The Brief

The videos are everywhere.

They show federal immigration agents on the streets of downtown Los Angeles, Paramount and communities across L.A. County, masked and in tactical gear, facing off with demonstrators.

As crowds protested the sudden presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies on the streets of Los Angeles, law enforcement officers responded in some cases with tear gas, pepper balls and rubber bullets.

Some protesters reported injuries and accused federal law enforcement of excessive force.

But seeking accountability for a federal agency is challenging.

“These incidents involving federal agents just essentially go into a black hole,” said Michael Gennaco, a former federal civil rights prosecutor who now consults with law enforcement on reforms.

He said people can lodge complaints with ICE, but they’ll never learn the results.

It’s also hard to identify individual agents. They wear masks and uniforms without their names. Sometimes, the uniforms only read: "Police."

At a news conference last week, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass questioned whether some of the masked men were even federal agents.

“Who are these people?" Bass asked. “And frankly, the vests that they have on look like they ordered them from Amazon. Are they bounty hunters? Are they vigilantes? If they're federal officials, why is it that they do not identify themselves?”

LAist reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment on complaints and its response to the protests. The department has not responded.

Peter Eliasberg with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California said he doubted the federal government would take calls for accountability for agents accused of excessive force seriously, given recent comments from President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

" Even if there are oversight mechanisms built in, I just have a hard time believing that Secretary Noem or President Trump has any interest in using those oversight mechanisms," Eliasberg told LAist. "They seem to equate protests with something illegal that needs to be tamped down, but in fact, it is a fundamental constitutional right."

Demonstrators in Paramount describe excessive force

At a recent meeting in the city of Paramount, residents packed a small council chamber to express concerns about the response to a June 7 protest.

Alyson Barragan said she was at least 100 feet away from agents and protesting peacefully when they started shooting tear gas and projectiles at the crowd. At the City Council meeting, she lifted her shirt to reveal a large purple bruise on her lower back.

Several people in the audience gasped.

"I was shot running away from the violence inflicted by the agents," she said.

Alyson Barragan says federal agents shot her in the back with a rubber bullet while she was peacefully protesting their presence in Paramount.

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Alyson Barragan

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Abraham Flores told the council federal agents shot him in the head with a non-lethal projectile, landing him in the hospital with a brain bleed and concussion.

"Everyone was being peaceful," he said. "And it wasn't until those trigger-happy ICE agents started shooting at people that the chaos happened."

Vicki Martinez said she was driving to Home Depot for a flower pot when she was caught up in the protest that Saturday morning. She choked on tear gas as it streamed into her car.

"I feel like I have PTSD," she said.

Sara Aguilar, a medical assistant, said she saw two demonstrators with head wounds at the protest that day.

 "It's just excessive force — it's brutality,” Aguilar told LAist about federal agents at the scene. “I think that they should be accountable for that. [You are] shooting your rubber bullets at unarmed civilians. And that's not OK."

Federal policy issued in 2023 instructs officers to identify themselves and issue a verbal warning "when feasible" before using force.

In a video from the Paramount protest, demonstrators appear to be some distance away from a cluster of federal agents in tactical gear when the agents start throwing flash bang grenades, sending demonstrators running. No verbal warning can be heard in the video.

The members of the Paramount City Council have said that the city has no authority over federal agencies' actions.

No civilian oversight for Homeland Security

Local agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department and county Sheriff’s Department, responded to the protests, too, and have faced accusations of excessive force. The difference is they have some level of oversight.

The Los Angeles Police Department has a five-member civilian commission that holds weekly meetings and reviews cases of serious use of force by officers.

The county Sheriff’s Department has an 11-member civilian advisory board where the public can air complaints.

The Department of Homeland Security has no such body. The federal agency oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, Citizenship and Immigration Services and more.

According to its website, ICE has a formal complaint process through its Office of Professional Responsibility. Complaints against agents can be filed online or via phone. Homeland Security also has a civil rights office where people can lodge complaints.

The department did not respond to questions from LAist about accusations of excessive force. It said previously that ICE officers have experienced a 500% increase in assaults against them, but the agency did not provide data that supports that claim.

A spokesperson said "anyone who actively obstructs law enforcement in the performance of their sworn duties will face consequences," including arrest.

Gennaco, the law enforcement expert, said Congress has the authority to investigate federal law enforcement agencies, and has looked into ICE detention facilities. But he said such investigations are rare.

Individual agents are hard to identify — and nearly impossible to sue

It can be hard to identify a federal agent who fired a rubber bullet or pepper ball.

"Those federal agents had to be the Department of Homeland Security or ICE," said Gabriel Garcia, who said he was at the protest in Paramount. "They  were full-on wearing camo suits. They had gas masks on, they had military ballistic helmets on."

A 2021 law passed in the wake of the George Floyd protests requires federal military and civilian law enforcement personnel responding to a “civil disturbance” to wear visible personal identification and the name of the government entity employing them.

California lawmakers have introduced a bill that would ban most law enforcement officers from covering their faces while working.

But even if they could be identified, it’s nearly impossible to sue individual federal agents, according to UCLA Law Professor Joanna Schwartz, an expert on police misconduct litigation.

A 1971 Supreme Court case allowed individuals to sue federal officials for violating their constitutional rights, specifically when those rights are violated under the color of law. But over the years, the court has slowly chipped away at that right.

“The Supreme Court’s decisions have narrowed this right to sue so dramatically that it only covers only a few very narrow circumstances,” she said.

Lawsuits against Homeland Security

Suing the U.S. government is still an option. And that's what some organizations and people are doing.

The L.A. Press Club and others filed a lawsuit last week against the Department of Homeland Security, accusing federal agents of using "retaliatory violence" against protesters, legal observers and journalists at protests across the region.

Eliasberg, with the ACLU, is representing the Press Club. He said a legal doctrine known as "qualified immunity" makes it much harder to sue law enforcement. It protects government officials from liability unless they've violated "clearly established" constitutional rights.

The Press Club lawsuit seeks an injunction that would require Homeland Security officers to only use force in response to specific threats and not target journalists.

"Doing crowd management, policing First Amendment activity and protest – that's not what they're trained to do," Eliasberg said of the federal agents. "You're not supposed to use excessive force and generally indiscriminate force."

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the First Amendment protects speech and peaceful assembly, "not rioting."

"Anyone who actively obstructs law enforcement in the performance of their sworn duties will face consequences, which could include arrest," the statement reads.

Barragan, who was hit in the back by a projectile at the Paramount protest, said she plans to file a lawsuit against ICE and Homeland Security.

Her lawyer, Robin Perry, said litigation is one of the only routes available to Angelenos outraged by what they've seen on their city's streets.

" There's no meaningful oversight of ICE with this administration," Perry said.

A comment from the Trump administration last week indicates how it feels about efforts like Barragan's.

"President Trump and Secretary Noem are committed to restoring law and order in Los Angeles and around the country," Homeland Security said in an email. "No lawsuit, this or any other, is going to change that."

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has rejected a proposal that would have let tenants across the county fall behind by about three months' worth of rent and still have local protections from eviction.

Supporters said the rules would have helped immigrants stay housed after losing income because of federal immigration raids.

Only one of the county’s five supervisors supported the expanded eviction protections. With none of the other four willing to second the motion in Tuesday’s meeting, the proposal died before it ever came to a vote.

The proposal failed after an hour of impassioned public comment from both renters and landlords. Onlookers chanted “cowards” as the board cleared the room for closed session.

Would the rules have been challenged in court?

Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who put forward the proposal, said earlier in the meeting that expanding eviction protections would have been an appropriate way to help the county’s nearly one million undocumented immigrants.

Anticipating potential lawsuits to strike down the proposed ordinance, Horvath said, “I understand there is legal risk. There is in everything we do. Just like the risk undocumented Angelenos take by going outside their homes every day.”

Landlords spoke forcefully against the proposed rules. They said limiting evictions would saddle property owners with the cost of supporting targeted immigrant households.

“This proposed ordinance is legalized theft and will cause financial devastation to small housing providers,” said Julie Markarian with the Apartment Owners Association of California.

Horvath’s proposal would have built on an existing protection for renters in unincorporated parts of L.A. County, such as East L.A., Altadena and City Terrace. Under the current rules, renters can fall behind by up to one month’s worth of “fair market rent” (an amount determined by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department) and still be legally protected from eviction.

Protections won’t go countywide

Last week, county leaders voted to explore increasing that threshold to two months. But Horvath wanted to go further by increasing the limit to three months and making it apply countywide, not just in unincorporated areas.

Tenant advocates said family breadwinners have been detained during federal immigration raids, and other immigrants are afraid to go to their workplaces, causing families to scramble to keep up with the region’s high rents.

“Immigrant tenants are experiencing a profound financial crisis,” said Rose Lenehan, an organizer with the L.A. Tenants Union. “This protection is the bare minimum that we need to keep people housed and keep people from having to choose whether to stay in this county with their families and with their communities or self deport or face homelessness.”

A report published this week by the L.A. Economic Development Corporation found that 82% of surveyed small business owners said they’d been negatively affected by federal immigration actions. About a quarter of those surveyed said they had temporarily closed their businesses because of community concerns.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday placed on the June ballot a proposed temporary half-cent sales tax increase to fund the county’s struggling health care system, which has been hit hard by federal funding cuts.

If passed by voters, the increase would bring the county’s tax rate to 10.25%. It is projected to raise one billion dollars annually over five years.

The tax would expire in five years.

The background

County health officials said Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” will cut $2.4 billion from county health programs over three years, threatening closure of some of the county’s 24 clinics and an array of public health programs.

Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who co-authored the proposal, said the county faced a “federally imposed crisis” that in the absence of state action, could only be addressed by raising taxes on county residents.

“This motion gives the voters a choice, given the stark realities that our county is facing,” Mitchell said.

The vote was 4-1, with Supervisor Kathryn Barger the lone dissenter. Barger is the board’s sole Republican. She worried shoppers would go to Orange County, where the sales tax is 7.75%. She also said the state should take the lead on addressing federal funding cuts to county health care systems.

Public reaction

More than 700 people showed up Tuesday to speak out on the proposal. Health care providers pleaded with the board to place the measure on the ballot, saying federal funding cuts to Medi-Cal had hit them hard.

“This is a crisis,” said Louise McCarthy, president and CEO of the Community Clinic Association of L.A. County. “Medi-Cal accounts for over half of clinic funding. So these changes will lead to clinic closures, longer wait times, overcrowded E.R.’s and higher costs for the county.” 

Others opposed any plan that would increase the sales tax.

“Our city is opposed to the adding of this regressive tax to overtaxed residents and making it even more difficult for cities, especially small cities, to pay for the increasing cost of basic resident services,” said Rolling Hills Mayor Bea Dieringer. “The county needs to tighten its belt further.”

Details on the proposed plan

Under the plan, up to 47% of revenue generated will be used by the Department of Health Services to fund nonprofit health care providers to furnish no-cost or reduced-cost care to low-income residents who do not have health insurance. 

Twenty-two percent would provide financial support to the county’s Department of Health Services to safeguard its public hospital and clinic services. Ten percent would be allocated to the Department of Public Health to support core public health functions and the awarding of grants to support health equity.

The rest would be sprinkled across the health care system, including to support nonprofit safety net hospitals and for school-based health needs and programs.

A last-minute amendment by Supervisor Lindsey Horvath set aside 5% of funding for Planned Parenthood.

The spending would be monitored by a nine-member committee but ultimately would be up to the discretion of the Board of Supervisors.