Demonstrators in Los Angeles burned American flags over the weekend and displayed the flags of other countries as a symbol of resistance against the Trump administration's sweeping immigration policies.
Video published on Saturday shows anti-ICE agitators throwing down U.S. flags and lighting them on fire while a circle of other demonstrators watched and cheered them on. Some demonstrators even took turns spitting on the burning flags. The protesters can be heard in the footage repeatedly chanting "burn it down!"
Other images showed one person standing on top of a vehicle and waving a Mexican flag as heavy smoke and flames rose from burning vehicles nearby. Another viral image featured a masked protester carrying a Mexican flag while riding in circles on a dirt bike around a burning car.
Multiple masked protesters were spotted displaying other foreign flags, including China's, on the streets of Los Angeles over the weekend.
A protester waves the Mexican flag in front of a burning Waymo vehicle during an anti-ICE protest in downtown Los Angeles, California, on June 8, 2025. Benjamin Hanson/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
A protester draped in an El Salvador flag stands in front of police during clashes in Downtown Los Angeles, California on June 8, 2025. Jim Vondruska/Getty Images
A demonstrator in a multicoloured keffiyeh holds up the Soviet Union Flag as protesters clash with law enforcement in the streets surrounding the federal building during a protest following federal immigration operations in Los Angeles, California, on June 8, 2025. Ringo Chiu / AFP via Getty Images
“Insurrectionists carrying foreign flags are attacking immigration enforcement officers, while one half of America’s political leadership has decided that border enforcement is evil,” Vice President JD Vance wrote on X late Saturday.
Burning an American flag has long been used to express criticism of a certain government and its policies during a time of political turmoil. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects this kind of symbolic speech.
Critics, however, argue that waving foreign flags in this particular case actually contradicts the cause.
Stephen Miller, one of Trump's top aides, shared several of the images of the flags from over the weekend.
"What is the correct term to describe foreign nationals, waving foreign flags, rioting and obstructing federal law enforcement attempting to expel illegal foreign invaders?” Miller wrote in an X post.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Sunday expressed support for the Mexican community in the United States following the raids by immigration authorities in Los Angeles.
"Mexican men and women living in the United States are good men and women, honest people who went to the United States to seek a better life for themselves and to contribute to their families."
Forty-two Mexicans were detained in the Los Angeles ICE raids on Friday, officials said, and some of them have already been deported.
ICE said that it arrested gang members and convicted felons in Los Angeles on the day of the riots, including child sex abusers and murderers.
Meanwhile, Trump demanded the arrests of all masked rioters after he deployed 2,000 California National Guard troops to combat the demonstrations against federal immigration agents.
The president on Monday also doubled down on his decision to send it the National Guard to protect federal buildings that were being surrounded and vandalized by violent rioters.
"We made a great decision in sending the National Guard to deal with the violent, instigated riots in California," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated."
Local law enforcement didn't need the president's help, according to California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Trump sent troops to Los Angeles anyway, Newsom argued, in order to manufacture a scene of chaos and violence.
"Now things are destabilized and we need to send in more law enforcement just to clean up Trump’s mess," Newsom wrote on X.
Newsom also urged protesters not to give the Trump administration the spectacle that it wants.
