Reporter’s bag searched while covering LA immigration protest

Freelance journalist Joey Scott had his equipment bag searched by a sheriff’s deputy while covering an immigration enforcement protest in downtown Los Angeles, California, on June 8, 2025.

The weekend protests began June 6 in response to federal raids in and around Los Angeles of workplaces and areas where immigrant day laborers gathered, amid the Trump administration’s larger immigration crackdown. After demonstrators clashed with Los Angeles law enforcement officers and federal agents, President Donald Trump called in the California National Guard over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

Scott told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he and another reporter, Lexis-Olivier Ray of L.A. Taco, were attempting to cross a law enforcement skirmish line to escape tear gas and flash-bang grenades when they were stopped by a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy. Although other journalists were allowed to pass, the deputy insisted on searching their bags, Scott said.

Scott said both he and Ray displayed their press badges — Scott’s issued by the Industrial Workers of the World Freelance Journalists Union — but still had to show the contents of their bags to cross. In videos the pair posted to the social platform X, the deputy, who identified himself as a sergeant, can be seen shining a light into Ray’s bag.

He told the Tracker he feared refusing the search would have resulted in being forced back into the tear gas, his devices being seized or his detention or arrest. Scott, who has covered numerous protests over the past five years, said this experience was among the most intense.

The trauma of these encounters builds over time, he said. “You go out and the thing that goes through your mind is: Is this the night that I get arrested? Is this the night that I get severely hurt?”

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.