Photojournalist shot with pepper balls, detained amid LA youth protest

Freelance photojournalist Moon Mandel was shot with multiple crowd-control munitions by federal officers and detained in a kettle by police while covering an anti-deportation protest in Los Angeles, California, on Jan. 31, 2026.

Mandel told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that they arrived at the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown LA at around 5:30 p.m. to document an “emergency protest” organized by a youth-led group called Dare to Struggle.

Large-scale protests at the facility the day before had overtaken the Department of Homeland Security officers, Mandel said, forcing them back into the detention center and triggering a broad use of chemical munitions against the crowd.

The freelancer was among those at the Jan. 30 protests affected by the mixture of tear gas, pepper spray and pepper balls, and was also hit with a baton by a police officer.

While the demonstration Jan. 31 was significantly smaller — with Mandel estimating approximately 300 participants — federal officers had established a skirmish line at the edge of the property. The photojournalist came prepared, outfitted with a newly purchased respirator.

“Things were pretty calm,” they told the Tracker. “There were a couple of protesters who were demonstrating peacefully but sitting on the floor. Other people were verbally expressing how they felt about the current state of affairs, as is their freedom of speech.”

At about 6:15 p.m., Mandel said, federal officers — primarily from Customs and Border Protection — began pushing protesters back, utilizing batons and tear gas indiscriminately.

Mandel followed one group as it moved to another part of the detention center and then returned to the main compound at around 8 p.m. While there was some exchange of fireworks from individuals who were met with disorientation devices and pepper balls from federal officers, Mandel said tensions didn’t rise until nearly an hour later.

“Things got really heated, at least for me. I’m just taking photos of the front line, and I get shot at and hit multiple times with pepper rounds. Multiple shots to the body, hand, and then they hit me in the ear, which hurt a lot,” they said. “I yelled out, ‘Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, I’m press! I’m press, dude, what the fuck!’”

Los Angeles Police Department officers then arrived on scene to aid the federal agents in dispersing the crowd, Mandel said, forming a skirmish line and announcing an unlawful assembly.

As officers pushed the crowd back, one aimed a crowd-control weapon at the ground to ricochet a crowd-control munition into a demonstrator, but grazed Mandel instead. “I felt it mere centimeters away from my face. If he had deviated his aim by even a millimeter, I would have been shot directly in the face,” they told the Tracker.

Shortly before 10 p.m., officers detained those who remained using a process called kettling, a tactic by which officers surround a crowd, typically for mass arrest.

“They got on the loudspeaker and informed all of us that we had failed to disperse, we were gathered illegally, and every single one of us was going to be subject to arrest,” Mandel told the Tracker. “At this point, I was like, ‘Oh, well, I’m press, and I’m alongside other people who have press credentials and who have press vests on.’

“I figured we’d be fine, as long as we stick together, and make it very clear to the officers that we’re not instigators, we’re members of the press. We’re here to report on what’s going on, and we are not subject to failure-to-disperse arrest orders in California,” they continued.

But while two of the members of the press were ultimately able to speak to a sergeant and were released, Mandel — who was standing right behind them — was not.

“I did not have a press pass or a lanyard or anything, but I’d expected that the accredited media people were going to just be like, ‘Oh yeah, they’re with us. They’re good.’ They did not,” Mandel said. “So the officer was pretty much like, ‘If you don’t have a lanyard on right now, you’re getting arrested.’”

Mandel began to livestream from inside the kettle on the chance that officers might seize their camera and potentially destroy it or the memory card inside.

Mandel and a livestreamer were the last two individuals in the kettle, and Mandel said they once again tried explaining why they didn’t have credentials.

“I’m explaining to the cops, ‘I’ve shot for the BBC, I’ve shot for Al Jazeera. We don’t get press credentials because we’re freelancers. We’re here chasing the story, chasing these moments, and if we get the moment, then we can sell the moment,’” Mandel said.

After speaking with a media liaison, Mandel said they were ultimately released without charges.

The actions of both DHS and the LAPD on Jan. 30 appeared to violate California law prohibiting law enforcement from using violent protest policing tactics with members of the press, which courts reinforced with preliminary injunctions issued to both agencies last year.

Requests for comment from the agencies were not immediately returned. In a social media post on X the following morning, the LAPD said it arrested dozens of individuals, but did not address the use of force or detainment of journalists.

In a Jan. 31 post on his social media platform, President Donald Trump wrote that federal agents would participate in policing protests only if requested, but that he had instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol “to be very forceful in this protection of Federal Government Property.”