A California federal court has halted the Trump administration from executing immigration raids solely based on individuals’ “apparent race or ethnicity.”
In a 52-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, appointed by Joe Biden, issued two temporary restraining orders. The first order protects individuals in Southern California who claim their constitutional rights have been infringed upon by deportation operations. The second order supports attorneys who assert they are being obstructed from effectively consulting with their clients, violating constitutional rights.
The judge took the government to task for, in her view, denying the reality of the situation in the counties of Los Angeles and Orange.
“[T]he federal government concurs: Roving patrols without reasonable suspicion breach the Fourth Amendment, and restricting legal access breaches the Fifth Amendment,” the order states. “Despite overwhelming evidence presented here, the federal government wants this Court to believe that none of this misconduct is actually occurring.”
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The court later rubbished those efforts as presenting a series of simple questions – which were easy enough to answer.
The order offsets those questions to highlight them:
Do all individuals regardless of immigration status-share in the rights guaranteed by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution? Yes, they do.
Is it illegal to conduct roving patrols which identify people based upon race alone, aggressively question them, and then detain them without a warrant, without their consent, and without reasonable suspicion that they are without status? Yes, it is.
Is it unlawful to prevent people from having access to lawyers who can help them in immigration court? Yes, it is.
During the first week of June, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began a series of increasingly widespread enforcement actions in the broader Los Angeles area. Golden State protesters responded and the situation quickly became tense – with President Donald Trump seizing command of California’s National Guard regiment on June 7 in an effort to quell the protests.
Since then, militarized deportation sweeps have continued apace.
“Various places have been targeted by federal agents,” the court explains. “In one instance, the agents approached and prevented a non-white individual from walking away but not those who appeared to be Caucasians.”
The underlying lawsuit in the case was filed earlier this month.
The court credited the plaintiffs’ framing of those sweeps as more persuasive than the defenses advanced by the federal government.
“Defendants have a policy and practice of effectuating warrantless arrests without making an individualized flight risk determination,” the order goes on. “Defendants also have a policy and practice of not identifying themselves or explaining the basis for an arrest upon taking someone into custody. Agents and officers often show up masked, without any visible badges or insignia indicating what agency they work for, and have refused to identify themselves when asked.”
Frimpong, in ruling for the plaintiffs, also barred the government from relying on several other factors currently used by federal agents as the basis for their large-scale immigration sweeps.
The injunction for the detained plaintiffs bars ICE agents from relying on a person’s use of Spanish or “English with an accent” for a detention stop. The government also cannot use anyone’s “[p]resence at a particular location” or the “type of work” they do to articulate reasonable suspicion for such a stop.
In the injunction for the legal aid plaintiffs, Frimpong ordered the government to allow attorneys access to the massive, impromptu immigrant detention center in the basement of the downtown Los Angeles federal building – which is known as “Room B-18.”
The court additionally denied the government a pre-requested stay of the injunctions on the grounds that they failed to make “any showing that such a stay is warranted.”
“The Court does not find prejudice to Defendants,” Frimpong mused. “[C]ompliance with the Fourth Amendment is nothing new, contrary to Defendants’ claims. Complying with the law does not impose harm.”
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