On Tuesday, the Trump administration sought the approval of an appellate court to persist with warrantless arrests in Southern California, integral to their contentious immigration enforcement measures.

Through a 51-page submission to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, the U.S. Department of Justice pursued emergency intervention by requesting an immediate administrative stay and a comprehensive stay pending appeal of the primary case, aiming to halt the temporary restraining orders enacted by a Los Angeles district court at the end of last week.

The crux of the dispute is both the factual way Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are conducting immigration sweeps in the nation”s second largest city and the executive branch’s basic legal authority to conduct such sweeps. One of the government’s central arguments is that it was not given enough time to prepare.

“[T]he district court has entered a sweeping, district-wide injunction placing coercive restraints on lawful immigration enforcement affecting every immigration stop and detention,” the stay application begins. “The district court thought the issues presented were sufficiently urgent that she afforded the government only two business days to respond to hundreds of pages of submissions and issued the injunction in a written decision only days later.”

The plaintiffs filed their underlying lawsuit earlier this month.

Acting fast, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong — a Joe Biden appointee — set an expedited briefing schedule and, in turn, granted two temporary restraining orders: one for individuals who allege their constitutional rights have been violated by deportation dragnets; the second for attorneys who claim they are being blocked from conferring with their clients, also in violation of the Constitution.

In her ruling, Frimpong chided the government for conducting raids based on the “apparent race or ethnicity” of the people being targeted – as well as other what she found to be other impermissible factors like their language, accent, location, and line of work.

In their stay application, the government says it did not use “skin color” alone at least in relation to one of the plaintiffs – but largely seeks to vindicate the notion that such factors could, in fact, be permissible reasons to arrest someone without a warrant.

“[I]n trying to reduce the Fourth Amendment test to a formula by identifying a list of ‘irrelevant’ factors, the court grievously erred,” the appeal reads. “The Fourth Amendment imposes a totality-of-the-circumstances test, and it is entirely possible that one’s language, location, or type of work could be relevant in a particular factual context. Trying to develop bright-line rules in this context is a fool’s errand.”

This argument somewhat echoes comments made by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Fox News over the weekend.

“We never ran our operations that way,” Noem said. “We always built our operations, our investigations, on case work … and that is always how this has been done. It’s been done exactly how law enforcement has operated for many years in this country, and ICE is out there making sure we get the worst of the worst off the streets.”

While all but steering clear of the race discussion, the government argues the detentions of each plaintiff did, in fact, pass the test for “reasonable suspicion” – arrest without a warrant – under the Fourth Amendment. But, the appeal reiterates, the judge did not allow enough time for the DOJ to fully brief the case.

“Under federal law, the government only conducts warrantless arrest where officers have reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts,” the appeal goes on. “But the court’s broad, structural injunction will have a chilling effect on that enforcement, because it threatens officers with contempt sanctions if the court retrospectively disagrees with their view of whether reasonable suspicion was satisfied on particular facts. And that risk is potent, given that the court reached its judgment about the past arrests of three named Plaintiffs here, without giving the government a meaningful opportunity to marshal the facts and prove that reasonable suspicion did exist.”

Federal agents stage at MacArthur Park Monday, July 7, 2025, in Los Angeles (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes).

The DOJ, in its filling, and in line with the Trump administration’s general tenor against injunctions barring its behavior, says the district court clearly overstepped its bounds. And, again, the speed of the judge’s work is remarked upon in a negative light.

From the stay application, at length:

[O]n the eve of the July 4 holiday, [the plaintiffs] filed an “emergency” ex parte motion asking the court to impose a straight-jacket injunction that would vastly restrict the government’s ability to stop and detain anyone on suspicion of being unlawfully present in the United States. The court gave the government just two business days to respond to hundreds of pages of submissions, and largely rubber-stamped Plaintiffs’ proposed order just days later. The result is a sweeping, district-wide injunction that threatens to hobble lawful immigration enforcement by hanging a Damocles sword of contempt over every immigration stop.

The stay application, however, sees the aforementioned sword cutting soon – and deep. The government goes on to warn against the likelihood of a further injunction with even broader terms.

The DOJ argues the current injunction “is indefensible on every level” and “appears to be a first step to placing federal immigration enforcement under judicial monitorship.”

“It is untenable for a district judge to single-handedly ‘restructure the operations’ of federal immigration enforcement,” the filing goes on. “And make no mistake, that is exactly what this district court is doing. Indeed, the current injunction is only the start, the court has ordered the government to show cause why it should not also be required to develop policies, compel agents to undergo training, and even share records of each and every stop with the ACLU going forward. This judicial takeover cannot be allowed to stand.”

In their opposition to the administrative stay, the plaintiffs say the government is complaining too much after defending itself too little.

“The court below considered a ‘mountain of evidence’ that Defendants likely are engaged in a pattern and practice of detaining people in the Central District of California during ‘roving’ immigration patrols without reasonable suspicion that the person to be seized is unlawfully present in the United States,” the opposition filing begins. “The court gave Defendants nearly a week to provide contrary evidence, at their request.”

And, to hear the plaintiffs tell it, the government has substantially overstated the restrictions currently put in place by the lower court.

“Contrary to Defendants’ unsupported attorney argument, the order plainly allows Defendants to continue enforcing the immigration laws, including by engaging in targeted enforcement and voluntary questioning of persons present in certain locations,” the opposition motion continues. “But it properly prohibits Defendants from relying solely on four factors to deprive people of their liberty, which this Circuit has repeatedly held cannot suffice for reasonable suspicion: apparent race or ethnicity; Spanish language or accent; location; and occupation.”