Federal agents will need to stop profiling in immigration raids, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal ruled Aug. 1. The ruling affirms an injunction brought by Central District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong. 

Frimpong ordered federal agents operating in Riverside, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and other counties in the Central District to stop profiling people for immigration stops based on race, language, presence or work. 

a. As required by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, Defendants shall be enjoined from conducting detentive stops in this District unless the agent or officer has reasonable suspicion that the person to be stopped is within the United States in violation of U.S. immigration law. 

b. In connection with paragraph [a], Defendants may not rely solely on the factors below, alone or in combination, to form reasonable suspicion for a detentive stop, except as permitted by law: 

i. Apparent race or ethnicity; 

ii. Speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; 

iii. Presence at a particular location (e.g., bus stop, car wash, tow yard, day laborer pick up site, agricultural site, etc.); or 

iv. The type of work one does.

The order came in a case brought by two citizens stopped by federal agents, three detainees released on bond, the United Farm Workers of America, Los Angeles Worker Center Network and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.

One of those citizens, Jason Gavidia, was stopped by armed federal agents outside his work on June 12. He rents a tow yard in Montebello, where he works on cars. The agents demanded to know what hospital he was born at, and took his Real ID, which they never returned. Another citizen, Jorge Hernandez Viramontes, is a manager at a carwash in Whittier. On June 9, June 14 and June 18, federal agents showed up at the carwash, asking workers and customers if they were citizens. On the last visit, they detained Hernandez Viramontes for 20 minutes. One plaintiff, identified as J.M.E. in the ruling, was stopped by federal agents twice, on June 9 and on June 19.

The Ninth Circuit found that each of the plaintiffs had standing to sue, and that the federal government’s objections to the order lack merit. The government did not point to any clear errors in Frimpong’s factual errors, the ruling said.

The government argued that “some combination of the enumerated factors will at least sometimes support reasonable suspicion for a stop.” 

The defendants did not offer any analysis, legal authority or examples in support of that theory, and the Ninth Circuit was as a result not required to consider it, the ruling said.

In general, the profiling halted by Frimpong would not be reasonable suspicion for a stop, the ruling said.

An injunction spanning the entire California Central District is the narrowest way to ensure the plaintiff’s rights are protected, the ruling continued.

“As the district court recognized, given the nature of the challenged conduct—detentive stops of individuals based solely on a broad profile—enjoining Defendants from stopping only the Plaintiffs would not afford the Plaintiffs meaningful relief. How would a federal agent who is about to detain a person whose identity is not known, based on some combination of the person’s ethnicity, language, location, and occupation, discern in advance whether that person is on the list of individuals that agents are enjoined from stopping? The agents cannot stop first and then check whether the stopped person is one of the covered individuals; at the point of the stop, the challenged harm has already occurred,” the ruling said.

The appellate ruling did strike the clause “except as permitted by law” in Frimpong’s order on the grounds that it was impermissibly vague and would cause confusion.

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