A federal judge on Friday ruled that immigration officers in southern California can’t rely solely on someone’s race or speaking Spanish to stop and detain people.
District Judge Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order after a lawsuit was filed by three men who were arrested as they waited to be picked up at a Pasadena bus stop for a job on June 18, and after two others were stopped and questioned despite saying they are U.S. citizens.
Frimpong’s order bars the detention of people unless the officer or agent “has reasonable suspicion that the person to be stopped is within the United States in violation of U.S. immigration law.”
It says they may not base that suspicion solely on apparent race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; presence at a particular location like a bus stop or day laborer pick-up site; or the type of work one does.
Frimpong wrote in the ruling that most of the questions before her were “simple and non-controversial.”
“Do all individuals — regardless of immigration status — share in the rights guaranteed by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution? Yes, they do,” she wrote.
“Is it illegal to conduct roving periods 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,” she wrote.
The lawsuit, filed against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the head of Immigration and Customs and Enforcement and others, was filed as the federal government under President Donald Trump has aggressively made immigration arrests in Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California called the restraining order a victory for rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.
“No matter the color of their skin, what language they speak, or where they work, everyone is guaranteed constitutional rights to protect them from unlawful stops,” Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, said in a statement.
“While it does not take a federal judge to recognize that marauding bands of masked, rifle-toting goons have been violating ordinary people’s rights throughout Southern California, we are hopeful that today’s ruling will be a step toward accountability for the federal government’s flagrant lawlessness that we have all been witnessing,” Tajsar said.
Two of the people who sued said they were stopped and questioned by immigration officers despite explaining that they are U.S. citizens. One works at a car wash in Orange County that has been visited three times by immigration agents, most recently on June 18, according to the suit. That worker was questioned that day even after he told them he was a U.S. citizen, the suit says.
The three men arrested in Pasadena
Frimpong wrote in Friday’s ruling that one of the only issues before her were whether the people suing were “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,” she wrote.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats, have objected to the federal immigration actions in Southern California. Bass has said they are they are motivated by a political agenda “of provoking fear and terror.”
Bass said in a statement after Friday’s decision that the court “ruled in favor of the United States Constitution, of American values and decency.”
“Los Angeles has been under assault by the Trump Administration as masked men grab people off the street, chase working people through parking lots and march through children’s summer camps,” she said.
The Trump administration has defended the crackdown on people in the country without authorization. President Donald Trump ran on a campaign that promised deportations.
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