Judge orders feds to stop discriminatory raids, restricting attorney access

United States Central District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong placed a temporary restraining order against race-based federal immigration raids on July 11. The TRO directs law enforcement to rely on more than race, language, accents, location or occupation when deciding to detain people.

The TRO also orders the federal government to improve detainee’s access to attorneys by providing an attorney meeting room in Los Angeles’ Federal Building for detainees to visit with attorneys 48 hours a week and by requiring the federal government to provide detainees with confidential and unscreened telephone calls with attorneys. 

​​“There are really two questions in controversy that this court must decide today,” Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong wrote. “First, are the individuals and organizations who brought this lawsuit likely to succeed in proving that the federal government is indeed conducting roving patrols without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers? This court decides — based on all the evidence presented — that they are. And second, what should be done about it? The individuals and organizations who have brought this lawsuit have made a fairly modest request: That this court order the federal government to stop. For the reasons stated below, the Court grants their request.”

Bill Essayli, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, wrote that he disagreed with the ruling.

“We strongly disagree with the allegations in the lawsuit and maintain that our agents have never detained individuals without proper legal justification. Our federal agents will continue to enforce the law and abide by the U.S. Constitution,” he posted on X.

The case was brought by nine plaintiffs, including four organizations. Pasadena residents Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, Carlos Alexander Osorto and Isaac Villegas Molina were arrested while waiting at a bus stop on June 18, according to Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong’s ruling. Baldwin Park resident Jorge Hernandez Viramontes, an American citizen, was detained June 18 at his job site, an Orange County car wash. East Los Angeles resident and American citizen Jason Gavidia was stopped at a tow yard on June 12. The Los Angeles Worker Center Network, United Farm Workers, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) also filed suit.

Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong’s ruling said that detainees are being held in the basement of the federal building at 300 N Los Angeles St., a location which does not have beds or showers.  Three-hundred detainees are packed in the basement, making some of the rooms so cramped that they cannot sit or lie down. They have been deprived of food and menstrual pads, and rely on sink and toilet water. 

On June 6, attorneys from CHIRLA and ImmDef attempted to visit detainees to advise them of their rights. They were denied entrance. The next day, federal officers deployed an unknown chemical agent against them, Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong wrote.

On the occasions that family members and attorneys did meet with detainees, they received at most 10 minutes with them, she wrote.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a current arrest quota of 3,000 arrests per day, she wrote.

“The troubling use of masks, unmarked vehicles, and plainclothes to cover up immigration agents’ identities – and their own refusal to identify themselves when asked – has made it difficult to distinguish these agents from criminals. Their sweeping stops of Angelenos, based not on any evidence of wrongdoing but instead on racial profiling, is flagrantly unconstitutional,” Attorney General Rob Bonta wrote in support of the ruling.

Read the full ruling here.