Federal agents guard outside of a federal building and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center on 13 June 2025, in Los Angeles, California.
The White House denies the allegations as ‘false’ and says the ‘first amendment does not protect violent rioting’ US politics live – latest updates Donald Trump ordered the FBI to investigate protesters in Los Angeles who were demonstrating against the president’s immigration crackdown, according to a whistleblower complaint.
US senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat who represents California and serves on the Senate judiciary committee, said his office had received a copy of the complaint, which makes sweeping allegations about the Trump administration’s response to protests in LA in early 2025.
Demonstrators had been protesting against Trump’s deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to push the president’s agenda.
“These allegations are deeply alarming,” Padilla, who also serves as the top Democrat on the border security and immigration subcommittee, said in a statement.
“Using the FBI to target Americans for exercising their first amendment rights directly undermines our nation’s foundational values.
I won’t rest until we get answers.” NBC first reported on the allegations after viewing a copy of the disclosure, which identifies the whistleblower as Jill Fields, a former supervisory intelligence analyst in the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, who made the complaint following the federal response to anti-ICE protests around the city’s federal buildings, and in residential area, in February last year.
Fields alleges that Emil Bove, then the acting deputy attorney general, told Akil Davis, the head of the field office to open an investigation into protesters’ activities outside federal buildings, even though Fields says the demonstrations were protected free speech, and several FBI employees in the field office expressed concern with the legality of these requests.
Field, who joined the FBI in May 2016, also alleges that Trump reportedly viewed a TikTok video of protesters in Alhambra, California that alerted neighbors about the presence of federal immigration officers and advised them of their legal rights.
The White House, Fields says, then instructed Patel to direct the Los Angeles field office to initiate an investigation into those demonstrating in the video, because the president “was angry about the incident”.
Despite the fact that member of Fields’ team determined that the protesters’ actions were constitutionally protected and there was insufficient evidence, Fields was told by a colleague – whose name is redacted – that “the president wants this investigation”.
Fields says that even though her supervisor acknowledged the investigation was unconstitutional, the directive still had to be followed.
Fields alleges that a “dedicated immigration squad” was created, comprising 10 agents, some of whom were taken off active cartel cases to carry out the White House’s requests.
Fields says that she questioned the directives “operational logic” but her supervisor – whose name is also redacted in the complaint – described the move as “optics” designed to “make a show for the president”.
Fields says, however, she was not aware of any “actual or potential national security threat, federal criminal activity, or vulnerability” that would have warranted conducting assessments or opening investigations into anti-ICE and CBP protesters at the time.
She ultimately resigned from the bureau last year after she was removed from overseeing several programs, and believes that her diminished role was the result of objecting to protest-related investigations, according to the complaint.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis called the allegations, laid out in the disclosure, “false” in a statement to the Guardian.
“The first amendment does not protect violent rioting, obstructing law enforcement, and assaulting law enforcement,” she said.
“Assaulting and obstructing law enforcement is a crime.
This administration has been clear: anyone who assaults or obstructs law enforcement will be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” The FBI and justice department did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
In a letter to Todd Blanche, the attorney general, and Patel, Padilla asks dozens of questions about the reported investigations, including whether they resulted in arrests, how many directives of this kind the justice department has received from the president and how many investigations are still open.
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