Judge
Blocks Trump Administration Tactics in L.A. Immigration Raids
A federal
judge temporarily halted the administration from making indiscriminate arrests
based on race and denying detainees access to lawyers, in a lawsuit that could
have national repercussions.
Miriam
Jordan
By Miriam
Jordan
Miriam
Jordan is a national immigration correspondent based in Los Angeles.
Published
July 11, 2025
Updated July
12, 2025, 12:21 a.m. ET
A federal
judge in California blocked the Trump administration on Friday from making
indiscriminate immigration arrests in the Los Angeles area and from denying
detainees the right to consult with a lawyer.
The two
temporary restraining orders issued by the judge represented a sharp rebuke of
tactics that federal agents have employed in and around Los Angeles during
waves of immigration raids that began last month.
In the
orders, the judge, Maame E. Frimpong of the U.S. District Court for the Central
District of California, directed agents to stop racial profiling in the course
of seeking out immigrants and mandated that the federal government, which has
deployed hundreds of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other
agencies in Los Angeles County, ensure detainees have access to legal counsel.
“What the
federal government would have this Court believe — in the face of a mountain of
evidence presented in this case — is that none of this is actually happening,”
the judge wrote of the tactics barred in her order.
She said
that “roving patrols” without reasonable suspicion violated the Fourth
Amendment of the Constitution and that denying access to lawyers violated the
Fifth Amendment.
The ruling,
which remains in place for up to 10 days, came in response to a lawsuit filed
last week by immigrant advocacy groups, led by the American Civil Liberties
Union of Southern California and the nonprofit Public Counsel. A fuller hearing
is expected in the coming weeks as the groups seek a more durable order, known
as a preliminary injunction.
Los Angeles,
the largest city in the largest blue state, has become the center of President
Trump’s efforts to ramp up immigrant arrests to achieve his pledge of mass
deportations. It is also about 30 percent Latino and is home to the nation’s
largest population of undocumented people.
During a
hearing on Thursday, the judge was skeptical of the government’s assertions
that it was not violating the constitutional rights of people and that agents
were stopping immigrants based on “the totality of circumstances,” rather than
relying on race.
In addition
to ICE, which is responsible for detaining and deporting immigrants, the Trump
administration has tapped the Border Patrol, the F.B.I. and the Drug
Enforcement Administration to assist with an aggressive enforcement operation
in Los Angeles that prompted several days of protests last month.
Agents have
arrested people in parking lots, in tow yards and on job sites like
restaurants. Some encounters have been captured on bystander video, and in some
instances, the arrests have appeared to be roundups of random Hispanic people
by armed agents, who drive up in unmarked vehicles, in military or plain
clothes, wearing masks.
Mark
Rosenbaum, a lawyer with Public Counsel, said, “The order reflects there is
something very wrong when the federal government goes to war against an
American city and ignores the Constitution.” He added, “Hopefully this ends the
actions of the government rounding up carwash workers and other hardworking
people like they were domestic terrorists.”
The mayor of
Los Angeles, Karen Bass, said the judge’s ruling represented “American values
and decency.”
During the
hearing on Thursday, Sean Skedziewelski, a lawyer for the federal government,
defended the tactics that the agents had been using in Los Angeles. He said
that when they encountered people whom they weren’t initially targeting,
“agents can’t put blinders on.”
Judge
Frimpong described the government arguments as “very general,” saying that they
“did not really engage with the high volume of evidence that the plaintiffs put
in the record of the things we have all seen and heard on the news.”
She also
said that the government had failed to explain how agents selected locations
for sweeps, such as bus stops, beyond the fact that people congregating there
are of a particular race or in a low-income neighborhood.
“I’m not
really satisfied,” she said.
The lawsuit
was filed on July 2, accusing the Trump administration of unleashing
“indiscriminate immigration operations” that have swept up day laborers,
carwash workers, farmworkers, caregivers and others described as “the lifeblood
of communities.”
“Individuals
with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents,
suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they
are and where they are from,” the complaint said.
In her 52-
page ruling, Judge Frimpong said that the government “may not rely solely,
alone or in combination,” on race or ethnicity; on a person’s speaking Spanish,
or English with an accent; or on a person’s presence at a particular location,
such as a day-laborer or agricultural site, or type of work performed to
establish reasonable suspicion to stop and detain people.
In her
ruling, she wrote that during the hearing, government lawyers had argued that
the advocacy groups had not produced evidence that race was a motivating factor
for what the groups said were unconstitutional stops and arrests, that any
particular agent had engaged in unconstitutional stops and arrests or that
those stops and arrests were not consensual.
“But the
evidence before the court at this time portrays the reality differently,” she
said.
She
criticized the government lawyer for pointing to arrests at carwash in
Whittier, a town outside Los Angeles, as providing agents with reason to return
again and again over several days to take more people. In fact, they ended up
detaining a U.S. citizen there, she noted.
“The
reasoning is circular at best, and no details were provided to support the idea
that the multiple visits were indeed based upon ‘intelligence’ or
investigation,” the judge wrote.
Mohammad
Tajsar, senior staff attorney with the A.C.L.U. and counsel in the case, said
the ruling confirmed that “no matter the color of their skin, what language
they speak, or where they work, everyone is guaranteed constitutional rights to
protect them from unlawful stops.”
“While it
does not take a federal judge to recognize that marauding bands of masked,
rifle-toting goons have been violating ordinary people’s rights throughout
Southern California,” he said, “we are hopeful that today’s ruling will be a
step toward accountability for the federal government’s flagrant lawlessness
that we have all been witnessing.”
Tricia
McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said that “a
district judge is undermining the will of the American people.”
The outcome
of the case could have implications for how federal agents conduct enforcement
operations beyond Los Angeles, according to legal experts.
In a court
filing in support of the suit, California and 17 other states with Democratic
governors said that “aggressive enforcement tactics” had harmed local
economies, prevented people from seeking medical care and disrupted the daily
life of residents.
“Although
defendants claim to be conducting a targeted operation aimed at criminals
without legal status, they are instead conducting stops without reasonable
suspicion, which in turn has impacted countless Los Angeles residents
regardless of immigration status,” the states said in the court filing.
The federal
government said in court filings that agents had followed the law when they
stopped people whom they had reasonable grounds to suspect were undocumented.
“Consistent
with the totality of the circumstances approach, agents may consider the
location of the encounter, whether it was in a public place or businesses known
to employ aliens without documentation, including specific streets, parking
lots, and carwashes,” it said.
The lawsuit
accused agents of confining people for days in a “dungeonlike” site in Los
Angeles, known as B-18, intended for just hourslong stays, and pressuring
people into accepting rapid deportation without allowing them to contact
lawyers.
In
responding to the allegations that some detainees did not have access to
lawyers, the government argued that the plaintiffs were basing their claim on
“past limitations” at a holding facility in Los Angeles. It said that
operations there had been “normalized” on June 24 and that lawyers had since
been able to reach clients.
The judge
wrote in her ruling that “plaintiffs have sufficiently established that their
missions of providing legal representation to immigrants, such as those
allegedly detained at B-18 have been frustrated by defendants’ actions.”
Moreover,
she agreed with their argument that there was “sufficient likelihood that they
will again be wronged in a similar way” in the future.
On Monday,
heavily armed federal agents and National Guard troops marched through
MacArthur Park, at the heart of an immigrant enclave abutting downtown Los
Angeles.
Thomas D.
Homan, appointed border czar by Mr. Trump, had pledged that deportation efforts
would target immigrants with criminal records. But initial detention and
deportation numbers fell short of the president’s goals, which led to a
directive from Stephen Miller, a senior White House aide, to drastically
increase them. Since then, there has been a notable increase in the detention
of immigrants who don’t have criminal records.
Miriam
Jordan reports from a grass roots perspective on immigrants and their impact on
the demographics, society and economy of the United States.
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