A helicopter flies over anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles.Amy Katz/Zuma
Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Los Angeles County over the weekend to protest immigration raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In response, federal, state, and local authorities have all escalated a brutal crackdown against the anti-ICE demonstrators, with law enforcement deploying tear gas, bean bags, and rubber bullets against protesters and journalists alike, and President Donald Trump activating state National Guard members in defiance of Governor Gavin Newsom’s wishes.
“This is a chilling statement.”
On Sunday, according to the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Police Department made another escalation, flying over a group of demonstrators in downtown LA in a helicopter and announcing, “I have all of you on camera. I’m going to come to your house.”
The threat was greeted with extreme concern by civil liberties and digital privacy groups; if it was a true statement, it suggests that the LAPD could be using facial recognition to identify and retaliate against protesters. And if it is false, warned Jonathan Markovitz, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, it is still an overt attempt to frighten and intimidate demonstrators.
“This is a chilling statement,” he told Mother Jones. “Even if it were a joke, it was clearly designed to make the public afraid to exercise its First Amendment rights to protest and to hold government officials, including LAPD officers, accountable for their actions.”
Markovitz added that the announcement is “unfortunately, consistent with LAPD’s heavy-handed approach to the protests, which demonstrates a complete lack of respect for free speech rights. Threats to use government surveillance capabilities to punish people who are exercising those rights are fundamentally antidemocratic and authoritarian.”
Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, also found the statement concerning. The EFF is a digital rights group and often opposes what it says are inappropriate or illegal surveillance measures.
“You have constitutionally protected rights to protest,” Guariglia says. “When you have somebody wielding surveillance in a specific way to try to chill and deter people from protesting, that’s a violation of your constitutional rights.”
While that surveillance threat was made explicit by the helicopter’s loudspeaker, he adds that if “you see a drone flying over a protest, the exact same threat is implicitly made.”
With increasingly sophisticated facial recognition tools, Guariglia added, “the real fear has always been that a helicopter or a drone will fly over a crowd and generate a list of all the people who have attended the protest. At that point it’s a recipe for reprisals and retribution by the police for your politics.” In response, the EFF has developed guides on surveillance self-defense and to help protesters identify both visible and non-visible forms of surveillance they might encounter.
When participating in public protests and demonstrations, Guariglia says people should think “about the security of your digital devices,” and take steps like “putting your phone on airplane mode, or making sure you don’t take pictures that include the faces of other protesters, or turning face ID off to unlock your phone.”
“If you get arrested and your devices are seized,” he adds, that step can leave demonstrators more confident that data on their phones will be secure.
The LAPD uses helicopters constantly, on what City Controller Kenneth Mejia has said is an “almost continuous basis.” According to a 2023 audit by Mejia’s office, the aircraft spent “a disproportionate amount of time in certain communities,” while running up annual operating costs to taxpayers of about $50 million. The audit also found police used helicopters for less-than-essential reasons, including to fly officers to an annual chili cook-off and a ceremonial flight over a golf tournament.
The LAPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
