Student journalist detained amid San Francisco immigration protest

Student journalist Sam Grotenstein was detained while covering an anti-deportation protest in San Francisco, California, on June 8, 2025.

The protests were in solidarity with those that began in Los Angeles on June 6, following Trump administration immigration raids and the administration’s deployment of the California National Guard over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass.

The June 8 protests in San Francisco began that evening outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in the city’s North Beach neighborhood, Grotenstein told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. He was on assignment for The Daily Californian — the student-run newspaper of the University of California, Berkeley — alongside fellow student journalist Aarya Mukherjee.

Grotenstein said that he and Mukherjee followed the crowd for a couple of hours and, after a prolonged standoff with San Francisco police, the protest split.

“Cops basically started chasing the crowd around the streets of San Francisco and we all ended up getting corralled,” Grotenstein said.

After approximately 30 minutes, he said officers announced that people accompanied by minors and those with press credentials could leave. Mukherjee had a physical press pass and was allowed to leave the kettle at that time; Grotenstein, who only had digital press credentials, was not.

“We were both wearing helmets and mine said ‘Press’ in kind of comically large letters,” Grotenstein said. “Aarya explained to them that he is the news editor and I am a fellow staffer at the Daily Cal. They did not listen to that and kept me for another 30 minutes.”

He told the Tracker that the managing editor of the student newspaper drove to their location and, after going back and forth with the officers for around 10 minutes, the police accepted that Grotenstein was, in fact, a student journalist and released him.

The San Francisco Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The following night, both Grotenstein and Mukherjee were similarly detained and both assaulted by police while covering further anti-deportation protests.

The Daily Cal condemned the detentions in a June 10 editor’s note, writing, “While our staffers were released after about an hour, their detainment prevented them from reporting on the events of the night and, most importantly, actively threatened their safety.”