DHS attorney heckled and disrupted at UCLA Law Federalist Society event
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A chaotic situation unfolded in Los Angeles on Tuesday night as far-left activists and students harassed and berated a Department of Homeland Security attorney who was speaking to law students at a conservative group’s event at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
The incident occurred during a speech hosted by the UCLA chapter of the Federalist Society to law students by DHS general counsel James Percival. More than 150 protesters gathered outside the event chanting criticisms of the Trump administration, including “No to ICE, No to the KKK, No to Fascist USA.”
Students at the event booed Percival throughout his speech, and many held profane signs as he spoke. “F—you loser,” one sign read. As part of the outage, students made different sounds from their phones and shouted “Nazi” at different points.
The event ended with a question and answer session, during which most of the separatists left the hall in protest.
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Royce Hall on the UCLA campus is seen in the early morning hours. A San Francisco Bay Area man is facing federal charges in an elaborate scheme to steal historical Chinese documents from the University of California, Los Angeles library. (iStock)
“Yesterday, DHS General Counsel James Percival arrived at UCLA School of Law for a good-faith academic discussion and was met with personal attacks, repeated interruptions, and organized interruptions that prevented him from speaking,” UCLA FedSoc chapter president Matthew Weinberg told Fox News Digital.
“As President of the UCLA Law Federalist Society and event organizer, I have seen students who have come to hear and question a top federal official be denied the opportunity. If this is the case for conservative law students trying to host a speaker at an American law school in 2026, we are not staying silent on the issue.”
After the event was announced, left-wing campus groups distributed posts and online petitions containing statements deemed “threatening”. One of these radical left groups was By All Means Necessary (BAMN). website Calling for a “new militant civil rights and immigrant rights movement,” one person posted a flyer on Instagram promoting a picket line outside the law school.
“UCLA should not give ICE and Trump Administration representatives a base from which to organize Trump’s racist ethnic cleansing campaign against the United States and the Middle East,” the flyer said.
“Stop the fascist takeover of the American federal government! Stop the Trump police state!” title on social media said the article.
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Janss Steps on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles on October 20, 2017. (MichaelGordon1/Getty Images)
The UCLE Latino Law Students Association also fueled hysteria over the event.
“Many students at UCLA and UCLA Law have been impacted by ICE’s practice of tracking, abducting, and profiling those they suspect are in the United States without a warrant, primarily based on ethnicity,” the group said, later adding that inviting Percival to speak “completely disregards the safety of our undocumented students and minimizes the immense harm and trauma inflicted on our communities for decades.”
“By providing Mr. Percival with a platform, the Federalist Society and the UCLA Act legitimize and normalize racially discriminatory policies that actively harm both UCLA students and our community more broadly,” the group said. he said.
Video of the incident quickly became a hit on social media after it was posted by UCLA law school graduate Yitzy Frankel and even caught the attention of a senior Justice Department official.
“Oh, @UCLA,” Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for Human Rights Published on X. “… Adding to List…. And this is the wrong list.”
“Some little punks tried this when I went to speak at the UVA Law FedSoc, but school security cooperated with me to eliminate the disruption during the Q&A,” Dhillon added in another post. “Conservative campus speakers unfortunately must now expect this nonsense and prepare accordingly.”
“When you don’t discipline this type of behavior, you’re subject to more of it,” said Ilya Shapiro of the Manhattan Institute. Published on X. “This isn’t hard.”
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UCLA students walk out of conservative speaker’s event (Yitzy Frankel and Matthew Weinberg)
“The university values ’diversity of thought’ so highly,” says Judicial Network President Carrie Severino. Published on X “This tolerance does not extend to conservative legal arguments. It is difficult to imagine that these students would be committed to the rule of law and preserving the independence of the judiciary.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to UCLA for comment.
The incident underscores an ongoing trend of far-left students and activists disrupting conservative events on college campuses and harassing conservative students.
“FIRE’s 2026 college free speech survey shows that 91% of students now self-censor at least some of their conversations with classmates,” wrote Fox News contributor William J. Bennett in a recent Fox News column discussing how conservatives are not comfortable expressing themselves on college campuses. “Israel and Palestine are the most feared issues of open opposition, just ahead of abortion and transgender rights. 88% of students at two leading universities now act as if they are more progressive than they actually are.”
