During protests, the Mexican flag stands as a symbol of Latin heritage—not colonization

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“They’re the children and grandchildren of immigrants,” said Chris Zepeda-Millán, a professor of Chicano studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Throughout this weekend’s protests, Mexican and other Latin American flags have emerged as protest emblems, which has angered the Trump administration’s officials and supporters. Trump officials have cast flag wavers as insurrectionists and seemed to assume that they are not U.S. citizens.

Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser, called out “foreign nationals, waving foreign flags, rioting and obstructing federal law enforcement attempting to expel illegal foreign invaders” in a social media post on Sunday afternoon.

But for many protesters who are American citizens, the flag means pride in their roots, as well as solidarity with immigrants who are being targeted for deportation.

“They’re the children and grandchildren of immigrants,” said Chris Zepeda-Millán, a professor of Chicano studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied the immigrant rights movement in California. “They have no doubt in their own citizenship or their own belonging here, but they understand the racial undertones of the attacks on immigrants,” he said.

“So you’re getting this reaction of ‘We’re not going to let you make us be ashamed of where our parents and grandparents came from,’” Mr. Zepeda-Millán added.
The appearance of foreign flags at immigration protests is not new, nor is it the outrage by those who call it un-American. But American flags have been flown by protesters in Los Angeles, too, as they have in past protests against immigration crackdowns. And in Los Angeles this week, fusions of the American flag with that of another country, such as Mexico or Guatemala, have regularly been seen waving among the demonstrators.

Some immigrant coalitions in the past have discouraged the waving of foreign flags, lest it feed anti-immigrant backlash. But Alfonso Gonzales Toribio, an ethnic studies professor at the University of California, Riverside, who has written about Latino immigrant rights movements, said that right now, immigrants “feel attacked.”

He added, “I don’t think we are going to be able to dissuade people” from flying the flag of their homeland. “It gives people a sense of pride.”