Los Angeles business owners railed against looters who raided their stores as anti-ICE riots continued to rage through the city.
"This is so ridiculous. This doesn’t look like they’re protesting for ICE or anything. They are doing [it] just for the looting of the stores. I saw they’re breaking into the Apple store. They’re breaking into the Adidas store. This is not them doing protest [sic]," Monty, who owns Bargain2Perfumes, told NewsNation.
Another Los Angeles business owner, Paul Scrivano, told Fox News people are "sick and tired" of the city’s weak leaders, whom he called "children."
"These people don’t care. The only way it’s going to stop is if many troops come in, round them up, put them in the back of trucks, and bring them into a cell," Scrivano said. "We’ve got a lot of empty jail cells here in Los Angeles. We need to put them in jail cells, as many as we possibly can. If it’s thousands, it’s thousands."
The anti-ICE riots that erupted in Los Angeles over the weekend continued into Monday night. Throughout the unrest, agitators have shut down the 101 freeway, attacked law enforcement, and set cars ablaze, prompting President Donald Trump to send in the National Guard in response. Videos of looters robbing cannabis and tech stores have surfaced, leaving business owners angry and upset.
The teary-eyed owner of Nathan Jewelry described his distress while assessing the damage to his business with his daughter.
"Very bad. One week, it’s a riot … and they close the business, and nobody can come inside. Another day, something else. Another day, something else," he said in broken English as the camera panned to smashed windows and empty shelves. "Why do these people come to downtown?"
"I’m not a big guy. I’m not a big fish," he added.
His daughter agreed. "Very crazy. Very sad. Very terrible," she said. "People are stupid. What can you do?"
Liberal pundits and politicians, meanwhile, have shrugged off the riots as peaceful, even as split-screen footage showed cars engulfed in flames.
"At this point, this has been very peaceful. It has been tense at some points, but we haven't seen any violence happening here," CNN correspondent Julia Vargas Jones said, for example, as the network showed rioters on motorbikes circling a car on fire in the middle of an intersection.
California Democrats held a news conference Tuesday advocating for peaceful protests against Trump’s decision to send in the National Guard. California Rep. Maxine Waters (D.) said, "There was no violence. I was on the street. I know. … Get it straight, and don’t just rely on what you’re being told or the few incidents that you saw."