Journalist Melanie Buer was shoved multiple times and detained by officers while covering a protest against immigration raids in downtown Los Angeles, California, on Aug. 8, 2025.
Protests in LA began in early June in response to federal raids of workplaces and areas in and around the city where immigrant day laborers gather, amid the Trump administration’s larger immigration crackdown. Raids at Home Depots in early August took place seemingly in defiance of a July 11 court order temporarily prohibiting federal agents from using discriminatory profiling.
On Aug. 8, two days after an immigration raid in the parking lot of a Home Depot in LA’s Westlake neighborhood, protesters gathered at the store and marched to the Metropolitan Detention Center downtown. The demonstrators and the journalists covering them encountered a violent response from Los Angeles Police Department officers, violating a court order protecting the press from arrest, assault or other interference.
Buer, an independent journalist, was documenting protesters marching to the detention center. About a half-hour after demonstrators arrived there, LAPD officers formed a skirmish line. While Buer and other journalists were photographing the line, law enforcement began advancing on them.
“Almost without warning, police officers began using batons on anyone within the vicinity, of which there were many journalists,” Buer told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
She described aggressive shoving by police and witnessed journalists being struck with batons, pushed and trampled. Though not seriously hurt, Buer was shoved into pylons multiple times. An officer swung a baton at her back but missed.
“They were swinging the batons like baseball bats,” said Buer, who posted a video of the assault to social media.
The use of force continued for nearly an hour before officers formed a kettle, a tactic used to surround and control a crowd, around a small group of journalists and demonstrators. When Buer and others identified themselves as reporters and asked to leave, officers refused.
“They disregarded that we were media, told us to walk to the wall and that we would be put under arrest,” said Buer, who was wearing her International Federation of Journalists press badge. “One officer said, ‘The statutes don’t matter.’”
She and several other journalists were placed in zip-tie handcuffs and held for about 90 minutes. Officers took their information, photographed them and eventually released them without charges. Two journalists without physical press badges were taken to a police station and later released.
Buer was previously detained by Omaha police while covering a protest in 2020, but said this was the first time it had happened to her in LA.
“Myself and other reporters were doing nothing that would warrant this,” Buer said. “So I’m just going to keep reporting as I report.”
The LAPD did not respond to a Tracker request for comment about the detained journalists. In a statement posted to the social platform X, the department’s Central Division wrote that an unlawful assembly was declared “due to the aggressive nature of a few demonstrators.”
“The protest went into the late night hours with people refusing to disperse,” it continued. “Central Division will continue to support 1st Amendment rights of all people. However, if violence or criminal activity occurs, laws will be enforced.”
This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.