The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has confirmed the use of drones during the Los Angeles protests, sparking further debate over the increasing law enforcement response to demonstrations triggered by immigration raids.
Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), a DHS agency, verified on Thursday that it’s providing “aerial support” to law enforcement.
A CBP spokesperson stated to TIME via email that the agency is offering aerial support to federal law enforcement partners involved in operations in the Greater Los Angeles area, focusing on situational awareness and officer safety as requested.
Earlier in the week, DHS shared drone footage of the protests on social media.
The post included video of burning cars and an apparent explosion accompanied by ominous music, with the message: “WATCH: DHS drone footage of LA rioters… California politicians must call off their rioting mob.”
The Los Angeles protests have entered their seventh day, according to on-the-ground media reports, with some escalating to include arson and projectiles.
Despite this, President Donald Trump has expressed support for a large-scale response and is deploying hundreds of Marines to the area, despite opposition from state and local leaders. Local law enforcement has employed crowd control tactics like rubber bullets and tear gas, and Mayor Karen Bass has declared a “local emergency” and implemented an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew.
Since the protests began last Friday, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has arrested over 160 people. The majority of these arrests, primarily for failure to disperse, occurred on Monday.
After media reports of drones flying without call signs over the anti-ICE protests, CBP confirmed that the agency was using two Predator drones.
Does DHS have the authority to use drones?
Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed the drone reports. Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed questioned Hegseth on whether he was prepared for DHS to use drones “to detain or arrest American citizens.”
Hegseth responded that every authorization provided to the National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles falls under the President’s authority.
Alejandra Montoya-Boyer, senior director of the Center for Civil Rights & Technology at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, stated that tech and civil rights groups are “surprised and deeply concerned” by the drone usage, though it’s “not necessarily new.”
Montoya-Boyer tells TIME that CBP has extensive leeway to deploy drone technology and other surveillance tools to track anyone, whether they’re crossing the border or in these spaces. She acknowledges that while “this isn’t necessarily the first time we’re seeing this,” it remains potentially harmful and could “disproportionately impact communities of color and immigrants right now.”
She explains that people are often unaware of CBP’s expansive jurisdictional reach, extending 100 air miles from any U.S. external boundary, encompassing almost two-thirds of the U.S. population.
Montoya-Boyer asserts that the technology used by these drones was designed for tracking border crossings, not for surveilling U.S. citizens at protests.
She states that the development and appropriation of these technologies by CBP and DHS allow them to be used for domestic surveillance, potentially by an administration acting outside of established norms.
While CBP claims the drones focus on “situational awareness” and “officer safety,” Montoyta-Boyers suggests that there’s reason to doubt that it’s solely for law and order, as there is a growing expansion of surveillance technologies in the name of immigration enforcement being deployed across the country on the majority of people, whether they’re immigrants or not.
She advises those peacefully protesting to consult guides from the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild regarding protestors’ rights.
Have drones been used during previous U.S. protests?
This isn’t the first instance of drones being used to support law enforcement during U.S. protests.
In 2020, CBP deployed drones during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd’s murder. However, CBP at the time, through Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan, maintained that its drones weren’t used to “surveil” protestors, but rather to “provide assistance to state and locals so they could make sure that their cities and their towns were protected.”
He stated that they were not gathering information on law-abiding protesters but were present to ensure safety and maintain law and order.
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