A former FBI supervisor has come forward to allege that President Donald Trump pushed the bureau to investigate anti-ICE protesters in Los Angeles after agents found no evidence they had committed a crime.
Jill Fields, a former supervisory intelligence analyst in the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, made the allegation in a new whistleblower disclosure sent to Sens. Alex Padilla and John Cornyn, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s immigration panel.
She is asking Congress and the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate.
The disclosure describes two instances in early 2025 when Fields says senior administration officials pushed the FBI to investigate protesters, despite concerns inside the bureau that their conduct was protected by the First Amendment, according to Padilla’s letter summarizing the disclosure.
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In one incident, Trump had watched a TikTok video of protesters using bullhorns to warn residents about immigration officers in Alhambra, California, and tell them about their legal rights. FBI personnel who reviewed the incident had not found evidence of a crime.
The White House then instructed FBI Director Kash Patel to have the Los Angeles field office investigate the protesters.
Patel later told senior bureau officials that Trump “was angry about the incident, and he wanted those protesters investigated and arrested,” according to CNN, which reviewed the disclosure.
Fields later said she was told by another person, whose name is redacted in the disclosure, that the inquiry would proceed because “the President wants this investigation,” according to NBC News.
The disclosure also alleges a separate push from Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general at the time, to investigate anti-ICE and Customs and Border Protection protesters demonstrating at federal buildings in Los Angeles — without identifying a specific crime or national security threat. Bove is now a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Fields and other FBI employees raised concerns that the investigations violated bureau policy and constitutional protections. The disclosure also alleges that personnel were diverted from investigations involving violent crime, drug trafficking and transnational criminal organizations.
Fields had publicly described part of the episode before. In January, she told The New York Times that her team reviewed protesters’ conduct, concluded they had done nothing wrong and were nevertheless told an investigation had to proceed.
Fields also alleges she lost responsibility for three programs after raising objections and believes the action was retaliation for her internal disclosures. She later resigned from the FBI.
In Padilla’s letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche and Patel, he sought details about the investigations and gave them until Oct. 12 to respond. He asked how many demonstrations, social media accounts and people the FBI monitored, whether anyone was arrested or charged, and whether the White House gave instructions concerning the inquiries.
Without control of Congress, Padilla and other Democrats are not able to compel the government to disclose such information — but the focus on potentially unconstitutional investigations of protesters is a likely sign of where the party will focus its efforts should it regain power after November’s midterms.
A Justice Department spokesperson told CNN that the department would continue to “vigorously uphold the First Amendment rights of all Americans and restore the rule of law.”
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