Reporting from L.A.

Give me Disneyland, where rules are strictly enforced

I was in Los Angeles for the ICE riots of 2025.

Well, to be precise, I was in that part of the Greater Los Angeles Area called Disneyland, where citizenship rules mean something.

Anyone can become a citizen of Disneyland. Pay your money, go through a security check, behave yourself, and you are a member in good standing of the “Happiest Place on Earth.”

You may not sneak in. Disneyland maintains a strict zero tolerance on that front. There are walls around the place and security.

You cannot organize a protest parade down Main Street, objecting to the no-smoking policy or $10 corn dogs, and you certainly can’t wave flags from SeaWorld and yell “Shamu Rules!”

At the end of day, snug in the hotel room, I watched local TV bring me the news of a city with no rules. Anybody can sneak into L.A., stay here, work here, and participate in protests complaining about the rule of law. Non-profit organizations funded by California to fight against citizenship rules bring in riot masks by the truckload for the demonstrators. Why would a state-funded NGO have riot masks in storage?

To boot, roving groups of good Los Angelenos (also identifying as bandits) use the protests to loot the local Apple store.

If something like that happened in Disneyland, the CEO of Disney would stop it immediately. There would be no wringing of hands or delaying enforcement for five days.

But the CEO of California and Los Angeles did nothing for five full days.

Of course, there are differences between the city of L.A. and a theme park. So, before anyone loses their bowels about the comparison, can we at least agree that both have rules. One enforces its rules and is very successful. The other picks and chooses which rules it wants to enforce.

And that is why scenes like the one above have happened in L.A. for the last five days. By refusing to enforce rules for decades, the keepers of L.A. have created this kind of violence. Until California begins to take seriously the rules of what it means to be a good citizen, this kind of Mexico-first insurrection will continue to exist just under the surface. The burning of the American flag has been a nightly occurance in L.A.

And the mayor and the governor said nothing about it. That tells you all you need to know.