The Los Angeles Press Club filed a lawsuit against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last week over the “excessive violence” used against journalists and protesters amid the city’s anti-ICE demonstrations.
The lawsuit alleges that DHS violated plaintiffs’ rights through “targeting them without probable cause, and through the misuse of weaponry, including, without limitation, chemical agents such as tear gas, rubber bullets, impact munitions, pepper balls, pepper spray, exploding grenades, batons, fists, and other weapons.”
According to the filing, DHS has used “unnecessary and excessive violence to prevent [plaintiffs] from exercising their First Amendment rights to report on, observe, and protest government actions,” adding that without the ability to “engage in that discourse, the United States loses critical checks on government power that are essential to our constitutional democracy. Suppressing the rights of the free press and protesters is the calling card of cowardly dictators and threatens to destroy our nation.”
“DHS agents did not target their assault towards people posing a threat in any way,” the journalists argue. “Rather, they fired their weapons indiscriminately and at every angle in front of them in the direction of the gathered community, hitting people in the head with projectiles and choking them with tear gas. Some agents shot tear gas canisters and rubber bullets directly at people as they did this.”
Adam Rose, press rights chair of the Los Angeles Press Club, said in a statement that “at least seven members of our organization have been subject to use of force or suffered a serious press rights violation by DHS officers” since June 6. “This number doesn’t include dozens of incidents with minor amounts of tear gas or similar chemical weapons,” he said, adding, “Democracy depends on an informed public. An informed public depends on a press free to do its job without fearing violence by federal agents.”
DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Hill that the First Amendment protects “peaceful assembly – not rioting.”
“We remind members of the media and journalists to exercise caution as they cover these violent riots,” she said. “President Trump and Secretary Noem are committed to restoring law and order in Los Angeles and around the country. No lawsuit, this or any other, is going to change that.”
