Internal emails revealed DHS acting General Counsel Joseph Mazzara urged agents to have 'started hitting' Los Angeles anti-ICE protesters

Internal Department of Homeland Security emails disclosed on March 27, 2026, by the watchdog group American Oversight showed that the agency's then-acting General Counsel, Joseph Mazzara, privately suggested federal agents in Los Angeles should have used far more aggressive force against demonstrators during the June 2025 protests over immigration enforcement. In the emails, Mazzara wrote that agents should have "just started hitting" anti-ICE protesters and should have arrested "everyone that couldn't get away." [1]

American Oversight, which obtained the records through public-records requests, received two versions of the emails — one in which the redactions had failed to obscure Mazzara's remarks and one in which they had succeeded — indicating that DHS had attempted to conceal the general counsel's language before releasing the documents. The remarks concerned the same Los Angeles operations for which a federal court subsequently ruled the accompanying National Guard deployment illegal. [1, 2]