Appeals court upholds block on indiscriminate immigration sweeps in L.A. area

Washington Post

5 days ago

A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court's temporary order blocking the Trump administration from conducting indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests in Southern California on the basis of race, among other factors.
The Friday ruling came after the administration withdrew most of the remaining National Guard troops that President Donald Trump had ordered to Los Angeles in June, along with about 700 active-duty Marines, to quell demonstrations against federal immigration raids in the state and 'support the protection of Federal functions.'
Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney for the plaintiffs, celebrated the appellate ruling by a three-judge panel, saying in a statement that it 'sends a powerful message: the government cannot excuse illegal conduct by relying on racial profiling as a tool of immigration enforcement.'
'These raids were unconstitutional, unsupported by evidence, and rooted in fear and harmful stereotypes, not public safety,' he said.
The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to requests for comment early Saturday.
The temporary order was granted by Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California last month as part of a lawsuit filed by immigrant advocacy groups in Los Angeles and a group of individuals who had been detained or questioned. Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued that Trump's mass deportations involve tactics that are unconstitutional, including patrolling and rounding up individuals without reasonable justification and refusing them legal counsel.
The temporary order prohibits the federal government from making immigration detention stops solely on the basis of apparent race or ethnicity, whether a person speaks Spanish or speaks English with an accent, presence at a particular location, or the type of work one does. In her ruling, Frimpong wrote that there was a 'mountain of evidence' that federal immigration enforcement tactics were violating the Constitution.
The order applies to the seven counties that fall within the Central District: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura.
The three judges with the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — two appointed by President Bill Clinton and the third by President Joe Biden — wrote in their ruling upholding the order that attorneys for the federal government had argued that the plaintiffs could not show a sufficient likelihood of future injury occurring without the temporary order, nor could they show a 'real and immediate threat' that they will be harmed again.
But while the plaintiffs — which include three detained immigrants and two U.S. citizens — had only been stopped once, their attorneys provided a statement from another individual who had been stopped twice by immigration officers twice in 10 days.
The judges — Ronald Gould, Marsha Berzon and Jennifer Sung — added in their ruling that it was important to note that the defendants in their motion to suspend the temporary order did not dispute that the stops 'have been based solely on the four enumerated factors' of race, language, location and job. 'They did not challenge the district court's findings that those stops are part of a pattern of conduct that has apparent official approval. And, finally, they did not meaningfully dispute the district court's conclusion that sole reliance on the four enumerated factors, alone or in combination, does not satisfy the constitutional requirement of reasonable suspicion.'
The judges added that the defendants' general descriptions of training regarding the requirements for a lawful seizure 'do little to overcome Plaintiffs' specific evidence showing a series of similar detentive stops without reasonable suspicion,' and that they agreed with the district court that this conduct was 'part of a pattern of officially sanctioned behavior.'
In a statement after the District Court ruling last month, Bill Essayli, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, maintained 'that our agents have never detained individuals without proper legal justification.'
The appeals court's decision marks yet another setback for the Trump administration's immigration agenda. Also Friday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from rapidly deporting immigrants granted parole at a port of entry — a decision that could affect its ability to remove hundreds of thousands of people.