Los Angeles ICE Raids and Protests, 2025: Fact vs. Fiction

The most contested part of this story isn't the timeline — it's who was actually arrested. DHS and independent human-rights researchers describe very different arrestee populations, and one number widely repeated in connection with the LA raids turns out to describe a different time and a different claim entirely.

DHS officials publicly described the June operations as targeting people with criminal records. Fox News reported individual criminal histories DHS provided for several people arrested at Home Depot locations, but did not report an aggregate percentage covering the June Los Angeles raids specifically. ^[5]

A "70% of arrestees have criminal convictions or charges" figure often attributed to the LA operation is real, but it is not that claim: it comes from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's statements about ICE detentions nationwide in January 2026, seven months after the LA raids. PolitiFact found the underlying data showed only 5–7% of detainees nationally had violent-crime convictions. ^[6]

Human Rights Watch's November 2025 review of the broader Los Angeles enforcement surge (late May through July 2025) found the opposite of DHS's framing: about 66% of those detained had no U.S. criminal history at all, and only 5% had prior violent or sex-offense convictions. ^[4]

ICE and Border Patrol operations began June 6, 2025, at multiple Los Angeles locations, including Home Depot parking lots in Paramount — a traditional day-laborer gathering point — and the Ambiance Apparel warehouse in the Fashion District. ^[2][3]

At least two dozen garment workers were detained at Ambiance Apparel alone, and SEIU California president David Huerta, who had come to observe the raid, was also detained; he was later released on bail but faces felony charges. ^[3]

Protests began the same day and spread to sites including the Metropolitan Detention Center and the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building downtown. ^[2]

By June 8, demonstrations had grown more confrontational: protesters blocked the 101 Freeway, and an Australian journalist covering the unrest was struck by a rubber bullet. ^[2]

More than 850 people had been arrested across Los Angeles County by June 11–12, as Mayor Karen Bass imposed an overnight curfew. ^[2]

On June 7, President Trump signed a memo ordering deployment of at least 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles County over Governor Newsom's objections; the first 300 troops, from the California Guard's 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, arrived June 8. ^[2]

Contrary to widely repeated claims, Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act. The White House said explicitly there was "no plan at the moment" to do so, relying instead on a narrower federal statute; a presidential memorandum, not an Insurrection Act declaration, was the legal basis for federalizing the Guard. ^[7]

Roughly 700 active-duty Marines were separately activated to support the operation, drawn from Camp Pendleton and the Twentynine Palms base — among the first activations of Marines for domestic unrest in decades. ^[8][2]

Social media filled with competing narratives as events unfolded. Two claims checked for this dossier were genuinely fabricated or distorted — though not in the exact form earlier reporting on this event described.

A widely shared video of a police car engulfed in flames, reposted by figures including Sen. Ted Cruz and Alex Jones, was footage from the May 2020 George Floyd protests in Los Angeles, not the 2025 demonstrations. ^[1][12]

CBS News and PBS NewsHour traced this and other recycled footage — including a 2024 Jeep-fire video and unrelated military-family footage from Camp Pendleton — that circulated as if it were live coverage of the 2025 unrest; no verified view count for the police-car video could be confirmed. ^[1][12]

A viral claim held that Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said undocumented protesters should be "granted citizenship." PolitiFact rated this False: in the full video, Waters spoke broadly about immigrants in general deserving due process and "consideration for having citizenship," not a blanket citizenship grant for protesters specifically. ^[11][1]

In early July 2025, the ACLU and Public Counsel filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of immigrants stopped at Los Angeles-area bus stops and two U.S. citizens swept up in the operation, alleging Fourth and Fifth Amendment violations. ^[9]

On July 11, 2025, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order barring agents from stopping people based solely on apparent race or ethnicity, a Spanish-language accent, location, or type of work. ^[9]

On August 1, 2025 — not mid-July, as sometimes reported — a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel upheld that restraining order, finding the four factors cited "even when considered together ... describe only a broad profile" and do not amount to reasonable suspicion. ^[10]

Beyond the litigation, workers at the Fashion District and Home Depot sites described family members detained without immediate access to counsel or word of their whereabouts. ^[3]

Verification found real fabrications on both sides of this story — a recycled 2020 video and a distorted Maxine Waters quote — but the sharpest distortion involves official statistics: DHS's framing of the raids as targeting convicted criminals is contradicted by Human Rights Watch's independently reviewed data, while a "70%" DHS statistic often cited in connection with these raids actually dates to January 2026 and describes nationwide detentions, not the June 2025 Los Angeles operation. ^[4][6]