Fact-checking misinformation about the LA protests

Day laborers detained outside of a Home Depot. Protesters marching. Hundreds of people arrested. National Guard and U.S. Marines deployed.

Days of demonstrations against federal immigration raids in Los Angeles have fueled round-the-clock news coverage and a number of misleading social media posts, including unrelated videos being mislabeled or shared out of context. 

Protests broke out across Los Angeles on June 6, after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided workplaces and confronted day laborers, arresting 44 people who allegedly violated immigration law. Many of the demonstrations have been peaceful, but there also have been outbursts of violence. The Los Angeles Police Department arrested hundreds of people on charges including failure to disperse, looting and vandalism.

In response, and without state leaders’ consent, President Donald Trump deployed National Guard troops and hundreds of U.S. Marines. California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s domestic military deployment. Trump has said without offering evidence that Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have paid violent protesters. In the Oval Office on June 10, Trump said the National Guard will remain in Los Angeles "until there’s no danger." The June 7 memo he issued that federalized the National Guard said the duration of the National Guard deployment would be "60 days or at the discretion of the Secretary of Defense."

On June 10, Bass declared a curfew for downtown Los Angeles from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. local time.

Here are some of the claims we’ve fact-checked so far.

Users mischaracterize videos unrelated to the LA protests

Amid legitimate images showing people in Los Angeles waving Mexican flags, vandalizing self-driving cars and pelting rocks at California Highway Patrol vehicles, other videos populating social media news feeds are not what they claim to be.

One video shared June 8 showed a police car engulfed in flames. But the video dates to 2020, when people rallied against police brutality after the May 25, 2020, murder of George Floyd, a Black man, while in police custody. 

Another video, shared June 8, showed a row of military vehicles driving down a street. Some users said the video is evidence that "Marines have arrived in Los Angeles!" But the video was from June 4, before the protests began, and it shows military service members reuniting with their families at Camp Pendleton, about 100 miles south of Los Angeles.

Some social media users also linked a video of a large crowd chanting "We are Los Angeles!" to the protests. But that video showed Los Angeles Football Club fans cheering before a May 18 match with the team’s top Major League Soccer rival Los Angeles Galaxy outside of the Bank of Montreal Stadium. 

California politicians’ comments misrepresented

Some social media users said U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., whose district includes much of southern Los Angeles, made a plea "to grant citizenship to every undocumented protester in Los Angeles."

But the full video of Waters' comments shows otherwise. Answering a question, Waters spoke broadly about immigrants and said people who have come to the U.S. "should be given an opportunity to tell their stories, whom they are and why they are here and ask the United States to please do what the Constitution allows us to do and that is —  give them consideration for having citizenship here." 

Other social media users used generative artificial intelligence chatbots to erroneously fact-check Newsom, saying that photos he posted June 9 were from 2021. 

Newsom criticized Trump’s treatment of the National Guard troops he deployed, saying they had no fuel, food, water or place to sleep. As evidence, Newsom posted photos of National Guard Members sleeping on the floor. 

X users said the photos, which were first published June 9 by the San Francisco Chronicle, were from the 2021 U.S. military evacuation from Afghanistan. AI chatbots ChatGPT and Grok mistakenly gave that information when asked about the photos’ origin.

Trump misstated when the National Guard arrived in Los Angeles

In the early morning of June 8, Trump praised the California National Guard’s response to Los Angeles protests, thanking them for a "job well done." But the National Guard had not yet arrived in LA, according to news reports about the timeline of events and a California governor’s office spokesperson. 

"Great job by the National Guard in Los Angeles after two days of violence, clashes and unrest," Trump wrote on Truth Social at about 2:41 a.m. EDT. 

The first media reports of California National Guard troops on the ground in Los Angeles were June 8 at about 9 a.m. EDT. A spokesperson for Newsom’s office told PolitiFact the National Guard deployed between 5 to 7 a.m. EDT.