Incident details
- Date of incident
- September 1, 2025
- Location
- Los Angeles, California
- Assailant
- Law enforcement
- Was the journalist targeted?
- Unknown
Assault
Law enforcement at an immigration protest in Los Angeles, California, on June 12, 2025. It was one of many protests continuing for months, including a Sept. 1 demonstration where reporter Kayjel Mairena was pepper-sprayed and struck by a pepper ball.
Kayjel Mairena, a student journalist for Santa Monica College’s The Corsair, was shot in the head with a pepper ball and pepper-sprayed while covering an immigration protest in downtown Los Angeles, California, on Sept. 1, 2025.
It was one of many protests that 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.
Trump’s deployment of federal troops to LA was ruled illegal by a federal judge on Sept. 2.
Mairena, the Corsair’s news editor, told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he was documenting the protest Sept. 1, outside the city’s Metropolitan Detention Center, where immigration detainees were being held. Despite wearing press credentials, he said he was struck in the head with a pepper ball and pepper-sprayed by Department of Homeland Security officers that day. It’s unclear whether he was directly targeted.
In a statement emailed to the Tracker, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin urged journalists to be cautious while covering what she characterized as “violent riots,” and added that Trump and Secretary Kristi Noem “are committed to restoring law and order.”
On Oct. 18, Mairena was documenting a protest in the same downtown area when he was struck in the side with an impact projectile fired by the Los Angeles Police Department and nearly trampled by a mounted officer.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogs press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
