Radical California Professors Urge Students to ‘Get Ready for War.’ One Named an ICE Agent, Then Told a Crowd Where to Find Him.
On Sunday, September 6, 2026, in Oxnard, California, a tenured professor at a California public university stood on the closing panel of an activist summit, named a specific federal immigration officer, said she had “good authority” on which hotel he was staying at, and gave the crowd enough detail to find him — before telling them, repeatedly, to “f**k him up.”
The professor is Melina Abdullah, who teaches Pan-African studies at California State University, Los Angeles and co-founded the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter. The agent she named is Brian Palacios, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer already at the center of a separate, unresolved case: the Los Angeles Police Department is still investigating whether he was justified in fatally shooting a Compton man on New Year’s Eve.
She was not the only California academic urging a crowd toward confrontation that week. The day before, in Chicago, University of California, Santa Barbara history professor Rudolph “Butch” Ware told a separate socialist conference that Democrats “must be destroyed” and that his audience was “nowhere near ready for a war in the streets.” Neither professor has been charged with a crime. Both work for public universities that say the comments do not reflect institutional views.
- “F**k him up” the phrase Abdullah repeated to a crowd, directed at a named ICE agent, across a widely shared two-minute clip — Daily Caller, Sept. 8, 2026
- Dec. 31, 2025 the date ICE agent Brian Palacios, off duty, fatally shot Keith Porter Jr., 43, outside a Northridge apartment complex — LAist
- $211,683 Butch Ware's disclosed 2024 salary as a UC Santa Barbara associate professor of history — The College Fix, Sept. 8, 2026
- 0 criminal charges filed against Abdullah or Ware over their remarks as of publication — Daily Caller; Townhall, Sept. 8, 2026
- SD-25 the California State Senate district represented by Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), who shared the summit's closing panel with Abdullah — Ballotpedia
The event was called “La Defensa del Pueblo: A Summit to End the Terror Against the People,” an all-day gathering in Oxnard organized by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, Ventura County Defensa, 50501 SoCal and United Teachers Los Angeles, billed as a response to a federal pressure campaign against immigrant-rights groups. Its closing panel put Abdullah on stage alongside California State Senator Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), PSL Central Committee member Karina Garcia, and The People’s Forum founder Manolo De Los Santos. Also on the day’s program: Keith Porter Sr., the father of the man Palacios shot.
Video of Abdullah’s remarks, posted to X the following day by analyst Stu Smith, shows her calling Palacios “the killer ICE agent” and saying she had “good authority” on the Oxnard hotel where he was staying that weekend — naming the property and its street address aloud for the crowd. Civic Intelligence is withholding both details here; repeating them would extend the doxx, not report on it. She then pointed toward the audience: “You see the devil right there, f**k him up” — a line she and reporters covering the clip say she repeated multiple times. She urged attendees to buy George Jackson’s guerrilla-warfare manual “Blood in My Eye” and to “study guerrilla warfare.” Only after naming him and the hotel did she add a gloss: “When I say f**k him up, I mean in many ways” — standing “on the front lines,” or “giving a dollar.”
Why is @CalStateLA professor Melina Abdullah identifying a specific ICE agent, telling a crowd where he may be staying, giving the street address, and repeatedly saying to 'f*ck him up'?
Abdullah has taught Pan-African studies at Cal State LA for more than two decades and has chaired the department. She co-founded Black Lives Matter’s Los Angeles chapter in 2013 and describes herself, in her university biography, as a “womanist scholar-activist.” She has a history of confrontational public advocacy: in 2022, Cal State LA police removed her from a mayoral debate on campus after she and a companion bypassed the guest list and refused repeated requests to leave.
The university put daylight between itself and the summit. The event was “not sponsored by, affiliated with, or authorized” by Cal State LA, the school said, adding that Abdullah attended “in an individual capacity.” The statement affirmed the university’s commitment to free speech while saying it does “not agree with or condone hatred, threats, or violence.” It did not say whether Abdullah faces any internal review. PJ Media’s David Manney posed the obvious comparison: would a conservative professor who named a target’s hotel to a hostile crowd still be teaching by lunchtime?
A Cal State LA professor named an ICE agent, gave a hotel street address, and told the crowd to 'f*ck him up.' Melina Abdullah, a Pan-African studies professor and BLM Grassroots leader, spoke Sunday at the PSL-tied La Defensa del Pueblo summit.
During the same Sept. 4–5 window Abdullah spoke in Oxnard, Rudolph “Butch” Ware, an associate professor of history at UC Santa Barbara, took the stage at “Socialism 2026,” a four-day conference in Chicago that drew thousands of activists over Labor Day weekend. Ware, who teaches African and Islamic history and ran as the Green Party’s write-in candidate for California governor, is paid $211,683 a year in public salary, according to state compensation records reviewed by The College Fix.
“Some of these clickety-clack revolutionaries have never been in a f**king gunfight,” Ware told the crowd, “but some of us that grew up in the hood know what guns are like.” He went further: “Y’all ain’t nowhere near ready for a war in the streets. You better get ready for both kinds of war. And if you stay ready, you ain’t got to get ready.” He dismissed elected Democrats such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed as insufficiently radical — officials, he said, whose party keeps producing them to “contain radicalism.” “The Democrats cannot be reasoned with,” he said. “They must be destroyed.”
Not every official on stage in Oxnard used incendiary language. State Senator Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), who represents California’s 25th Senate District, closed the summit’s panel by describing her own legislative work: regulating the “fusion centers” and automated license-plate-reader networks that share data with federal immigration authorities. Pérez did not make the remarks about Palacios and has not been reported saying anything urging violence. But a sitting state legislator sharing a stage, on the same day, with a colleague who went on to name a federal officer’s hotel to a crowd is itself part of the record.
Inside-Outside Strategy: California Senator Targets Fusion Centers and ALPR Technology as Activists Talk 'Guerrilla Warfare.' California State Senator Sasha Renée Pérez tells activists at the La Defensa del Pueblo summit she is already trying to translate their concerns about federal surveillance into state law.
The video has drawn public calls for prosecution. Article III Project founder Mike Davis wrote that Abdullah “must face federal charges.” U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli (Trump-appointed), whose Central District of California office covers Los Angeles and Ventura counties, has taken an aggressive posture toward anti-ICE violence before: in July his office won a 37-month federal sentence, plus $253,415 in restitution, against a Los Angeles man who threw burning debris and rocks at California Highway Patrol officers during a 2025 riot, and Essayli said afterward that “those who attack our brave officers protecting public safety will face federal prison time for their crimes.” As of publication, neither his office nor DHS had announced any action tied specifically to Abdullah’s or Ware’s remarks.
BREAKING: RADICAL CALI PROFESSOR PROMOTES POLITICAL VIOLENCE AGAINST FEDERAL AGENT! Cal State Los Angeles Professor Melina Abdullah Both Doxxed & Incited Violence Against An @ICEgov Agent During 'La Defensa Del Pueblo' Summit In Oxnard, Sunday. A FEDERAL CRIME! @USAttyEssayli
Palacios, the agent Abdullah named, has not been charged with a crime either. Federal officials say he was responding to what he believed was an active shooter when he fired on Keith Porter Jr., 43, on New Year’s Eve; Porter’s family disputes that account, and friends say he was firing a rifle into the air to celebrate the new year. Months later, LAPD still had not finished its investigation, and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office says it has not yet received the case for a charging decision. That unresolved backdrop is why Abdullah called him “the killer ICE agent” onstage — and why doing so, before any allegation has been tested in a courtroom, matters.
What’s certain is the gap between rhetoric and consequence. Two tenured professors at California’s public universities told separate crowds, within a day of each other, to prepare for “war.” One added a federal officer’s name and lodging to the instruction. As of this story’s publication, both are still teaching, still drawing public paychecks, and facing nothing more binding than a university press statement and a wave of demands from commentators that someone, somewhere, do something about it.
On Sept. 6, 2026, Cal State LA professor Melina Abdullah told a Ventura County activist summit she had “good authority” on which Oxnard hotel a named ICE agent, Brian Palacios, was staying at, disclosed the property and its address, and repeatedly told the crowd to “f**k him up.” During the same Sept. 4–5 window in Chicago, UC Santa Barbara’s Butch Ware told a socialist conference that Democrats “must be destroyed” and that activists should “get ready for war.” Cal State LA says Abdullah acted in an “individual capacity” and does not condone “hatred, threats, or violence.” Neither professor has been charged with a crime. Palacios, the officer Abdullah named, has not been charged either — the LAPD probe into his fatal Dec. 31, 2025 shooting of Keith Porter Jr. remains open.
