As images of protests in Southern California have flooded television and social media in recent days, a key question has emerged: Why are so many protesters carrying Mexican flags at an American political protest?
The sea of red, white and green Mexican flags at anti-deportation protests this week in Los Angeles has been seized upon by conservatives who argue that the demonstrations are inherently un-American, causing some protesters to consider leaving them at home.
Photos of masked provocateurs waving Mexican flags atop burning Waymo taxis spread instantly across conservative social media this weekend. Republicans pointed to them as a prime example of why President Trump called in the National Guard and how immigration had gone too far in California.
“Look at all the foreign flags,” Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff and the architect of Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda, said Sunday on X. “Los Angeles is occupied territory.”
To many Americans, including those on the left, it might seem a bad strategy to fight deportations of undocumented immigrants by waving the flag of another country.
But protesters said this week that they see the Mexican flag as a symbol of defiance against Mr. Trump’s immigration policies or of solidarity with other Mexican Americans. The flag has become so ubiquitous in recent decades that it is a part of the Southern California landscape, adorning pickup trucks and flapping from bridges. Few mass gatherings occur in the region without a Mexican flag or two, from weekend soccer matches to Los Angeles Dodgers championship parades.
This week, those who kept waving them said that it was important to honor their heritage and not acquiesce to Mr. Trump, even while they recognized the potential political cost. They said that the flag to them was not un-American, that it represented their Chicano roots rather than a national allegiance.
The issue has cut at the heart of what it means to be an American, and whether freedom truly means being able to fly the banner of your choosing.
Bonnie Garcia, 32, a U.S.-born citizen from Los Angeles, said she had briefly considered stopping to buy an American flag before attending a rally on Monday that denounced the deployment of National Guard troops in the city. But she stuck with her original plan to bring two small flags representing the countries her parents came from, Guatemala and Mexico.
“I’m proud to be American, but in these times, being Californian is what makes me proud, and seeing the diversity here, seeing that a lot of people haven’t forgotten the roots,” she said. “I feel like that’s why Trump fears diversity and fears representation in people’s faces because he doesn’t want people to remember, he wants to erase us, and I’m not going to stand for that.”
At protests in Los Angeles, Mexican flags have made up a solid majority, many flown by young Americans whose grandparents or great-grandparents came from Mexico. Among the crowds, there has also been a sprinkling of American flags, flags from Central American countries and Palestinian flags. Some demonstrators brought hybrid flags that had the Mexican colors and coat of arms along with the American stars and stripes.
In a nation of immigrants, Americans break out flags from other countries for cultural celebrations or holidays, like Irish Americans on St. Patrick’s Day or Italian Americans on Columbus Day. But in California, where Latinos are a plurality and Mexican Americans are the largest group among them, Mexican flags are flown throughout the year as a matter of cultural pride.
Still, the optics at protests have caused California activists to ask themselves whether their flag choice was only providing more fodder for Mr. Trump as he pursued an immigration crackdown. On social media, some progressives suggested that protesters should replace their foreign flags with American ones, knowing that their rallies were being aired nationally each night.
Some on the left said that even more than optics, it was important to show that the American flag was not a patriotic symbol for the MAGA movement — that the flag belongs to all Americans, including those who oppose Mr. Trump’s deportation push.
Lorena Gonzalez, the head of the California Labor Federation, headed to downtown Los Angeles for a rally on Monday with 60 small American flags to hand out.
“Waving the Mexican flag doesn’t bother me, but I think it’s important to remind people that I’m very proud to be an American,” Ms. Gonzalez, a former Democratic state legislator and the daughter of an immigrant farmworker, said by phone.
California has had this debate before. In the 1990s, Gov. Pete Wilson sought to end public benefits for undocumented immigrants, making arguments similar to those expressed by Mr. Trump today. At the time, white people were the majority in the state, but it was projected to become a Latino plurality, which it did in 2014.
Mr. Wilson championed Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot measure that would have banned public services for undocumented Californians. Mike Madrid, the author of “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy” and a Republican political consultant, said the ubiquity of Mexican flags against the measure so alienated the state’s voters that it tipped the election.
“You lose the frame of this being about constitutionality and due process and human rights when you start waving a foreign flag,” Mr. Madrid said.
Decades after the Proposition 187 fight, Mr. Madrid sees the potential for the waving of the Mexican flag to help conservatives again this year.
“It hurts Latinos, and it hurts Californians,” he said. “It’s almost so bad that I wonder if it’s being orchestrated.”
Kevin de León, a former legislative leader and Los Angeles city councilman, said the number of Mexican flags at the Los Angeles protests reminded him of his days as a labor organizer in the 1990s.
“If we had a redo, back in the day, we would have carried American flags,” he said. “There should always be American flags. That’s one mistake that we made on the left — we allowed the right to co-opt the American flag as if it’s their own. But we’re as American as anyone else. We shouldn’t allow others to call out the flag as if it belonged to them exclusively.”
Fernando Guerra, the head of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, agreed that waving Mexican flags was politically counterproductive this week.
But in a metropolis where roughly half of the population is Latino, he said, it is unlikely that Mexican flags will lose their attraction.
“Strategically, should the Mexican flag be waved the way it has been at these protests? No,” he said. “But can you prevent that from happening? No.”
Maria Flores, 52, a Mexican-born member of the United Food and Commercial Workers who has been a U.S. citizen for more than two decades, waved the Mexican colors at a rally this week.
Ms. Flores said she also owns an American flag but worried about carrying it at an anti-Trump protest because the stars-and-stripes iconography had become so associated with the MAGA movement.
“Right now, it could look bad to raise the American flag because of the Trump administration,” she said. “If I put the U.S. flag outside my home, my neighbors would think I’m with Trump.”
She described an otherwise law-abiding undocumented family member who had been trying for years to become legal. The effort had failed so far.
“I carry the flag for my family and everyone who doesn’t have papers,” she said in Spanish. “I speak for them. I am their voice.”
