With federal agents conducting more immigration-related arrests throughout Southern California, residents have been active, too, capturing on camera those detentions in their communities — by real agents and potential impersonators.
Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel for First Amendment rights at the ACLU of Southern California, said community members have a constitutional right to record government officials engaging in public duties: “Doesn’t matter if it’s LAPD, the L.A. Sheriff’s Department, ICE or Border Patrol.”
But being a bystander also means navigating moments that can take very quick turns.
LAist cannot offer legal counsel, but we have turned to civil rights experts for guidance about how to document these detentions safely and effectively.
What can bystanders record?
The public has the right to capture agents’ faces and license plates, Eliasberg said.
WITNESS, a nonprofit devoted to using video evidence to expose injustice, recommends gathering images of any documents that agents present, including warrants. Community members can also record badges, weapons and uniforms. Video of the context in which detention takes place — including street signs, landmarks and any cameras that might be affixed to nearby buildings — can be used to authenticate the footage and corroborate community members’ experiences.
How close can you be to law enforcement?
How far away must witnesses be while recording interactions between agents and detainees?
“There's no tape measure rule,” Eliasberg said. “You have a right to record, and you have a right to be pretty close. You just can't get in the way so much that you're interfering with what the officer's trying to do.”
Eliasberg also noted that there may be public safety reasons for law enforcement to close off an area, including crime scenes and disaster zones.
After federal immigration agents shot and killed Minnesota residents Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, the national ACLU held an information session to provide guidance for observers. More than 76,000 people tuned in.
“A good rule of thumb would be that you want to be enough steps away from the officer that they would have to affirmatively walk towards you to be in physical contact with you,” said Byul Yoon, a fellow at the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “That's going to reduce the chance that they claim that you were interfering.”
WITNESS encourages community members to “film openly and comply with any instructions agents give you.”
But “if the agents tell you to stop filming, you can tell them: ‘I am exercising my right to document this arrest,'” a WITNESS instructional video adds. And if agents ask you to step back, “document yourself complying.”
Can you ask agents to identify themselves?
Given that agents continue to cover their faces, use unmarked vehicles and sometimes wear plain clothes, community members have increasingly demanded that they identify themselves. This, too, is permissible, Eliasberg said.
“The public has a right to ask: ‘Who are you? What is your name?’” he added. “They may not get an answer, but they have an absolute right to ask that question.”
If witnesses don’t get answers, Eliasberg said, “trying to take a photograph of the badge to see the name is a perfectly appropriate response.”
Can you ask detainees questions?
In videos circulating across social media, community members have also taken to asking detainees three questions:
- What is your full name?
- What is your birthday and year?
- Who can we call?
Eliasberg said this is “absolutely permissible.”
At the ACLU of Southern California, he added, “we are hearing stories all the time where people are saying: ‘I have no idea what happened to my family member.’ I mean, literally, they've been snatched off the street, or they don't even know. They just don't come home one night.”
Can you remind detainees about their rights?
The public also has the right to tell people who are being arrested that they have rights, Eliasberg said. This includes the right to remain silent and not to sign any documents.
“You're simply informing them what their constitutional rights are,” he said.
Is it OK to record ICE from inside my car?
In some parts of the country, federal agents have set up traffic stops, then proceeded to ask drivers for proof of citizenship. In such situations, drivers can “absolutely” record these interactions, said Gloria Leal, general counsel of League of United Latin American Citizens, a nonprofit that works to advance the economic condition, educational attainment and civil rights of Latinos in the U.S.
But, “whenever possible,” Leal recommends observing and filming immigration agent activity on foot. The courts and law enforcement “generally treat vehicles as potentially deadly weapons, even when no harm is intended [by the driver],” she said.
If you’re in a vehicle and are approached by an immigration agent, she added, “you should not inch forward or reposition your vehicle without instruction. Do not block lanes, driveways, or sidewalks.”
Maribel Hernández Rivera, the ACLU’s national director of immigrant community strategies, offered another piece of advice: “Don’t record while driving.”
Yoon added: “If you're recording ICE from behind the wheel while you're driving and holding your phone, you could be pulled over or cited for breaking that law."
What if an agent takes away my phone?
If an immigration agent takes an observer’s phone, deletes their recordings or coerces them into sharing a password, those actions are a potential violation of the Fourth Amendment, Leal said.
In such situations, she added, an observer “should not physically resist.”
“They should state that they do not consent to the seizure or search,” she said. “They should [also] try to document the officer's identity, then seek legal counsel.”
WITNESS and Eliasberg emphasized that agents cannot take your phone if you're simply trying to record what's happening. They also can’t force you to delete your footage. But they may try anyway.
To help create a barrier, WITNESS recommends that witnesses lock their phones with a passcode, which are protected under the Fifth Amendment. (Fingerprint IDs and facial recognition are not.)
If you feel that your civil rights have been violated, you can seek help from organizations like the ACLU, which offers free services.
“The problem,” Eliasberg said, “is we don't necessarily have the resources to help everybody.”
How should I share my footage?
Community members typically share their footage with trusted media outlets, attorneys at civil rights organizations, or on social media. The state has also moved to track potentially unlawful activity by federal agents. Recently, the California Department of Justice launched a portal where the public can submit videos and photos. The portal asks community members to indicate whether their footage depicts excessive force, unlawful searches or arrests, or other civil rights violations.
In its tip sheet for filming immigration enforcement activity, WITNESS recommends securing consent from the arrestee “and/or direct representatives,” including members of that person’s family or their lawyer. WITNESS also suggests keeping a copy of the video file in a secure location, in case your footage is removed from social media.
If you’d like to share your footage with LAist’s investigative reporting team, you can do so by contacting editor Jared Bennett on Signal. His username is jbennett.18. You can also share it with watchdog correspondent Jordan Rynning, whose username is jrynning.56. For instructions on getting started with Signal,visit the app's support page. Once you're in the app, you can type their usernames in the search bar after starting a new chat.
How footage can help community members
The morning of June 17, Oscar Preciado went to a Walmart in Pico Rivera to pick up merchandise for his work as an Instacart shopper.
That day, 20-year-old Adrian Martinez was detained and taken by Border Patrol — even though he’s a U.S. citizen.
Preciado was in the parking lot. When he saw the agents appear, he whipped out his phone.
In a conversation with LAist, Preciado said he and other community members were recording the agents’ vehicles and license plates when he noticed that “they were throwing someone to the ground.”
Preciado ran over to capture what was happening.
“It was horrifying to witness,” he added. “The kid weighs 110 pounds, maybe, and he was being thrown around by these big guys.”
The federal government later said that Martinez was detained for punching officers. But after watching video footage, a federal judge said he threw no punches.
Martinez has since been released from custody on bond. He also lost his job. But he's home with his family.
Learn from a bystander: What is the experience like?
Since detentions by the Department of Homeland Security intensified in southeastern L.A. County, local resident Eric Eztli has been monitoring Home Depot parking lots and car washes. He keeps an eye out for suspicious vehicles, as well as for people who, in his view, are racially profiling and unfairly detaining his community members.
Last summer, Eztli went to a Home Depot in Huntington Park, bearing witness as men in sage green uniforms, with Border Patrol patches affixed to their sleeves, chased a day laborer. The agents’ faces were covered.
Eztli ran toward them and started to record the interaction on his cellphone.
In his video, Eztli is heard demanding that the agents show a warrant for the man’s arrest. They do not.
One of the agents tackles the day laborer to the ground. Then, three agents hold down the day laborer and handcuff him. As they tie his arms behind his back, one agent pushes the day laborer’s face into the dirt, first with his hand, then with his knee. Eztli repeatedly asks the day laborer for his name. The man manages to say “Jorge” before agents drag him away. “Jorge what?” Eztli shouts after him, trying to get his last name.
As the agents’ unmarked vehicles pulled away from the parking lot, Eztli recorded their license plate numbers.
The scene hurt to watch, he told LAist, but he wanted to gather as many details as he could. Some of it might be of use to Jorge.
“I was going to get his birthday, too, but they just took him very quickly,” Eztli said.
Eztli also meant to get a contact number so he could reach out to Jorge’s family and let them know he’d been detained. Full names and birth dates are also required to search for people in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s inmate locator system.
“I think it's important for the community to exercise their right to record and make sure that [agents] are being held accountable,” Eztli added. “But it's hard because they are hiding behind anonymity, so they can do whatever they want — that's why it feels so scary.”
