Wave of car attacks on ICE agents follows incendiary rhetoric from target-city leaders

A surge in car-rammings and other assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during targeted operations in California, Illinois and North Carolina has coincided with sharp criticism from local and state leaders against federal officers.

In comments to Fox News Digital on Friday, Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said:

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, whose city was targeted second after Los Angeles, has repeatedly labeled Trump a racist and characterized ICE agents as terrorists.

As recently as this week, Johnson told a podcast - in a report aired by Sky News - that "attacks" on illegal immigrants and targets of the Trump administration have the same characteristics as the priorities of antebellum freedmen.

"We know that the intentional attacks that are coming from the Trump administration and the extreme right in this country has very much been what I call an attempt to relitigate the Civil War," Johnson said.

"They have not accepted the results that the North actually won."

Johnson said that Trump is also politically targeting education, housing, transportation, jobs and health care, which he said were "literally the five demands of descendants of slaves."

During the Civil War, however, the Confederacy was led largely by Democrats of that era, including President Jefferson Davis, Vice President Alexander Stephens and officers like Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who later became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also spoke out during ICE operations in her city, saying, "These tactics sow terror in our communities."

Noem later claimed Padilla "lunged" at her, which resulted in various analyses of video of the confrontation.

Padilla was quickly tackled by Noem's security detail, and later commented on the incident, saying that if his treatment is how the Trump administration deals with a "senator with a question … you can only imagine what they're doing to farmworkers" on the immigration enforcement front.

"We won't be silent. We won't back down. We will continue to hold the federal government accountable when it violates the Constitution and federal law," Bonta said in a July 7 statement.

On Friday, DHS announced another arrest of a car-ramming suspect, with officials alleging Mexican national Roberto Galeana-Guatemala struck and seriously injured an officer with his vehicle when ICE was attempting to arrest him in National City, California.

McLaughlin said the incident marked roughly the 100th vehicle attack on ICE personnel since Trump took office.

After a recent case in which critics claimed DHS "kidnapped" a teenager, McLaughlin said the boy had been part of a group throwing rocks at officers who themselves were targets of another vehicle ramming attack.

She suggested rhetoric from critics over the incident was yet another accelerant on the political fire causing such attacks:

"A U.S. teenager was arrested for assaulting law enforcement in Chicago - any claims that CBP 'kidnapped' a U.S. citizen and held him in a warehouse are bizarre and categorically false," she said.

"These are more disgusting smears peddled by the media and billboard law firms. This attack is not an isolated incident, and it reflects a growing and dangerous trend of illegal aliens violently resisting arrest, and agitators and criminals ramming cars into our law enforcement officers."