President Donald Trump and his administration have carried out multiple arrests to curb the ongoing anti-ICE riots, now in their sixth consecutive day in Los Angeles.
FOX LA, reporting live on Monday, captured footage of a truck unloading and distributing what appeared to be thousands of dollars’ worth of professional riot gear—specifically, high-tech bionic face shields—to violent demonstrators.
According to Fox LA reporter Elex Michaelson, the masks being distributed to protesters were identified as Uvex Bionic Face Shields. These shields are typically used by machinists and autobody workers to guard against chemical splashes and flying debris.
However, rioters have been repurposing them as protection against police crowd control gas, making it more difficult for law enforcement to disperse violent demonstrations and restore order.
Journalist Andy Ngo reported that “Far-left extremists set up a website to crowdfund riot gear for the open border insurrectionists in Los Angeles.”
Now, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, Bill Essayli, has announced that the FBI’s Los Angeles field office has arrested Alejandro Theodoro Orellana on charges of Conspiracy to Commit Civil Disorder (18 U.S.C. § 371) in connection with his alleged role in distributing face shields to suspected rioters.
Orellana is an alleged member of the Brown Berets, “a radical Latino paramilitary group that are currently embedded in cities across the United States,” according to RANN.
Joshua Steinman, a former military officer who served on the National Security Council during Trump’s first term as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Cyber, claims that Alejandro Orellana represents the kind of foreign sabotage operatives that, in his view, were allowed to enter the country under the Biden administration, the Daily Caller reported.
On Friday, meanwhile, Trump expressed gratitude to an appeals court for its decision allowing him to maintain the deployment of the California National Guard in Los Angeles.
“The Appeals Court ruled last night that I can use the National Guard to keep our cities, in this case Los Angeles, safe,” Trump posted on his Truth Social page. “If I didn’t send the Military into Los Angeles, that city would be burning to the ground right now. We saved L.A. Thank you for the Decision!!!”
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted the Trump administration’s motion to stay a ruling by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, according to The Washington Post.
Earlier Thursday, Breyer claimed Trump had acted unconstitutionally in federalizing elements of the California National Guard to help protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as well as federal property, citing the 10th Amendment.
By dispatching the Guard, Breyer ruled, Trump had acted improperly, “both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.” He further ordered that control of the Guard be returned to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Breyer issued his ruling after California filed a lawsuit against Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and the Department of Defense. The suit sought to limit the role of the National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles to the protection of federal facilities and personnel, barring them from other operations.
It also challenged Trump’s authority to deploy those forces in California without the consultation or approval of the state’s governor.