On Saturday, I went to a riot and found myself at a quinceañera.

I wasn’t lost. I had headed to the L.A. County cities of Compton and Paramount to see the “riots and looters” that Donald Trump and his administration were talking about on social media. I know those communities well. I spent years covering them for the Los Angeles Times.

But try as I might, I couldn’t find any rioting.

Yes, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies were on Alondra Boulevard, along with some people who appeared to be federal agents. The sheriffs had two lines, protecting either side of the stretch of Alondra Boulevard that is home to Paramount’s Home Depot. That store, and an industrial park nearby, had been the site of a day-long conflict between federal agents, who were believed to have seized migrants (but denied it), and local protestors who came to the scene to stop the agents.

To the east, sheriff’s vehicles were confronting a few protestors (“stragglers,” said one deputy), pushing them back into the middle of Paramount. To the west, the law enforcement lines had crossed L.A. River and the 710 Freeway, which separate Paramount and Compton — and used vehicles and non-lethal projectiles to push back a small group of protestors into east Compton.

This being Compton, with its strong oral culture (it’s the hometown of Kendrick Lamar), some of the protestors were profane and provocative. A few were anarchists, dressed in black and wearing masks (just like the feds!), and threw things at the sheriffs.

On the Compton side of law enforcement line, a burned-out car sat in the intersection at the corner of Alondra and Atlantic. But people weren’t rioting or doing the large-scale destruction we saw during the 1992 civil unrest. Maybe 400 people milled around. The foolish ones wrote “Fuck ICE” on signs (I say foolish because this was not the moment to pursue love-making with ICE agents. Wiser taggers went with “Fuera ICE,” or “Away ICE,” since the departure of these feds would certainly make everyone safer.

As I approached the law enforcement line, I swallowed droplets that tasted like tear gas and pepper spray. A self-described medic, dressed like an anarchist, gave me a rag and some water. I retreated to Atlantic and Alondra.

Not much was happening there, so I walked around the neighborhood. Two hundred yards in any direction, it was just another Saturday night. People inside and outside their homes were enjoying a cool June evening. A short walk up Atlantic, families were relaxing in the park where Venus and Serena Williams learned to play tennis.

I wandered west and then south, passing again near the law enforcement line. Less than 200 yards from there, I saw lights and heard banda music.

Outside hovered teenage girls and their fathers. It was a quinceañera, a man said.

“Bro,” said a middle-aged gentleman wearing a Dodger hat, “you OK?”

“I’m good,” I said.

“Your eyes are kind of watery. Let me get you some water.”

I could see fine. But I poured water from the cold bottle into my eyes and drank the rest. And he asked: “What’s the deal up there?”

I tried to explain.

“Trump is an idiot,” he said. “What else is new?”

Then the father of the girl celebrating her birthday warmly invited me in.

He apologized that the party wasn’t grander — “I don’t have the money to rent a place” — but the event was quite spectacular.

It took up two side-by-side apartment building driveways that extended maybe 40 yards in from the street. The father and his family had put up a white tent, with chandeliers hung from the top. More than 100 people attended. There was a dance floor and a stage with a terrific band — three guys on guitars — played so loud that you couldn’t hear the helicopters overhead.

There was a woman making tacos. The father ordered me two al pastor. They were delicious.

Who knew civil war could be so tasty?

Technically it turned out the party was a Sweet 16, not a quinceañera, for the father’s youngest daughter. This was his second marriage, and he wanted to go all out. He missed his older children, who had moved to Wyoming, where life is easier.

He saw no reason to stop the party. As close as we were to the law enforcement lines, we didn’t feel that the police actions outside constituted anything like what the White House was officially calling “a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

“The government does what the government does,” the father said. “Life goes on.”

Eventually, he excused himself to dance with his wife.

Some other guests invited me to dance. I joined in for a little while. If your national government is going to declare you in rebellion, you might as well have a good time.

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.