Incident details
- Date of incident
- June 8, 2025
- Location
- Los Angeles, California
- Targets
- E. Tammy Kim (The New Yorker)
- Assailant
- Law enforcement
- Was the journalist targeted?
- Yes
Assault
Authorities stand outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, California, on June 8, 2025. A New Yorker reporter said she was shoved repeatedly by a pair of police officers that day.
E. Tammy Kim, a contributing writer at The New Yorker, was pushed by officers while covering an immigration enforcement protest in downtown Los Angeles, California, on June 8, 2025, she reported.
The protests began June 6 in response to federal raids in and around LA of workplaces and areas where immigrant day laborers gathered, amid the Trump administration’s larger immigration crackdown. After demonstrators clashed with LA law enforcement officers and federal agents, President Donald Trump called in the California National Guard and then the U.S. Marines over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass.
In her piece for The New Yorker, Kim wrote that she encountered around 20 National Guard members — “in camouflage, armed, helmeted, clutching shields” —outside the Metropolitan Detention Center, where immigrants were being held. Behind them were a half-dozen tactical vehicles.
“The scene did more to provoke than soothe,” she wrote.
More than 100 officers from the Los Angeles Police Department, outfitted in black riot gear, shot off tear gas, Kim reported.
“A pair of officers shoved me repeatedly and pushed me forward on the sidewalk with their batons,” Kim wrote. “When I identified as press, one said, ‘I don’t care.’”
When reached for comment, the LAPD directed the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker to the department’s social media accounts. In a statement posted to social platform X, the department said it had worked through the night to restore public safety.
Kim could not immediately be reached for comment.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogues press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
