Anti-ICE Protesters Attack TSA Air Marshals in Lynwood After Mistaking Them for Immigration Officers

When the Mob Doesn’t Know Who It’s Mobbing

Here’s what happened Wednesday night at Ten-Raku, a Korean BBQ spot in Lynwood’s Plaza Mexico shopping center. Three federal air marshals, the folks who sit on planes to make sure terrorists don’t turn your Southwest flight into a nightmare, grabbed dinner after work. Normal stuff. They ate, they paid, they walked outside.

Then they got surrounded by a frenzied mob.

The problem? These agitators thought the air marshals were ICE agents. They weren’t. Not even close. One’s part of TSA, the other’s part of ICE. Different agencies, different missions, different uniforms if you bother to look. But when you’re whipped into a political frenzy by rhetoric that paints every DHS employee as some kind of villain, details don’t really matter anymore.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson didn’t mince words about what went down. These TSA employees were “surrounded and viciously harassed by a frenzied mob,” incited by left-wing politicians who’ve decided that anyone working for DHS deserves to be targeted. You know what that sounds like? Organized intimidation dressed up as activism.

When Anger Becomes Identity

A woman who apparently helped organize this circus told Fox 11 that they thought the agents were “potentially” ICE employees. Potentially. That’s the word that should stick with you. They weren’t sure. They didn’t verify. They just saw federal agents and decided that was enough justification to swarm them outside a restaurant.

This isn’t protest. It’s not civil disobedience. It’s not even particularly effective political theater. It’s just rage looking for a target, any target, as long as it wears a badge.

And here’s the thing that gets lost in all this manufactured outrage. These air marshals protect people. Every single day, they board commercial flights to ensure that passengers and crew make it home safely. They’re not rounding anyone up. They’re not enforcing immigration law. They’re literally there to stop the next 9/11.

But in the current climate, where politicians have spent years demonizing anyone connected to border enforcement or homeland security, none of that matters. The mob sees a federal agent and assumes enemy. Context is irrelevant. Facts are negotiable. The important thing is performing your anger for the cameras.

The Real Cost of Political Theater

There’s a broader problem here that goes beyond three agents getting harassed at a restaurant. When political leaders spend years telling their supporters that certain government employees are inherently immoral, that enforcing immigration law is tantamount to fascism, that anyone who works for ICE or DHS is complicit in crimes against humanity, this is what you get. Mobs that can’t tell one agency from another but know they’re supposed to be angry.

Individual liberty means something. It means the freedom to do your job without getting surrounded by strangers who’ve decided you’re evil based on your employer. Limited government means we don’t empower mobs to intimidate federal employees just trying to grab dinner.

The irony? These same activists would scream bloody murder if conservative protesters showed up at an IRS agent’s favorite lunch spot or followed EPA employees to their cars. And they’d be right to complain. That kind of targeted harassment is wrong regardless of who’s doing it or who’s receiving it.

But we’ve entered an era where the rules only apply to the other side. Where mistaken identity doesn’t warrant an apology, just a shrug and a “well, we thought they might be ICE.” Where viciously harassing federal employees at restaurants counts as activism instead of what it actually is, which is mob intimidation that would make any authoritarian proud.

These three air marshals just wanted Korean BBQ. Instead they got a front-row seat to what happens when political rhetoric meets reality and nobody bothers to check if they’ve got the right people before the screaming starts.

That should worry everyone, regardless of how you feel about immigration policy.

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