Defining Photos From LA’s Historic Anti-ICE Protests
Flaming self-driving Waymo cars, “Death 2 ICE” spray-painted across the entrance of a boarded T-Mobile store, highway overpasses dotted with anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) graffiti, swaths of police cars lined up. These are some of the scenes captured by photojournalists during mass protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles over the weekend. The demonstrations reached a climax after President Trump deployed the National Guard without California Governor Gavin Newsom’s consent in a rare exercise of power for a sitting president.
Hundreds poured onto the streets of Downtown Los Angeles and nearby Paramount — a small city with a large Latino population — in a series of demonstrations that began last Friday, June 6, and lasted through Sunday, June 8. At least 56 protesters were reported to have been arrested as of this writing. Protesters first gathered in the city’s fashion district, where ICE was conducting an immigration raid, prompting further demonstrations in front of the Los Angeles Federal Building later that day.
The Trump administration invoked a federal law that grants the president authority to mobilize the National Guard, usually controlled by state governors, to “suppress … rebellion.” Newsom condemned the president’s intervention as a “serious breach of state sovereignty” and announced that he is suing Trump. Newsom also called the move illegal.
During a dramatic third day of protests, approximately 300 Trump-deployed members of the California National Guard stood in front of federally controlled buildings, including a detention facility, in opposition to protesters who called for the end of family separations and deportations of undocumented immigrants. Protesters carried Mexican flags, makeshift signs defending immigrants’ rights, and covered their faces and eyes.
Demonstrators graffitied messages like “Fuck ICE,” including on a sign for the Los Angeles Mall, as shown in a photograph taken by Frederic J. Brown. In the image, an individual power washes several messages, including “Free Palestine,” as others gather to watch.
In another photograph, Jim Vondruska captures the moment police cars lined the 101 Freeway in the dark on Sunday, blocking entry against a foreground of anti-ICE graffiti. Another photograph by Ringo Chiu captures a protester riding a skateboard as Waymo cars, driverless vehicles that reportedly share footage with law enforcement agencies, blaze behind him.
Local police shot “less-lethal” weapons, which can cause life-threatening injuries, at protesters, including at least one photographer. Left-wing political Twitch streamer Hasan Piker captured footage of blue-tipped projectiles apparently deployed by Los Angeles police in a segment shared on his platform. Officers shot at least two journalists with crowd-control projectiles, including an Australian broadcaster reporting live. A British photographer living in Los Angeles, Nick Stern, said he was shot Saturday in Paramount while documenting the demonstrations and underwent emergency surgery for a leg wound caused by what he believed was a non-lethal bullet.
In an interview with the local news outlet NBCLA‘s Mekahlo Medina, an unnamed protester defended the protests as peaceful on Sunday.
“There is graffiti,” he said. “But at the end of the day, the more damage was caused to us than was caused to them.” During the same newscast, a US Customs and Border Protection officer wearing riot gear is seen shoving Medina, who is wearing a clearly identifiable press vest.
In the latest development, Trump ordered the mobilization of 700 US Marines to guard federal property in Los Angeles. It is unclear what authority the president possesses to deploy Marines for domestic law enforcement, but the move could be legal if the president uses the Insurrection Act. George H.W. Bush last invoked the law in 1992 to mobilize federal troops during the Rodney King protests.
