The chaos in downtown Los Angeles crossed paths with Good Morning Britain reporter Noel Phillips this week.
Incase you’ve been sleeping under a rock for the last few days, president Donald Trump’s administration deployed the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on the city’s Latino population where they made just under 250 arrests.
On Friday (June 6), peaceful protesting turned aggressive, which resulted in the arrival of 2,000 National Guard soldiers at the scene who used tears gas and rubber bullets as their mode of retaliation.
Reporting from the frontline so to speak, Phillips chatted to GMB hosts Susanna Reid and Richard Madeley today (June 10), revealing that he’d taken a direct hit amongst the crowd.
“Just 10 minutes before coming on air yesterday, I was on the floor talking to several protesters,” he said. “I was on the floor because it was the best place to be, given the fact that the situation around us was so volatile, officers were obviously chasing protestors on the streets.
“As I was laying on the floor, I felt as though an enormous tonne of bricks had fallen on my arm. I realised within about 20 to 30 seconds that a rubber bullet had grazed the top layer of my skin and had caused a bit of injury.
“My arm was swollen, I went to the doctors, got it checked out, it wasn’t broken at all. But, it was swollen, it still is swollen. It’s in a bandage at the moment,” continued Phillips.
According to Phillips, some of the locals were comparing this outbreak of violence to a country at civil war.
“It gives you a sense of how unpredictable things are here,” he told Susanna and Richard. “Police don’t seem to care if you’re a journalist, whether you’re a resident or a protester in the street.”
Despite on-site suggestions that the National Guard is specifically targeting journalists, Phillips didn’t buy into them.
“I can’t say from my experience that I believe I was deliberately targeted. I was laying on the floor, I was not a threat to the officers,” he noted.
“The people that I was with, we were all laying on the floor and suddenly we just had [a rubber bullet] bang into my arm. If this was fired at me at close range, I think there would have been some considerable damage.”
Related: ‘Not what we voted for’: Latinas For Trump founder slams President’s immigration policy