Protestors face off with SFPD during an anti-ICE protest in San Francisco on June 8, 2025. Journalists and advocates say San Francisco police detained multiple reporters and interfered with First Amendment rights during recent protests against immigration raids. (Aryk Copley for KQED)
“We’re student journalists. We’re press.”
For the second night in a row, as part of their coverage of immigration protests in downtown San Francisco, UC Berkeley students Aarya Mukherjee and Sam Grotenstein found themselves detained by police.
“SFPD has kennelled us,” Mukherjee, a journalist for the university’s Daily Californian student newspaper, posted on the social media platform X on June 9. “We have announced that we are press and they are not letting us leave.”
Their experience was not unique.
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Press freedom groups are raising alarms about police interference with journalists’ First Amendment rights ahead of Saturday’s planned mass protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
In the last week, the San Francisco Police Department detained “numerous journalists” covering protests, “halting their ability to report the news,” according to a letter sent Wednesday to interim Police Chief Paul Yep by the Society of Professional Journalists and the First Amendment Coalition.
Some were kettled into barricaded areas, like Mukherjee and Grotenstein, despite displaying their badges and identifying themselves as press. Others were restricted from crossing police lines, obstructing their view of newsworthy events.
Press badges and homemade helmets identifying UC Berkeley student journalists detained by the San Francisco Police Department, on June 13, 2025, in Berkeley, California. (Courtesy of Aarya Mukherjee)
Aldo Toledo, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, was reportedly “shoved” to the ground, his phone knocked out of his hand as he tried to record police, the letter said.
Press freedom advocates condemned these actions by law enforcement, which they said trampled on journalists’ rights under state law.
“The press should not be singled out by officers to be kept away from a protest or a scene,” said Chessie Thacher, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. “That’s actually unlawful in California, and it is questionable under the First Amendment in California’s free speech rights.”
In 2022, California significantly expanded legal protections for the press, spurred by numerous injuries to journalists and arrests during coverage of the protests following the murder of George Floyd.
The new law explicitly allows journalists access behind police lines during an emergency and prohibits police from interfering with newsgathering or citing journalists for failing to disperse. The law also gives journalists the right to challenge any detention with a supervisor on the scene.
But as tensions have escalated between the Trump administration and California, journalists have increasingly found themselves caught in the crossfire.
In Los Angeles, several journalists covering the protests against ramped-up immigration enforcement have been injured, including an Australian TV broadcaster who police shot with a less-lethal projectile while she was live on air.
It is not immediately clear what led to the incidents involving journalists in San Francisco, and the SFPD did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication of this story.
Tracy McCray, head of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, said it can be difficult in a tense environment to identify who is a journalist and who is a protester “with a phone.”
“The press has a right to do their job and report on this. That helps everyone. But there needs to be a better way to identify them,” McCray told KQED. “Because people can say anything, right? And sometimes we can’t take their word for it.”
SFPD officers advance a line toward anti-ICE protesters during a demonstration outside the ICE offices in San Francisco on June 8, 2025. (Aryk Copley for KQED)
Mukherjee and Grotenstein were both wearing their student press badges and hard hats with “Press” and “Daily Cal” written on them, Mukherjee told KQED.
“On some level I understand that they are working and it’s an intense situation, but so far as detaining us for an hour, on two separate days, behind an SFPD line, when we’re repeatedly asking to speak to a supervisor … they’re putting our safety at risk,” said Mukherjee, 20. “And on a level I care about more, they’re impeding our ability to do our work and report on the events happening — it impedes both of those things.
While past anti-Trump protests in San Francisco have been relatively peaceful, including an April 5 protest called “Hands Off,” heightened tensions over the past week have led some to wonder if the protest could escalate. A safety advisory published by Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative reported that the recent developments in Los Angeles may contribute to increased “contention” on Saturday.
Indivisible SF’s Liliana Soroceanu, an organizer of the upcoming protest, said she expects that the escalation in L.A. would bring more than the 4,000 currently registered attendees out into the streets “to express their dissatisfaction with what’s going on in America.”
Members of her organization have been in touch with SFPD and the mayor’s office to come up with a safety plan for the event.
“Our hope is that this will be a joyful, peaceful event, and the police will basically keep us safe,” she said.
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