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  • Here’s how many Somalis are in the U.S. as Trump administration ends protected status

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    There are about 98,000 immigrants from Somalia living in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau’s latest 2024 estimates. About 83% are naturalized U.S. citizens.This comes as the Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it is ending temporary protected status for Somali immigrants.File video above: Temporary protection status ends for Nicaraguans and HonduransTPS offers protection from deportation and work authorization for those who are facing unsafe conditions in their home countries. Only a fraction of immigrants from Somalia in the U.S. have been granted TPS.The majority of Somali immigrants in the U.S. — about 44% — live in Minnesota. Ohio and Washington host the second-highest number of immigrants from Somalia, just over 10,000 each. President George H.W. Bush first granted TPS to Somalis in 1991 during the country’s civil war. Subsequent administrations have repeatedly renewed that status, including most recently President Joe Biden in 2024.Over the past decade, the total Somali immigrant population in the U.S. has remained about the same, although a growing number have become naturalized citizens. There are about 260,000 total people of Somali descent in the U.S. as of 2024 estimates — that’s including those born in the U.S.PHNjcmlwdCB0eXBlPSJ0ZXh0L2phdmFzY3JpcHQiPiFmdW5jdGlvbigpeyJ1c2Ugc3RyaWN0Ijt3aW5kb3cuYWRkRXZlbnRMaXN0ZW5lcigibWVzc2FnZSIsKGZ1bmN0aW9uKGUpe2lmKHZvaWQgMCE9PWUuZGF0YVsiZGF0YXdyYXBwZXItaGVpZ2h0Il0pe3ZhciB0PWRvY3VtZW50LnF1ZXJ5U2VsZWN0b3JBbGwoImlmcmFtZSIpO2Zvcih2YXIgYSBpbiBlLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdKWZvcih2YXIgcj0wO3I8dC5sZW5ndGg7cisrKXtpZih0W3JdLmNvbnRlbnRXaW5kb3c9PT1lLnNvdXJjZSl0W3JdLnN0eWxlLmhlaWdodD1lLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdW2FdKyJweCJ9fX0pKX0oKTs8L3NjcmlwdD4=

    There are about 98,000 immigrants from Somalia living in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau’s latest 2024 estimates. About 83% are naturalized U.S. citizens.

    This comes as the Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it is ending temporary protected status for Somali immigrants.

    File video above: Temporary protection status ends for Nicaraguans and Hondurans

    TPS offers protection from deportation and work authorization for those who are facing unsafe conditions in their home countries. Only a fraction of immigrants from Somalia in the U.S. have been granted TPS.

    The majority of Somali immigrants in the U.S. — about 44% — live in Minnesota.

    Ohio and Washington host the second-highest number of immigrants from Somalia, just over 10,000 each.

    President George H.W. Bush first granted TPS to Somalis in 1991 during the country’s civil war. Subsequent administrations have repeatedly renewed that status, including most recently President Joe Biden in 2024.

    Over the past decade, the total Somali immigrant population in the U.S. has remained about the same, although a growing number have become naturalized citizens.

    There are about 260,000 total people of Somali descent in the U.S. as of 2024 estimates — that’s including those born in the U.S.

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  • She went to get her green card and now faces deportation. Did the feds trick her?

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    On Sept. 16, Barbara Gomes Marques May and her husband arrived at the downtown Los Angeles federal immigration building for what they believed would be the final step in Marques May’s process to obtain her green card.

    The interview process had gone smoothly, Tucker May recalled. But toward the end, a federal immigration official she had met with said he needed Marques May to follow him so he could photocopy her passport, he recalled. She and her husband believed the trip would be brief and they would be able to leave.

    Instead, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent arrested Marques May, a 38-year-old Brazilian national who has no criminal record and works as a film director in Los Angeles. She was handcuffed and transferred to the ICE facility in Adelanto in San Bernardino County before being sent to Louisiana. Meanwhile, her husband and her lawyer scrambled to try to stop her deportation.

    On Wednesday, Marques May was scheduled to board a 6 a.m. flight to her home country, but her attorney was able to file a motion to reopen her deportation proceedings and keep her on U.S. soil, at least temporarily. As of Thursday, she had been moved to Arizona and will return to California while her deportation proceedings remain open, her attorney said.

    “It’s very much an ongoing nightmare,” Tucker May said in an interview this week.

    Department of Homeland Security officials did not respond to a request for comment about Marques May’s case.

    According to her attorney, Marcelo Gondim, Marques May arrived in the U.S. in 2018 on a tourist visa. Gondim said she applied for an extension but was denied. She ended up overstaying her visa, he said, and in 2019, the government sent her a notice to appear for a court hearing to begin deportation proceedings.

    But Marques May had moved and had not kept her address up to date with immigration court, and so the letter never reached her, Gondim said. Because she failed to appear, the government issued a removal order against her.

    In April 2025, the couple got married and she began the process to apply for a green card, Gondim said. Under the Biden administration, he said, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would have notified Marques May that there was a removal order issued for her and directed her on how to get it resolved.

    Overstaying a visa is not considered a criminal offense, and penalties are issued if the person leaves the country. In cases involving married couples, Gondim said, there’s an automatic forgiveness for overstaying a visa, relief that Marques May would’ve been eligible for.

    But the Trump administration has instead used courthouses and Citizenship and Immigration Services offices to engage in mass arrests of migrants attending mandated hearings and appointments. Soon, the USCIS will have expanded powers.

    In September, the Department of Homeland Security issued a new directive that will allow the agency — which administers and oversees immigration applications — to enforce immigration law with “special agents.” The order goes into effect Monday.

    “USCIS will have greater capacity to support DHS efforts by handling investigations from start to finish, instead of referring certain cases to Homeland Security Investigation within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” the agency said in a statement.

    After Marques May was arrested, May struggled to figure out where federal authorities had sent his wife. Finally, he was able to get in touch with her, and she detailed how, when she was arrested in L.A., she burst into tears, and an ICE agent took a selfie with her, he said.

    During her transfer between detention facilities, she told him, she was subjected to harsh conditions, including how she went without food or water for more than 12 hours and had access to bathrooms with no toilet paper. She was given only bread and water and a couple of times an apple.

    Marques May, who had surgery this year for chronic back problems, was also denied medical treatment for a device she uses to manage her pain, he said. May went public with her arrest more than a week after she was detained, he said, because he had run out of all legal avenues.

    “There is an open disdain being shown by ICE for the basic rule of law for this country,” he said.

    May began posting about her arrest online, garnering hundreds of responses and support. A GoFundMe page had raised more than $50,000 as of Thursday. U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), who counts Marques May as one of her constituents, said she was “doing everything possible to prevent her deportation and I’m demanding that ICE follow the law.”

    “Unfortunately, Barbara’s case is not unique, it reflects a broader pattern under Trump’s immigration policies that are unlawful and cruel,” she posted on X.

    Gondim said he repeatedly tried to stop her from being transferred to facilities outside California, only to find barriers and delays by ICE officials to getting legal documents for her to sign. From Adelanto, she was transferred to Arizona, then Louisiana.

    The government is not doing anything wrong by complying with the removal order, he said, “but they cannot prevent the person from having access to counsel and be able to present their case to file some form of relief [so they] don’t get unjustly deported.”

    To stop Marques May’s imminent deportation, Gondim filed separate motions to reopen her deportation proceedings and terminate her deportation proceedings. Until a judge rules on the case, Gondim said, ICE cannot deport her. He said he’s hopeful that she will end up being released.

    “Since she has already an approved petition from her U.S. citizen husband, and she has a clear path to filing a new [application] and getting her green card,” he said, an immigration court judge will not be interested in pursuing a case against a person who should be approved for permanent residency by law.

    Until then, May said his wife’s first feature film has been put on hold until she can be released. In 2021, Marques May premiered her short film, “Pretas,” at the Culver Theater for the L.A. Brazilian Film Festival. The film centers on Black women and their experiences dealing with racism and carries a message of creating a more anti-racist society.

    “I love Los Angeles so much,” she said in an interview at the time. “I couldn’t be happier. It was a premiere I wasn’t expecting.”

    It was their shared love of films that bonded the couple, who met on a dating app, May said. They spent a lot of their time together watching movies, sharing popcorn and then discussing what worked and didn’t in the films.

    May says he now thinks about all the immigrants who have not committed any crimes but lack the legal resources to avoid deportation.

    “These are human beings that these terrible things are happening to,” he said. “If anybody reads stories like this, if they think this doesn’t apply to them because they’re not married to an immigrant, I beg those people to consider what they think comes next.”

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    Melissa Gomez

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  • Trump attends the US Open as Rolex’s guest despite Swiss tariffs. Mixed cheers and boos greet him

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    President Donald Trump attended the U.S. Open on Sunday and briefly stepped out from a luxury box to wave at a main court crowd mostly still arriving for the men’s final. He drew mixed cheers and boos.Arthur Ashe stadium was only partially full and Trump’s waves weren’t announced beforehand. They were also brief enough so that some of those in attendance didn’t notice them.The president attended as a guest of Rolex despite imposing steep tariffs on the Swiss watchmaker’s home country, and organizers were seeking to keep booing of him from being seen on the TV broadcast.Trump has built the bulk of his second term’s domestic travel around attending major sports events rather than hitting the road to make policy announcements or address the kind of large rallies he so relished as a candidate.Because of extra security screening, the final between second-seeded Carlos Alcaraz, a 22-year-old Spaniard, and No. 1 seed and defending champion Jannik Sinner, 24, of Italy, was pushed back half an hour — meaning Trump arrived more than 45 minutes before the new start time. The president was watching from Rolex’s suite, and his acceptance of Rolex’s invitation comes mere weeks after the Trump administration imposed a whopping 39% tariff on Swiss products.The levy is more than 2 1/2 times higher than the one the Trump administration agreed to for European Union goods exported to the U.S. and nearly four times higher than on British exports to the U.S. It has raised questions about Switzerland’s ability to compete with the 27-member bloc that it neighbors.The White House declined to comment on Trump accepting a corporate client’s invitation at the tournament, but the president has had few qualms about blurring lines between political and foreign policy decisions and efforts to boost the profits of his family business.That includes tirelessly promoting cryptocurrency interests and luxury golf properties around the country and the world that bear his name. He announced Friday that the U.S. will use its turn hosting the Group of 20 summit in December 2026 to stage the sweeping event at Trump National Doral in South Florida.Any negative reaction to Trump’s presence won’t be shown on ABC’s national telecast, per standard policy, the U.S. Tennis Association says.”We regularly ask our broadcasters to refrain from showcasing off-court disruptions,” the organization said in a statement.As heavy rains began mostly clearing, and throngs of fans arrived for the match, no major street protests against the president could be seen from the touranment’s main stadium. Attendees also steered clear of wearing any of the president’s signature “Make America Great Again” caps, though.A 58-year tennis fan originally from Turin, Italy, came from her home in the Boston area to watch the final and said that when she bought a U.S. Open cap, she went with a fuchsia-hued one so it wouldn’t be mistaken for the signature darker color of MAGA hats.”I was careful not to get the red one,” said the fan, who declined to give her name because of her employer’s rules about being publicly quoted.Attending with Trump were White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, special administration envoy Steve Witkoff and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.Elsewhere in the crowd were a slew of celebrities — some of whom publicly backed then-Vice President Kamala Harris during last year’s election against Trump. Among them were Pink, Bruce Springsteen, Shonda Rhimes, Michael J. Fox, Sting, Shaggy, Ben Stiller and Courtney Cox.Trump came back to the press cabin on Air Force One during the flight to New York to note that the plane would be flying over Ashe stadium, but didn’t offer any further comment.Trump was once a U.S. Open mainstay, but hasn’t attended since he was loudly booed at a quarterfinals match in September 2015, months after launching his first presidential campaign.The Trump Organization once controlled its own U.S. Open suite, which was adjacent to the stadium’s television broadcasting booth, but suspended it in 2017, during the first year of Trump’s first term. The family business is now being run by Trump’s sons with their father back in the White House.Trump was born in Queens, home of the U.S. Open, and for decades was a New York-area real estate mogul and, later, a reality TV star. Attending the tournament before he was a politician, he usually sat in the suite’s balcony during night matches and was frequently shown on the arena’s video screens.In recent years, however, including between his presidential terms, Trump primarily lived at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.Alcaraz said before the final that having Trump on-hand would be a privilege and “great for tennis,” but also suggested that such sentiment went for any president watching from the stands. “I don’t want myself to be nervous because of it,” he said.The president has also frequently attended sporting events — where the roar of the crowd sometimes features people booing him while others cheer him.Since returning to the White House in January and prior to Sunday’s U.S Open swing, Trump went to the Super Bowl in New Orleans and the Daytona 500, as well as UFC fights in Miami and Newark, New Jersey, the NCAA wrestling championships in Philadelphia and the FIFA Club World Cup final in East Rutherford, New Jersey.Having a sitting president attend the U.S. Open hasn’t happened since Bill Clinton went to the 2000 tournament, though former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, attended the event’s opening night in 2023.___Associated Press writer Brian Mahoney contributed to this report.

    President Donald Trump attended the U.S. Open on Sunday and briefly stepped out from a luxury box to wave at a main court crowd mostly still arriving for the men’s final. He drew mixed cheers and boos.

    Arthur Ashe stadium was only partially full and Trump’s waves weren’t announced beforehand. They were also brief enough so that some of those in attendance didn’t notice them.

    The president attended as a guest of Rolex despite imposing steep tariffs on the Swiss watchmaker’s home country, and organizers were seeking to keep booing of him from being seen on the TV broadcast.

    Trump has built the bulk of his second term’s domestic travel around attending major sports events rather than hitting the road to make policy announcements or address the kind of large rallies he so relished as a candidate.

    Because of extra security screening, the final between second-seeded Carlos Alcaraz, a 22-year-old Spaniard, and No. 1 seed and defending champion Jannik Sinner, 24, of Italy, was pushed back half an hour — meaning Trump arrived more than 45 minutes before the new start time. The president was watching from Rolex’s suite, and his acceptance of Rolex’s invitation comes mere weeks after the Trump administration imposed a whopping 39% tariff on Swiss products.

    The levy is more than 2 1/2 times higher than the one the Trump administration agreed to for European Union goods exported to the U.S. and nearly four times higher than on British exports to the U.S. It has raised questions about Switzerland’s ability to compete with the 27-member bloc that it neighbors.

    The White House declined to comment on Trump accepting a corporate client’s invitation at the tournament, but the president has had few qualms about blurring lines between political and foreign policy decisions and efforts to boost the profits of his family business.

    That includes tirelessly promoting cryptocurrency interests and luxury golf properties around the country and the world that bear his name. He announced Friday that the U.S. will use its turn hosting the Group of 20 summit in December 2026 to stage the sweeping event at Trump National Doral in South Florida.

    Any negative reaction to Trump’s presence won’t be shown on ABC’s national telecast, per standard policy, the U.S. Tennis Association says.

    “We regularly ask our broadcasters to refrain from showcasing off-court disruptions,” the organization said in a statement.

    As heavy rains began mostly clearing, and throngs of fans arrived for the match, no major street protests against the president could be seen from the touranment’s main stadium. Attendees also steered clear of wearing any of the president’s signature “Make America Great Again” caps, though.

    A 58-year tennis fan originally from Turin, Italy, came from her home in the Boston area to watch the final and said that when she bought a U.S. Open cap, she went with a fuchsia-hued one so it wouldn’t be mistaken for the signature darker color of MAGA hats.

    “I was careful not to get the red one,” said the fan, who declined to give her name because of her employer’s rules about being publicly quoted.

    Attending with Trump were White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, special administration envoy Steve Witkoff and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.

    Elsewhere in the crowd were a slew of celebrities — some of whom publicly backed then-Vice President Kamala Harris during last year’s election against Trump. Among them were Pink, Bruce Springsteen, Shonda Rhimes, Michael J. Fox, Sting, Shaggy, Ben Stiller and Courtney Cox.

    Trump came back to the press cabin on Air Force One during the flight to New York to note that the plane would be flying over Ashe stadium, but didn’t offer any further comment.

    Trump was once a U.S. Open mainstay, but hasn’t attended since he was loudly booed at a quarterfinals match in September 2015, months after launching his first presidential campaign.

    The Trump Organization once controlled its own U.S. Open suite, which was adjacent to the stadium’s television broadcasting booth, but suspended it in 2017, during the first year of Trump’s first term. The family business is now being run by Trump’s sons with their father back in the White House.

    Trump was born in Queens, home of the U.S. Open, and for decades was a New York-area real estate mogul and, later, a reality TV star. Attending the tournament before he was a politician, he usually sat in the suite’s balcony during night matches and was frequently shown on the arena’s video screens.

    In recent years, however, including between his presidential terms, Trump primarily lived at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.

    Alcaraz said before the final that having Trump on-hand would be a privilege and “great for tennis,” but also suggested that such sentiment went for any president watching from the stands. “I don’t want myself to be nervous because of it,” he said.

    The president has also frequently attended sporting events — where the roar of the crowd sometimes features people booing him while others cheer him.

    Since returning to the White House in January and prior to Sunday’s U.S Open swing, Trump went to the Super Bowl in New Orleans and the Daytona 500, as well as UFC fights in Miami and Newark, New Jersey, the NCAA wrestling championships in Philadelphia and the FIFA Club World Cup final in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

    Having a sitting president attend the U.S. Open hasn’t happened since Bill Clinton went to the 2000 tournament, though former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, attended the event’s opening night in 2023.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Brian Mahoney contributed to this report.

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  • Immigration to U.S. declines for first time in 50 years amid Trump crackdown, study shows

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    For the first time in more than half a century, immigrants leaving the U.S. outnumber those arriving, a phenomenon that may signal President Trump’s historic mass deportation efforts are having the intended effect.

    An analysis of census data released by Pew Research Center on Thursday noted that between January and June, the United States’ foreign-born population had declined by more than a million people.

    Millions of people arrived at the border between 2021 and 2023 seeking refuge in America after the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, which ravaged many of their home countries. In 2023, California was home to 11.3 million immigrants, roughly 28.4% of the national total, according to Pew.

    In January, 53.3 million immigrants lived in the U.S., the highest number recorded, but in the months that followed, those who left or were deported surpassed those arriving — the first drop since the 1960s. As of June, the number living in the U.S. had dropped to 51.9 million. Pew did not calculate how many immigrants are undocumented.

    Trump and his supporters have applauded the exodus, with the president declaring “Promises Made. Promises Kept,” in a social media post this month.

    “Seven months into his second term, it’s clear that the president has done what he said he’d do by reestablishing law and order at our southern border and by removing violent illegal immigrants from our nation,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote in a USA Today column on Thursday. “Both actions were necessary for Americans’ peace and prosperity.”

    But some experts caution that such declines will have negative economic effects on the United States if they continue, resulting in labor shortages as America’s birth rate continues to drop.

    “Looking ahead in the future, we’re going to have to rely on immigrant workers to fulfill a lot of the jobs in this country,” said Victor Narro, project director at UCLA Labor Center. “Like it or not, the demographics are going to be changing in this country. It’s already changing, but it’s going to be more pronounced in the future, especially with the decline in native-born workers.”

    The Pew analysis highlights several policy changes that have affected the number of immigrants in the country, beginning during then-President Biden’s term.

    In June 2024, Biden signed a proclamation that bars migrants from seeking asylum along the U.S. border with Mexico at times when crossings are high, a change that was designed to make it harder for those who enter the country without prior authorization.

    Trump, who campaigned on hard-line immigration policies, signed an executive order on the first day of his second term, declaring an “invasion” at the southern border. The move severely restricted entry into the country by barring people who arrive between ports of entry from seeking asylum or invoking other protections that would allow them to temporarily remain in the U.S.

    Widespread immigration enforcement operations across Southern California began in June, prompting pushback from advocates and local leaders. The federal government responded by deploying thousands of Marines and National Guard troops to L.A. after the raids sparked scattered protests.

    Homeland Security agents have arrested 4,481 undocumented immigrants in the Los Angeles area since June 6, the agency said this month.

    Narro said the decrease in immigrants outlined in the study may not be as severe as the numbers suggest because of a reduction in response rates amid heightened enforcement.

    “When you have the climate that you have today with fear of deportation, being arrested or detained by ICE — all the stuff that’s coming out of the Trump administration — people are going to be less willing to participate in the survey and documentation that goes into these reports,” Narro said.

    Michael Capuano, research director at Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nonprofit that advocates for a reduction in immigration, said the numbers are trending in the right direction.

    “We see it as a positive start,” Capuano said. “Obviously enforcement at the border is now working. The population is beginning to decrease. We’d like to see that trend continue because, ultimately, we think the policy of the last four years has been proven to be unsustainable.”

    Capuano disagrees that the decrease in immigrants will cause problems for the country’s workforce.

    “We don’t believe that ultimately there’s going to be this huge disruption,” he said. “There is no field that Americans won’t work in. Pew notes in its own study that American-born workers are the majority in every job field.”

    In 2023, the last year with complete data, 33 million immigrants were part of the country’s workforce, including about 10 million undocumented individuals. Roughly 19% of workers were immigrants in 2023, up from 15% two decades earlier, according to Pew.

    “Immigrants are a huge part of American society,” said Toby Higbie, a professor of history and labor studies at UCLA. “Those who are running the federal government right now imagine that they can remove all immigrants from this society, but it’s just not going to happen. It’s not going to happen because the children of immigrants will fight against it and because our country needs immigrant workers to make the economy work.”

    The United States experienced a negative net immigration in the 1930s during the Great Depression when at least 400,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans left the country, often as a result of government pressure and repatriation programs. Not long after, the U.S. implemented the bracero program in 1942 in which the U.S. allowed millions of Mexican citizens to work in the country to address labor shortages during World War II.

    Higbie predicts the decline in immigration won’t last long, particularly if prices on goods rise amid labor shortages.

    “You could say that there’s a cycle here where we invite immigrants to work in our economy, and then there’s a political reaction by some in our country, and they kick them out, and then we invite them back,” he said. “I suspect that the Trump administration, after going through this process of brutally deporting people, will turn around and propose a guest worker program in order to maintain a docile immigrant workforce.”

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    Hannah Fry

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  • Thousands rally in downtown L.A. against Israel’s air and ground war in Gaza

    Thousands rally in downtown L.A. against Israel’s air and ground war in Gaza

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    Thousands of people waving the black, green, red and white Palestinian flag and chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” gathered at Pershing Square on Saturday afternoon to protest Israel’s escalating air and ground war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

    The event began with a series of speakers who decried the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Israeli bombing attacks since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants launched their bloody incursion into Israel, and called for an end to what they termed an Israeli occupation of the densely populated enclave on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

    The crowd then began marching slowly down the middle of 6th Street, attracting hundreds more people who had arrived to show their support by joining the event led by groups that included the Palestinian Youth Movement, an independent, grassroots organization of Palestinian and Arab youths.

    Demonstrators carry a gigantic black, green, red and white Palestinian flag in showing their support for Palestinians at Pershing Square in downtown L.A. on Saturday.

    (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

    Among them was Salah Odeh, of Pasadena, who said he was supposed to have joined his University of La Verne teammates in a game on Saturday but decided that the situation in his home country is “bigger than football.”

    He said it’s imperative that the people of Gaza be given humanitarian aid and that Palestinian fighters receive military assistance in the face of Israel’s bombing campaign in recent weeks.

    “People are offering their prayers, and that’s good — but we need physical help. We need military assistance,” said Odeh, who wore a black-and-white keffiyeh on his head, a Palestinian flag around his neck like a cape, and a pro-Palestine shirt and necklaces.

    Gaza, he added, “is an open-air prison where everyone has been given the death penalty simply because they are Palestinian.”

    Thousands gather to be a part of The Palestinian Youth Movement demonstration in support of Palestinians at Pershing Square.

    Pro-Palestinian demonstrators march down 6th Street in downtown L.A. on Saturday.

    (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

    Many of the demonstrators were heartened by the size of Saturday’s protest, which they view as an indication that younger generations are rejecting media narratives that they say unfairly seem to portray all Palestinian people as terrorists.

    Negar Mizani, of Los Angeles, was accompanied by her husband and 3-year-old daughter in their third street demonstration since the war erupted on Oct. 7 with an attack on Israel by Hamas militants.

    She shared an impassioned plea. “We would like for the Israeli apartheid to end — and a cease-fire,” she said. “It’s about recognition of the humanity of the people of Gaza.”

    Nearby, Roy Nashef, of Los Angeles, held up a sign calling on the media to differentiate between Hamas and the residents of Gaza. “I’m just here to grieve with everyone else,” he said.

    The war has led protesters on both sides to take to the streets across California and around the world.

    A week ago, thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered at Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles, then began marching down Hill Street chanting and carrying signs denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “war criminal.”

    Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered two weeks earlier near the Israeli Consulate in West L.A. to condemn the bombardment of Gaza.

    The next day, thousands marched to the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance in solidarity with Israel. Los Angeles is home to the second-largest Jewish community in America, with more than 500,000 members, and while views on the conflict run the gamut, many have found themselves reeling by the events that have unfolded in recent weeks.

    The latest bloodshed began Oct. 7 when Hamas launched its incursion into Israel, killing more than 1,400 people — mostly civilians — and taking more than 200 hostages. Since then, Israel has launched a barrage of airstrikes across Gaza that have destroyed neighborhoods as Hamas militants fire rockets into Israel.

    On Saturday, Palestinian officials published the names of 6,747 Palestinians killed and pleaded for help in a humanitarian crisis, with more than 1 million people displaced.

    Israeli officials said 230 hostages are still being held in Gaza by Hamas. On Saturday night, Netanyahu said that the military had opened a “second stage” in the war by expanding the bombardment and sending ground troops into Gaza.

    Times staff writer Louis Sahagun contributed to this report.

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    Connor Sheets

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