On June 6, 2025, protests erupted in Los Angeles over Immigrations & Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that saw dozens detained as part of a nationwide crackdown on alleged illegal immigration. Over 1 in 3 Angelenos are foreign-born, one of the highest percentages of any American city. Within days, President Donald Trump deployed over 4,000 California National Guard to LA, the first federalization of National Guard without a state governor's consent since the 1965 marches from Selma to Montgomery during the Civil Rights Era. Shortly after, the Pentagon dispatched another 700 Marines, with a Pentagon spokesman boasting that more US troops were now deployed in LA than in Iraq or Syria.
As a double immigrant who spent my early childhood in LA, I felt compelled to return home to document this unprecedented domestic military expansion.
"Unlawful Assembly" depicts LA's surreal, troubling summer of 2025. The phrase is often declared by police before dispersing protests, but here also refers to the questionable legality of the deployment of US troops onto LA's streets. Despite inflammatory rhetoric describing the LA protestors as "insurrectionists", the demonstrations have been largely peaceful and confined to a small area of downtown LA. With the roving, lightning-fast raids themselves being almost impossible to cover, media coverage instead focused on the protests. Both police and protestors duly played their roles in creating a media spectacle, blurring the lines between perception, reality, and performance in a notoriously camera-ready city.
Although I bore the trappings of a photojournalist—personal protective equipment, press credentials, and zoom lenses—I wasn't really photographing like a news photographer. Arriving in the midst of unrelated personal turmoil, I found my eye changing in unexpected ways after landing in LA. Without the restrictions of being "on assignment" for a news outlet, I could simply make pictures of whatever drew me in, visually or emotionally. The resulting images are a reflection on the defiance, fear and uncertainty of this moment in LA.
