Essay: ICE is Rioting
No Justice, No Peace
A protester stands next to the remains of a burned car covered in anti-ICE graffiti, in the Compton neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, on June 7, 2025. Photo: RINGO CHIU / AFP
Watching the violence that the Trump regime has unleashed in Los Angeles, it is enraging to hear commentators urge protestors to be “peaceful” and not “riot” in the face of the full force of State-sanctioned violence.
Why is the onus on protestors to be "peaceful" when the State brings violence? Why is "rioting" used to malign only the people fighting violence initiated by the State and its agents, and not those agents and that State? Why isn't ICE described as rioting?
Those questions matter to me as a victim of State-sanctioned violence and as a feminist who insists on unpacking who has the right to violence and when.
In 2011, the Egyptian regime sent their plain clothes agents to entrap me at the front line of a protest and hold me until riot police arrived to do their job. The protest began in response to soldiers and police burning tents erected in Tahrir Square by families of people killed by state forces during the revolution in Egypt that year.
The air was thick with so much tear gas, our eyes and lips burned for hours. Snipers on surrounding rooftops shot several protestors in the eyes. Police and soldiers killed more than 40 people, and injured more than 300, including me.
Why is the onus on protestors to be "peaceful" when the State brings violence? Why is "rioting" used to malign only the people fighting violence initiated by the State and its agents, and not those agents and that State? Why isn't ICE described as rioting?
When riot police arrived to do the job the State had trained them to do, they surrounded me, and beat me with their night sticks; they broke my left arm and right hand, sexually assaulted me, and dragged me to their supervising officer, who threatened me with gang rape. Police held me for six hours at the Interior Ministry headquarters.
Then, military police took me against my will to their headquarters from police custody. They blindfolded me and took me to be interrogated.
“Is this necessary?” I gestured to ward the blindfold. “My arms are broken.”
“Your hands have dirt on them. Is that from the molotov cocktails you were throwing at the police?” the officer interrogating me asked.
“That grime is from when I fell to the ground as riot police were sexually assaulting me,” I replied.
A plain clothes agent of the regime later went on television to accuse me of "handing out molotov cocktails from her handbag to activists.”
The only “weapon” in my possession at the time of my assault and abduction was a smartphone that I’d been using to document the protest. It fell from my hands as riot police were beating me.
I joined that protest on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in November 2011 to honour the courage of fellow Egyptians–armed with nothing but courage and a determination to fight a regime armed to the teeth by the most powerful country in the world and other western allies.
For weeks now in that most powerful country in the world, ICE have terrorised citizens and non-citizens alike–for opposing a genocide, for being “illegal,” for being “gang members,” with utter disregard for the law or due process or anything that the State ostensibly adheres to in return for compliance and obedience.
Masked ICE officers have abducted people from their homes, the street, schools, workplaces, immigration court, and more.
Is that not violence?
Members of law enforcement operate during a standoff between police and protesters in Compton, California, on Saturday. Photograph: Daniel Cole/Reuters
ICE officers are armed to the teeth and backed by local and federal police, and now the National Guard in a country where the armed forces are supposed to export violence in the name of the U.S.
Is that not violence?
Asked on a Sunday morning talk show if active duty Marines could be deployed on the streets of LA, Speaker Mike Johnson made exactly that connection.
“One of our core principles is maintaining peace through strength. We do that on foreign affairs and domestic affairs as well. I don't think that's heavy handed,” he said.
Is that not violence?
All this in a country where Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has called for an “American Crusade” against the “internal” and “domestic enemies” of the U.S. and Israel. All this in a country where the President and Commander-in-Chief has long been publicly itching to deploy that military throughout the United States, in violation of its laws.
Is that not violence?
Remember, that same President and Commander-in-Chief did not deploy the National Guard against white supremacist insurrectionists on January 6, 2021, who attacked police and stormed the Capitol, openly calling for the assassination of the Vice Pand other senior politicians.
Who is allowed to be violent in the U.S?
ICE officers are armed to the teeth and backed by local and federal police, and now the National Guard in a country where the armed forces are supposed to export violence in the name of the U.S. Is that not violence?
And yet here are the commentators–white people in the U.S., many of whom I doubt have ever been on the receiving end of State-sanctioned violence–urging non-violence from protestors fighting back against all that violence; fighting back against fascism in a way that most white people in the U.S. refuse to.
Because they believe they are protected from that violence by the mere color of their skin, and their own inaction.
I see those same people urge California Governor Gavin Newsom to instruct the LA police department to “protect” protestors from the violence of federal agents–a police notorious for its unhinged violence.
The police, in Egypt, in the U.S., everywhere, protect power and property. The State empowers them with a monopoly on violence to be directed internally for its benefit in the way that it empowers the military with a monopoly on violence to be directed externally for its benefit.
And in LA today, and not for the first time, we are seeing how internal and external come together to terrorise in the name of the State.
And if you think you are “safe,” if you behave and obey, understand that fascism performs that spectacle of violence exactly to maintain that delusion. Your delusion.
Is it risky to fight back against the State and its violence. Of course it is. There is no revolution without risk. Can you get hurt? Of course you can. I know. There is no revolution without risk.
In case you have forgotten, ICE was created under the Patriot Act in 2002 to keep (white) people in the U.S. “safe” after the September 11, 2001 attacks. If you thought ICE’s purview would focus solely on brown, Muslim men, if you think their purview focuses solely on pro-Palestinian activists, “gang members,” and undocumented people, then you have accepted and are complicit in the lies of fascism.
How many students, Green Card and visa holders, and migrants will it take for white people in the U.S. to understand that nothing protects you from the regime–not your obedience, not your whiteness?
Next time you want to lecture people who are risking their lives to push back against fascism, remember the words of Assata Shakur.
“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”
A fight today prevents an even bigger fight tomorrow.
Is it risky to fight back against the State and its violence. Of course it is. There is no revolution without risk. Can you get hurt? Of course you can. I know. There is no revolution without risk.
Are you ready to fight? Are you ready for the revolution?
—Support my work with a paid subscription
—Support my work with a one-time payment via PayPal
—Support my work via Patreon
Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. Her new book, an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell!: Adventures in Menopause from Around the World, has just been published. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
I appreciate your support. If you like this piece and you want to further support my writing, you can like/comment below, forward this article to others, or send a gift subscription to someone else today.