Speakers rally the crowd outside the California State Building in San Francisco on June 9, 2025, calling for the release of SEIU California President David Huerta. Huerta was arrested by federal agents on June 6 in Los Angeles while serving as a community observer during a workplace Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
Labor leader David Huerta was released from custody on Monday on a $50,000 bond following his arrest last week during a protest against immigration raids in Los Angeles.
Huerta, the Service Employees International Union California president, made his first appearance in court on Monday, where federal authorities in a criminal complaint charged him with conspiracy to impede an officer. The felony charge carries up to six years in federal prison, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A.
Chanting “Bring our brother home,” some 60 labor activists rallied in support of Huerta on Monday in front of San Francisco’s state building, part of a national chorus of protests calling for Huerta’s release.
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“I am truly, truly sad by what’s going on right now,” Kristin Hardy, SEIU 1021’s San Francisco vice president, told attendees. “He [was among those] detained for exercising their First Amendment rights and advocating for immigrant workers. He belongs home. He belongs here with the people fighting for the working class.”
The demonstration was one of several held in San Francisco and other cities throughout California on Monday, with more actions planned as the Trump administration ramps up immigration enforcement in the state. It follows the arrest of more than 150 protesters in the city on Sunday night.
Huerta was detained while documenting and protesting a workplace raid in downtown L.A.’s garment district. Video footage of Huerta’s arrest shows the labor leader being violently knocked to the ground and lying with his head on the curb. Agents took Huerta, 58, to a nearby hospital before booking him in Metropolitan Detention Center, where he remained in custody until Monday, according to a union statement.
SEIU Local 87 president Olga Miranda speaks during a rally outside the California State Building in San Francisco on June 9, 2025, calling for the release of SEIU California President David Huerta. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
Shortly after Huerta’s arrest on Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom called him “a respected leader, a patriot, and an advocate for working people.”
“No one should ever be harmed for witnessing government action,” he wrote on X.
On Monday, U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, along with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, wrote to the Department of Homeland Security calling for a review of Huerta’s arrest.
“It is deeply troubling that a U.S. citizen, union leader, and upstanding member of the Los Angeles community continues to be detained by the federal government for exercising his rights to observe immigration enforcement,” the senators wrote in the letter, demanding the department provide additional details about the incident by Friday.
Abel Fuaau, a district representative for the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 39, demanded elected officials provide the support that labor and community leaders need to “fight back against these brown-shirted goons goose-stepping across California, wreaking havoc on our cities, on our families, on our neighbors.”
“Make no mistake, history is being written right now,” he said at Monday’s rally. “And as the old Union hymn goes, which side are you on? Who are you with?”
The criminal complaint alleges that Huerta joined other protesters before noon on Friday at the scene of the raid, after a federal judge authorized search warrants for four businesses “suspected of unlawfully employing illegal aliens and falsifying employment records related to the status of its employees.”
A federal officer, whose name is redacted in the affidavit, accused Huerta of yelling at and taunting officers and then sitting cross-legged in front of the vehicle gate, “effectively preventing law enforcement vehicles from entering or exiting the premises through the gate to execute the search warrant.”
Demonstrators rally outside the California State Building in San Francisco on June 9, 2025, calling for the release of SEIU California President David Huerta. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
Huerta’s arrest, and subsequent backlash, follows a weekend of tumultuous protests against raids in L.A. and surrounding areas, in which activists clashed with local law enforcement officials. In response to the unrest, President Trump deployed as many as 2,000 National Guardsmen into the city on Saturday without Newsom’s consent, arguing that doing so was necessary to protect ICE and other federal immigration agents from the “violent mobs.”
The deployment, which appeared to be the first time in decades that a state’s National Guard was activated without a request from its governor, was roundly condemned by Newsom and scores of other state and local leaders, accusing the president of inflaming tensions and sowing chaos.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Monday announced the state planned to sue the administration over its deployment of National Guard troops, saying that the president had unlawfully “trampled” the state’s sovereignty.
“We don’t take lightly to the president abusing his authority and unlawfully mobilizing California National Guard troops,” said Bonta, who planned to seek a court order requesting a restraining order to halt the deployment.
The Pentagon on Monday also mobilized more than 700 Marines in California to respond to the protests, NPR confirmed.
In San Francisco, Rudy Gonzalez, Secretary-Treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, warned demonstrators on Monday that the administration’s actions pose a direct threat to American society and democracy.
“It is fundamentally under attack by a fascist state, and there will be a time when David Huerta is not the only labor leader,” he said.
