One of the groups leading anti-immigration protests in Los Angeles is a taxpayer-funded activist organization with ties to the Democratic Party, while another has links to the Chinese Communist Party.
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) — which received tens of millions of dollars in government grants during the Biden administration — staged a rally last week to denounce Immigration and Customs Enforcement arresting illegal migrants across the city, including those convicted of heinous crimes.
Protests against ICE escalated since then, with more than 1,000 rioters taking to the streets, assaulting immigration officers, slashing tires and defacing public buildings, the Department of Homeland Security said, prompting President Trump to call in around 2,000 National Guard troops Sunday to quell the violence.
According to financial records obtained by DataRepublican, CHIRLA received nearly $34 million in government grants, mostly from the state of California, in the fiscal year ending June 2023, a jump from the $12 million it received the previous year.
The radical group also received around $450,000 in grants for “citizenship education and training” between October 2021 and September 2024 from the DHS — the very agency the group was protesting last week. The federal agency cut ties with the group and terminated any further funding in March, including clawing back nearly $101,000 in funding that had yet to be paid out.
A CHIRLA spokesman denied that the group had anything to do with the violence in a statement to The Post on Sunday.
He said CHIRLA “organized a press event on Thursday” to protest the round-ups and had “been sending legal observers to immigration courts and detention centers on Friday, Saturday and today as part of the LA Rapid Response Network.
“We have not participated, coordinated, or been part of the protests being registered in Los Angeles other than the press conference and rally cited above,” the rep said.
Rioting broke out in LA on Friday as federal authorities resumed the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, conducting numerous raids in recent weeks and netting “around 150” arrests, according to Trump’s hard-nosed border czar Tom Homan.
Another group that was behind some of last week’s protests is the Marxist Party for Socialism and Liberation, which played a part in virulent past anti-Israel campus protests at Columbia University and which was once associated with suspected DC terrorist Elias Rodriguez.
PSL has ties to the Chinese Communist Party through funding from socialist billionaire Neville Singham and his wife, Jodie Evans, founder of activist group Code Pink, according to a 2024 report by the Network Contagion Research Institute. Singham sunk millions of dollars into backing the groups after selling his software company, ThoughtWorks, for $785 million in 2017.
Singham’s ties to the Chinese government and Communist propaganda are well-documented. The New York Times published a lengthy 2023 expose on his far-reaching money machine, which has steered millions to China-praising nonprofits from South Africa, Ghana and Zambia to Brazil, New Delhi and beyond.
The PSL did not immediately respond to a Post request for comment Sunday.
Rioters gathered Friday after the recent protests to attempt to stop ICE agents from carrying out the immigration sweeps, leading to officers deploying tear gas and other less-lethal methods of crowd dispersal.
More than a dozen arrests were made Saturday, said Bill Essayli, the United States Attorney for the Central District of California, on X.
Images and videos showed hundreds of protesters clashing with riot gear-clad federal agents who were attempting to apprehend illegal immigrants near a Home Depot in Paramount, Calif.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and embattled Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass decried the raids, the latter claiming the federal agents used tactics that “sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city.”
In a statement on X on Saturday, Newsom wrote, “Federal government is moving to take over the California National Guard and deploy 2,000 soldiers. That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions. LA authorities are able to access law enforcement assistance at a moment’s notice.”
In a fiery response to Newsom and Bass on Truth Social Saturday, President Trump said, “If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!.”
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