(CNN) — Mexico’s green, white and red flag has become a defining symbol of the protests in Los Angeles.

Demonstrators have waved flags from Mexico and other Latin American countries, as well as US flags, to express solidarity with immigrants and denounce the Trump administration’s raids, provoking the ire of the president’s supporters.

Los Angeles has been roiled in protests since Friday, when ICE officers raided several workplaces in the city’s garment district. While the protests began peacefully, they have since led to dozens of arrests and some violent clashes. President Donald Trump deployed thousands of National Guard troops and Marines, outraging Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who in a complaint defined the mobilization of the California guardsmen as an “illegal takeover” and on social media called the potential use of the Marines “a blatant abuse of power.”

The Mexican flag has long been a mainstay at immigration-related demonstrations, particularly in LA, which has deep cultural and economic ties to Mexico and is seen as the capital of the Mexican diaspora in the US. More than 3.4 million people of Mexican heritage or born in Mexico live in Los Angeles County, according to Census data, more than any other county in the US.

But images and video showing flag-waving protesters facing off with police have drawn anger from Republican officials.

Republicans, on the other side of the issue

“They were literally out there protesting, carrying a foreign flag. That is absolutely insane. They’re not just peaceful protesters. These are illegals,” Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin told CNN’s Dana Bash, while defending Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard to LA.

“Insurrectionists carrying foreign flags are attacking immigration enforcement officers,” Vice President JD Vance posted on X Saturday.

The Department of Homeland Security has shared on social media several photos and videos of the protests where, amid chaotic scenes, the Mexican flag is featured prominently.

Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller described the protesters on social media as “foreign nationals, waving foreign flags, rioting and obstructing federal law enforcement attempting to expel illegal foreign invaders.”

Waving a foreign flag – or even destroying an American one – is legal under freedom of expression rights protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment.

Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda, associate professor of Chicana, Chicano and Central American Studies at UCLA, said invoking flags to demonize protesters is a “well-documented move on the part of the Trump administration, knowing that every single demonstration of this type brings out the Mexican flag.”

Former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger told CNN’s Erin Burnett he thinks protesters are waving the wrong flag.

The visual of the Mexican flag at protests “are terrible, honestly, and this is feeding right into Donald Trump’s narrative,” Kinzinger said. “People can carry whatever flag they want. They have a right to do it. I just think that it would be much stronger if they were carrying American flags only.”

A long-time magnet for controversy

The current Mexican flag was officially adopted by the country in 1968, though variations have been used since Mexico’s war of independence from Spain in the early 1800s.

It is illegal in Mexico to use the Mexican flag for anything other than patriotic festivities, official or sporting events, and school and government ceremonies and under very specific circumstances.

The brandishing of it and other Latin American flags to defend the rights of immigrants in the US has a long and complex history.

The Mexican flag was a lightning rod during the 1994 movement against California’s Proposition 187, which sought to bar undocumented immigrants from accessing education, health care and social services. The flags, waved by protesters to show pride, were seen by many as symbols of anti-American defiance.

“This is something that goes back, actually, to the 1990s, when many people protested against Proposition 187 at the time,” Jorge Castañeda, former Mexican foreign minister, told CNN on Tuesday. “And then also the early 2000s when demonstrations all over the United States took place against several laws that were being implemented then on immigration.”

Castañeda suspects this time around “practically all of the demonstrators, all of the protesters, are American citizens.”

“You would have to be quite reckless and foolish to be a Mexican citizen without papers, or even as a legal permanent resident, to go out and demonstrate today in these protests because you would most likely be arrested and deported, even if you’re a legal permanent resident and certainly if you have no papers,” said Castañeda, who was foreign minister from 2000 to 2003.

In LA, some have argued waving the Mexican flag risks undermining the protesters’ cause by alienating people and shifting attention away from immigration policy.

Waving the Mexican flag “transforms what should be a debate about American constitutional rights and due process into a conversation about foreign loyalty and cultural assimilation,” Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist focused on Latino voting trends wrote in the Sacramento Bee.

But the waving of foreign flags speaks to the generations of people from Mexico and other Latin American countries who have called the US, and particularly California, home, Hinojosa-Ojeda, the UCLA professor, said.

“The flags mean their families. The flags mean their communities. It’s not about having an international invasion,” he added.

The flags are a “mechanism of pride and identity that is under attack,” Hinojosa-Ojeda added.

Antonio Rodriguez, an organizer with the Brown Berets immigration advocacy group, said the Mexican flag at the protests is a symbol of unity, not division.

“I don’t necessarily think just because somebody has pride in their culture that they’re un-American,” Rodriguez said.

“Waving a Mexican flag, for us, is showing pride in our culture and our family.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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