Immigration Raids
LOS ANGELES (CNS) – Plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration in Los Angeles Monday hailed an appeals court ruling that upheld a decision temporarily barring federal agents from making arrests without probable cause.
On Friday night, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the federal government’s request to reverse the order prohibiting federal agencies – – including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — from continuing what U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of Los Angeles federal court determined were unlawful actions in Los Angeles and surrounding counties.
The roving raids targeting car washes, parking lots where day laborers gather and garment factories disrupted immigrant communities throughout the region for weeks in June and July, causing widespread fear.
On July 11, Frimpong granted temporary restraining orders preventing the government from stopping individuals in violation of the Fourth Amendment and requiring the government to provide detained individuals with access to counsel.
The government appealed the TRO pertaining to immigration stops and requested that the court pause the order while the appeal is pending. A three- judge 9th Circuit panel, all Democratic appointees, denied the request after hearing arguments in San Francisco last week.
“This is a landmark victory, not just for those in the courtroom, but for every farm worker, garment worker (and) day laborer who’s been profiled, detained or harassed … just for existing,” Armando Gudino, executive director L.A. Worker Center Network, said Monday at a news conference in downtown Los Angeles. “ICE and law enforcement are not above the law. The Fourth Amendment doesn’t stop at the gates of a car wash, at a garment factory or at a strawberry field.”
In early July, Southern California residents, workers and advocacy groups including Gudino’s organization sued the DHS for allegedly “abducting and disappearing” community members using unlawful stop and warrantless arrest tactics and confining individuals at a federal building in illegal conditions while denying them access to attorneys.
The lawsuit’s lead plaintiff, day laborer Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, 54, of Pasadena, says he was waiting to be picked up for a construction job at a Metro bus stop in front of a Winchell’s Donuts in Pasadena on the morning of June 18 when he and two others were surrounded by masked men with guns, arrested and taken to a detention center in Los Angeles, where he remained for three weeks. He has since been granted bond and released.
The men who took Vasquez Perdomo never identified themselves to the plaintiffs, never stated they were immigration officers authorized to make arrests, never stated that they had arrest warrants and never informed the plaintiffs of the bases for their arrests, the lawsuit alleges.
“I am afraid that just standing outside can mean being taken again,” Vasquez Perdomo said at the news conference. “I was targeted because I’m Latino, because I’m a day laborer, because I’m invisible.”
Vasquez Perdomo said he became a plaintiff in the case because “I don’t want silence to be my story. I want justice, for me and for every other person whose humanity has been denied.”
An eventual appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is expected, where six of the nine justices were appointed by Republican presidents.
President Donald Trump had not personally commented on the ruling as of Sunday, but White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson took issue with the ruling.
“No federal judge has the authority to dictate immigration policy — that authority rests with Congress and the president,” Jackson said in a statement to City News Service. “Enforcement operations require careful planning and execution; skills far beyond the purview or jurisdiction of any judge. The Trump administration looks forward to continuing to implement its immigration policies lawfully.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether the raids would continue.
“This is a victory for Los Angeles, and this is a victory because the people of Los Angeles stood together,” Mayor Karen Bass told reporters Friday night outside Getty House, her official residence.
“I think the administration might have believed that this was going to divide our city, that our city was going to go at each other in division, but we did not. We stood strong, and I am very happy to say that us standing strong … gave the court the resolve to uphold this decision.”
During arguments before the appeals court, U.S. Department of Justice Attorney Jacob Roth insisted that the immigration stops — which began June 6 in the Los Angeles area — were perfectly legal, carefully targeted and conducted with probable cause to make arrests.
“The officers are instructed to find reasonable suspicion before an arrest,” Roth told the panel, adding that Frimpong’s restraining order “is fundamentally flawed on multiple levels.”
The suit also claims that federal officials have unconstitutionally arrested and detained people in order to meet arbitrary arrest quotas set by the Trump administration.
U.S. officials have denied the presence of a quota.
Chandra Bhatnagar, executive director of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, which is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said Monday that the 9th Circuit ruling is a signal “to all residents of the Southland (that) we the people are winning.”
He told reporters that “stopping and detaining people because of what they look like, what language they speak or where they come from is unconstitutional and morally indefensible. It is bigotry pure and simple.”
If the administration claims it is not breaking the law, Bhatnagar continued, “why is it fighting against an order that forbids it from breaking the law?”
Trump administration officials have defended the raids, pointing to the president’s many statements during the 2024 campaign pledging to carry out mass deportations of those here illegally, and touting the alleged criminal records of some detainees.
Frimpong has scheduled a hearing in the case on Sept. 24 in downtown Los Angeles.
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