Behind the viral video of Skater Kid and the continued fight against ICE

A young man with a skateboard faces off with agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement during a confrontation June outside a Home Depot in Paramount Warning This video contains profanity Video courtesy of Capital Main This article was produced by Capital Main It is published here with permission A young man with a black bandana covering his mouth and a skateboard in hand stands alone in the street as dozens of masked federal immigration agents standing a couple dozen feet away focus their weapons on him The small army unleashes a barrage of pepper balls tear gas kinetic munitions and flash-bangs which strike their target more times than he can count In the chaos he does not fall or run but instead walks slowly to the other side of the road his silhouette obscured by a plume of chemical irritants and his dark clothes now painted powdery white and green from the impact of myriad projectiles When he arrives at the other side of the road he turns around and flips the bird at the platoon of federal officers who targeted him The confrontation took place on June outside a Home Depot in Paramount California where federal agents had been staging in front of Department of Homeland Defense offices While out covering the resulting society resistance I captured the scene on video and published it to social media later that day It went viral amassing more than million views on X alone As other accounts began reposting the clip it was clear that viewers were intrigued by the young man I dubbed Skater Kid in my posts One wrote an Ode to Skateboard-Guy another drew fan art of the young man s bird-flipping while others compared the standoff to Tank Man from the crackdown in Tiananmen Square I was unable to speak with Skater Kid at the Paramount protest and so his perspective on the event went unrecorded But a week later he recognized me while I was covering a No Kings rally in downtown Los Angeles I interviewed him later that month to hear his take on the Paramount protest how he was recovering from his injuries and what his thoughts were on the ongoing U S Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence in Los Angeles He petitioned to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the federal regime and spoke on the condition that he be identified only as Skater Kid Skater Kid holds his board outside the Paramount Home Depot A logo on his shirt has been obscured to maintain anonymity Photo by Jeremy Lindenfeld Capital Main Skater Kid reported he had been preparing to go on a date with his girlfriend the morning of June when an Instagram post alerted him to the presence of federal immigration agents in Paramount Have to help my people I advised her I m sorry but I have to come out to encouragement my people he recalled I notified her I loved her I kissed her and then made my way to the Paramount Home Depot By the time he arrived federal officers had already used crowd-control weapons on the growing crowd Children older adults and bystanders had been coughing and crying from the effects of liberally deployed tear gas As a aftermath No one was close to the police which kind of rubbed me the wrong way he reported So he walked nearer to the skirmish line of federal immigration agents and began yelling at them I narrated them You guys really decided to clock in and terrorize the locality I called them Nazis I m pretty sure it rubbed them the wrong way The officers began shooting pepper balls near his feet but undeterred Skater Kid continued taunting the agents dancing around the projectiles as they hit the ground After more than a minute of the standoff he began walking away only to be met with an overwhelming salvo of munitions from Boundary Patrol I had gotten shot on my forehead both sides then my neck my shoulder my back was pretty lit up too he disclosed I got shot at least times They tear-gassed right in front of me flash-banged me at least twice that I remember The tear gas staying on your clothes after a while it just started burning my skin It felt like it was just on fire Despite being struck dozens of times Skater Kid disclosed he didn t feel much I genuinely think the adrenaline just took over he revealed Maybe it s because of the sports I ve done like boxing I ve been hit harder What he noticed more was the care he received from total strangers who tended to his wounds A girl gave him a face mask to protect against irritant fumes multiple people offered him saline to wash out his eyes and others gave him water to get his cough under control What s more he commented it was especially powerful to realize that people were out protesting and putting their safety at liability for the very same reason he was Seeing everyone come out and help each other it was a beautiful moment he mentioned He absolutely decided to head home after getting a call from his mom who immigrated to the United States from Mexico before Skater Kid was born At first he resisted her pleas for his return telling her If we re not fighting for ourselves who else is going to But eventually after his little sister got on the phone and begged him not to get hurt he had no choice but to call it a day Gripped by fear It s no way to live He recovered fairly promptly from his physical injuries in fact he was back protesting ICE operations in downtown Los Angeles the very next day But head wounds and a body full of bruises weren t his only source of pain Getting shot getting tear-gassed getting flash-banged multiple times it didn t hurt as much as seeing my society of immigrants being just gripped by fear he revealed It s no way to live to be going to work and hiding at home Skater Kid announced the terrorizing of immigrant communities is nothing new but that compared to the tactics of President Donald Trump s first term the new intimidation and violence have been much more severe In June ICE was holding a record number of detainees across the country nearly half of whom had no criminal records The resulting fear has driven countless immigrants into hiding Skater Kid has been extremely saddened to see local street vendors too scared to do the work they have been doing for years Closer to home his family has grown increasingly paranoid as federal agents continue to detain immigrants often violently My dad doesn t want to admit it as much but you can tell you can see there is genuine fear in their eyes he mentioned My dad doesn t even want to get gas sometimes so he made me buy a jerry can Skater Kid has used the resulting frustration as fuel to continue protesting If the cabinet is overreaching taking away rights from our people we re supposed to fight back he disclosed With enough resistance with enough pushback with enough fight they ll eventually cave no matter how long it takes We just have to show up Jeremy Lindenfeld writes for Capital Main an award-winning nonprofit publication that reports from California on the the greater part pressing economic environmental and social issues of our time including economic inequality conditions change robustness care threats to democracy hate and extremism and immigration Copyright Capital Main