Skater Kid: Behind the Viral Video and Continued Fight for Justice

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 7 outside a Home Depot in Paramount, California, where federal agents had been staging in front of Department of Homeland Security offices. 

While out covering the resulting community resistance, I captured the scene on video and published it to social media later that day. It went viral, amassing more than 10 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 1989 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 asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the federal government and spoke on the condition that he be identified only as “Skater Kid.”

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Skater Kid holds his board outside the Paramount Home Depot. A logo on his shirt has been obscured to maintain anonymity.

Skater Kid said he had been preparing to go on a date with his girlfriend the morning of June 7 when an Instagram post alerted him to the presence of federal immigration agents in Paramount. 

“I told her, ‘I’m sorry, but I have to come out to support my people,” he recalled. “I told 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 result, “No one was close to the police, which kind of rubbed me the wrong way,” he said. 

So, he walked nearer to the skirmish line of federal immigration agents and began yelling at them. 

“I told them, ‘You guys really decided to clock in and terrorize the community?’ 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 Border Patrol.

“I had gotten shot on my forehead, both sides, then my neck, my shoulder, my back was pretty lit up too,” he said. “I got shot at least 20 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 said he didn’t feel much. “I genuinely think the adrenaline just took over,” he said. “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 said it was especially powerful to realize that people were out protesting and putting their safety at risk for the very same reason he was. 

“Seeing everyone come out and support each other … it was a beautiful moment,” he said. 

He finally 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. 

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He recovered fairly quickly from his physical injuries — in fact, he was back protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement 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 community of immigrants being just gripped by fear,” he said. “It’s no way to live, to be going to work and hiding [at] home.”

Skater Kid said the terrorizing of immigrant communities is nothing new, but that compared to the tactics of President Trump’s first term, the recent 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 many immigrants across Los Angeles 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, which immigrated from Mexico, 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 said. “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 government is overreaching, taking away rights from our people … we’re supposed to fight back,” he said. “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 … We got to show these fucking racist pigs that we’re not scared. We’re not scared of them … And for the immigrants who are scared, such as my parents, such as my family members, don’t be scared to continue living life.”

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