LOS ANGELES — A federal judge on Friday ruled that immigration officers in Southern California can’t rely solely on someone’s race or the fact that they’re speaking Spanish to stop and detain them.
U.S. District Judge Maame 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 jobs 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 a person’s apparent race or ethnicity; the fact that they’re speaking Spanish or English with an accent; their presence at a particular location like a bus stop or a day laborer pickup 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 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,” she wrote.
Frimpong issued another order that lawyers be granted access to an area in a federal building in Los Angeles where those detained by immigration authorities are held, and to allow those detained phone access with legal counsel.
The lawsuit, filed against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and others, was filed as President Donald Trump’s administration has aggressively been making 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 say that immigration officials did not identify themselves and did not show any warrants, according to court documents.
A U.S. citizen said he was approached at a tow yard on June 12 and an agent demanded to know “What hospital were you born in?” He said he did not know but was a U.S. citizen and could show ID, and was pushed against a metal fence and his arm was twisted, according to the the claims cited in the ruling. He was released but his ID was taken and never returned, it says.
Frimpong wrote in Friday’s ruling that one of the only two issues before her was 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.
She wrote that the second question was what to do about it, and that the request that the federal government be made to stop that conduct was reasonable.
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 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.
Newsom said the ruling stops what he called the violation of people’s rights and racial profiling. He said the Trump administration has been arbitrarily detaining people.
“Stephen Miller’s immigration agenda is one of chaos, cruelty and fear,” Newsom said in a statement, referring to the White House deputy chief of staff and immigration hard-liner.
The Trump administration has defended the crackdown as an enforcement of immigration laws. Noem and DHS officials have said that people accused or convicted of serious crimes have been deported under it. Trump ran on a campaign that promised deportations.
Bill Essayli, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, who was also named as a defendant in the suit, denied any wrongdoing.
“We strongly disagree with the allegations in the lawsuit and maintain that our agents have never detained individuals without proper legal justification,” he wrote on X. “Our federal agents will continue to enforce the law and abide by the U.S. Constitution.”
The judge’s temporary restraining order also requires the government to provide training for agents operating in the Central District of California, which covers Los Angeles and surrounding areas, among other requirements.