Los Angeles Protests 2025: One Square Mile of Truth in a City Full of Lies

If you’re only seeing headlines, you’d think the Los Angeles protests 2025 were a total breakdown of law and order. That’s the narrative being pushed on repeat, especially by media outlets more interested in chaos clips than context. But on the ground, it’s not fire and anarchy. It’s fear and resistance. It’s unmarked vans, plainclothes agents, helicopters blasting threats and families reliving historic trauma in real time.

What’s happening in LA isn’t new. It’s just louder. And if you come from an Indigenous or immigrant community like I do, you know exactly what this is. It’s not about safety. It’s about control. The Los Angeles protests 2025 didn’t expose some deep civic failure. They exposed the lengths this government will go to maintain power and who it’s willing to hurt in the process.

ICE Is Operating Like a Paramilitary Force in Los Angeles

The targets are brown folks, immigrants and families trying to get to work, to church and to their appointments. People standing in line at courthouses to finalize their legal paperwork. People just trying to survive.

And before someone jumps in with “but the law,” let’s get something straight. Immigration violations are civil offenses. Not criminal. Civil. Meaning the federal government is deploying a militarized presence to snatch people for paperwork issues. That’s not about law. That’s about optics.

As an Indigenous woman, I’ve seen what happens when the state decides your body is a threat. I come from people who were hunted, relocated, sterilized and erased. So when ICE starts rolling deep through Los Angeles, hiding behind face coverings and tactical gear, I don’t see public safety. I see the same old playbook with a modern budget.

FUN FACT

Los Angeles County remains one of the nation’s largest counties with 4,084 square miles, an area some 800 square miles larger than the combined area of the states of Delaware and Rhode Island.

The Los Angeles protests 2025 didn’t escalate because people were out of control. These protests didn’t come out of nowhere. They started in response to federal immigration raids in the garment district, a longtime hub for immigrant labor, especially for undocumented Latino and Asian workers. And when you treat neighborhoods like battlegrounds, don’t act surprised when people push back.

The National Guard Was Never Meant to Be a Political Prop

Let me say this not as a journalist, but as a Blue Star mom. My son has served in the Army National Guard since 2020. He’s a medic. He signed up to help and to serve his community, respond to wildfires, hurricanes and public health crises. What he did not sign up for was to be dropped into city streets and used as a pawn in some cheap political theater during the Los Angeles protests 2025.

The National Guard isn’t supposed to be an intimidation tactic. It’s not a tool for presidents to flex during news cycles. It exists to support governors and state governments during emergencies, when they ask for it. And that’s the kicker. In 2025, Los Angeles didn’t ask and neither did the governor of California. Trump sent them anyway, breaking precedent and bulldozing past state authority like it was optional.

This wasn’t about keeping order. It was about sending a message. And if you think that message landed with pride in the hearts of Guard families like mine, you’re wrong. As a reminder, when we deploy the National Guard, not only are we paying for their time but also, their food and for their homes/apartments that they’re not living in when they’re sent out because of an emergency.

This isn’t law and order. It’s resource theft disguised as leadership. It’s draining funds that could be used for schools, healthcare, infrastructure, and instead sending soldiers into their own cities to stand against the communities they’re meant to serve. That’s not safety. That’s a breach of trust.

Peaceful Protest Is Not the Problem.
It Never Was.

The Los Angeles protests 2025 were loud, yes. They were massive. They were disruptive but that’s because that’s what protest is supposed to be. They were not violent by default, and they were not chaotic by design. That framing is intentional. It’s lazy at best, dangerous at worst.

What we saw in LA were thousands turning out, peacefully, in coordinated marches and rallies, not just to protest the raids but to reject the fear and violence that came with them.

But you wouldn’t know that from watching the clips on cable news. You’d think the entire city was one giant riot scene. That’s not a coincidence. It’s not poor reporting. It’s the narrative being pushed to discredit movements, especially when those movements are led by Black, brown and Indigenous communities demanding real change.

Yes, there was vandalism. Yes, there were some who showed up to cause damage but those people are not the movement. They are not the voice of resistance. They are opportunists who hijack pain for personal gain. And every time media outlets blur that line, they’re helping the state justify a violent response.

Let’s be clear, no one is excusing destruction. But when you treat protest as inherently criminal, you’re telling on yourself. You’re showing the world that your problem isn’t with broken windows. It’s with raised voices.

That’s what makes the state response so infuriating. It’s not just excessive. It’s strategic. Turn up the violence, then blame the people. Paint the crowd as dangerous, then justify the crackdown. It’s a cycle we’ve seen over and over and the Los Angeles protests 2025 were no exception.

Facial Recognition Turned Protest Into a Police Lineup

During the Los Angeles protests 2025, law enforcement watched from the sky and behind screens. Helicopters broadcast threats through loudspeakers, warning that protestors had been identified and would be tracked down. That wasn’t crowd control. It was intimidation.

The use of Clearview AI by police departments, including LAPD, has been documented for years. In 2020, BuzzFeed News reported that LAPD ran over 475 facial recognition searches through Clearview AI alone. As of 2023, the department confirmed continued access to these tools.

That’s a problem because facial recognition software isn’t neutral. It’s less accurate on Black, brown and Indigenous faces. According to a 2019 NIST study, false positives are up to 100 times more likely for people of color compared to white individuals. That means you can be flagged and investigated simply because the tech got it wrong or because you fit a profile.

This isn’t safety. It’s surveillance built on flawed data and when that data gets passed to agencies like ICE, CBP or FBI, which already have long histories of overreach, it becomes a tool for long-term targeting. The Los Angeles protests 2025 didn’t just expose cracks in the system. They showed us exactly how far law enforcement will go to monitor and punish public dissent. And they did it using software with a proven bias against the very communities leading the movement.

It’s All Happening in a One‑Square‑Mile Bubble

Let’s put this in perspective: the Los Angeles protests 2025 are in a small area of Downtown Los Angeles. A temporary curfew was put in place on just one single square mile, but it’s already been lifted. That’s just the area between the 5 and 110 freeways, and north of the 10 freeway, around Civic Center and City Hall. Without traffic, it would take me at least thirty minutes to drive there. I don’t live on the outskirts of Los Angeles and say that I live in LA so that people know the general vicinity of my house. My home address has a physical 90036 Los Angeles zip code.

• Protest Zone: 1 square mile in Downtown LA
• City of Los Angeles: 470 square miles
• LA County: 4,060 square miles
• Percentage of LA City affected: 0.2%
• Percentage of LA County affected: 0.025%
  

All this panic, all this posturing, all this federal overreach for one square mile. You could walk it in under 20 minutes. You could miss it if you blink. But if you watched the news, you’d think the Hollywood Sign was on fire and everyone in Silver Lake was looting Whole Foods.

Los Angeles isn’t under siege. One tiny pocket of our massive city is under surveillance, and the government is using it to justify tactics that don’t belong in any democracy.

Here’s the Truth.
I’m Here and We’re Okay.

I live in Los Angeles. I’m watching this play out in real time, not from a screen, not through a spin machine, but right here on the ground. And I’ll tell you straight: we’re fine. Don’t fall for the spectacle.

The Los Angeles protests 2025 are not the fall of civilization. They’re a concentrated moment in a single square mile of a city that spans hundreds. The rest of LA is still working, still driving, still living.

What you’re seeing isn’t a crisis. It’s a performance.

The director of this performance is a convicted felon named Donald Trump, whose crimes are rooted in lies. This man built his entire brand on a book he didn’t even write. They called it The Art of the Deal, but the only thing he’s ever delivered is a scam. He walks away every time whether it’s from business, from truth or from accountability.

And let’s be real:
Trump needs California more than California needs Trump.

California, as a state, has one of the largest economies in the world. We are culture, power, innovation, agriculture and resistance. We don’t beg for relevance. We shape it so don’t let this man spin another lie. Don’t let him turn my city into a soundbite. Los Angeles is still standing and we see right through him.