Amid growing tensions over the perpetrators of the violent anti-ICE riots, a California-based company specializing in providing on-demand protest crowds says there are ways to distinguish between hired demonstrators and organic participants.
“We receive inquiries regarding practically every major social cause imaginable, and the anti-ICE demonstrations are no exception,” Adam Swart, the CEO and founder of Crowds on Demand, told Fox News Digital. “The fact that we receive requests does not mean we take them, in many cases, because the budget does not match the ambition.”
Swart also told the outlet that his firm has received “numerous high budget requests” regarding the anti-ICE demonstrations, but that those offers were declined due to the fact “that they do not want to get close to any form of illegal activity, including violence, vandalism or blocking off roads without a permit.”
Swart, who founded Crowds on Demand in 2012 while studying at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with the goal of “changing how advocacy is done,” explained how his company supports various causes and how to identify if protests are connected to other companies or organizations.
He said that one way to spot the difference between his crowds and those who are hired by other companies is if those “paid protest teams are kept on standby.”
“These groups deploy protesters within minutes using geolocation tools and encrypted chats,” Swart said, assing that “only compensated activists move that fast.”
“Now what you’re seeing from the agitators should not be logged in with the broader protest movement, and that is because there is a group of agitators who attach themselves to every cause and use that cause as an excuse to loot, to be violent, and to create disruption,” Swart told Fox.
“They do not care about those causes, they merely care about looting and destruction. These are pirates. These are psychopaths, and their behavior should not be tolerated, and their actions should not be used to delegitimize peaceful demonstrators,” he continued.
Swart also added, chillingly, that some of these groups have informants inside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“Activist groups are (likely) receiving tipoffs about ICE raid locations, allowing them to stage protests before law enforcement even arrives,” Swart claimed.
“I strongly believe that there are ICE informants who are providing information to demonstrators about the locations of the raids. The reason why I believe that is that there were hundreds of demonstrators that showed up with just a few minutes’ notice at the locations of the raids. That is difficult to do,” he continued.
Swart mentioned that this is purely his speculation, and he has no specific information about how the riots might be funded.
“While I don’t have direct information that the protesters are being paid, I strongly believe that many of the protesters are being compensated,” he explained. “How do I know this? Because when you can gather hundreds of people at the wee hours of the morning or the late hours of night with zero notice with just a text message within a 10-minute period, that sounds a lot more like a rapid reaction force than a group of passionate demonstrators.”
He went on to say that people should look for legal donations and payouts that are “disguised as support.”
“Instead of direct cash payments, groups offer expensive legal defense packages and luxury accommodations as a workaround – compensating illegal action without ever calling it that,” Swart explained, adding that another giveaway is the arrangement of hotel accommodations for violent rioters.
“Expect to see protest leaders put up in boutique hotels ‘awaiting trial.’ It’s a tactic increasingly used to reward aggressive participants without raising legal red flags,” he said.
