorithms push Antifa’s posturing, turning vandalism into viral spectacle.
These platforms profit from outrage. They amplify emotion, suppress context, and reward hysteria. The result is a feedback loop of performative politics — activism as cosplay.
After years of indulgence, government crackdowns have finally returned. ICE operates under firm executive backing. Local police departments no longer hesitate to enforce the law. The radicals, once protected, now find themselves exposed and outmatched.
But even as law enforcement regains its footing, the left’s playbook remains unchanged. The grievances are repackaged, the slogans recycled, the media coverage predictable. It’s cultural Marxism with a TikTok filter — ideology as entertainment.
Farce doesn’t mean harmless. Every protest turned stunt still corrodes civic life. Each viral act of defiance feeds distrust in law, borders, and the rule of order itself.
The radicals thrive on illusion: fake oppression, fake urgency, fake rebellion. Meanwhile, real Americans bear the cost — higher crime, divided communities, and institutions too timid to defend themselves.
RELATED: The left’s costume party: Virtue signaling as performance art
Photo by serazetdinov via Getty Images
The lesson we refuse to learn
The tragedy of 2020 proved that surrendering to the mob invites ruin. The farce of 2025 shows that ridicule alone isn’t enough to defeat it. Both demand resolve — the courage to confront lies, restore order, and defend the institutions that safeguard freedom.
History doesn’t stop repeating itself; it stops being repeated. Whether America ends this cycle depends on whether its citizens choose firmness over fear, enforcement over appeasement, and truth over spectacle.
Enough with the doctored outrage porn. The burning question is whether we’ll tolerate this clown show recycling into catastrophe or crush it with resolve that honors real American values.
The line between tragedy and farce is thinner than ever — and this time, we can’t afford to play the fool.
