Judge beefs up block on race-based ICE stops in LA

A federal judge wasn't persuaded that the Supreme Court's pause of the temporary restraining order she issued last year was an obstacle to her granting the request for a preliminary injunction.LOS ANGELES (CN) — A federal judge indicated Thursday she would issue a new order to block U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement agents from stopping people solely because of their race in LA County.U.S. District Judge Maame Frimpong tentatively granted the request for a preliminary injunction brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the United Farm Workers and others.The judge’s tentative ruling wasn’t made publicly available, and she didn’t issue a final decision at the end of the hearing in downtown LA.Frimpong, a Joe Biden appointee, last year issued a temporary restraining order — a more short-term remedy — to stop ICE agents, frequently masked and driving in unmarked cars, from violating the constitutional rights of predominantly working-class Latinos caught up in the unprecedented immigration crackdown the Trump administration unleashed last year in Southern California.While the Ninth Circuit rejected the government’s request to stay that temporary restraining order, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and paused it a year ago.Daniel Mummolo, an attorney with the U.S. Justice Department, urged the judge at Thursday’s hearing to follow the guidance of last year’s Supreme Court decision. Justice Brett Kavanaugh observed the plaintiffs likely lacked standing to seek a broad injunction restricting immigration officers from making investigative stops because they were unlikely to face future harm from such stops.“On this record, it’s hard to believe that any of these plaintiffs face a real threat of imminent harm,” Mummolo argued, noting there have been very few instances in which people had been stopped more than once by ICE agents.Frimpong, however, noted the plaintiffs have accumulated more evidence since last year, including depositions of immigration agents and officials as well as body camera footage, to beef up their claims that Latinos are targeted by ICE solely because of their ethnicity rather than a reasonable suspicion they are in the country without proper authority.“Isn’t it possible that the Supreme Court stayed the original TRO because the court didn’t have enough evidence before it,” she asked the government lawyer.The ACLU and other plaintiffs argue that ICE agents to this day continue to roam Southern California, armed and masked, and seizing citizens and noncitizens alike based on a demographic profile the agency deems “suspicious” — people who appear Latino and low-income or working class.“This policy has race at its core,” Anne Lai, an attorney with the UC Irvine Law Clinic, told the judge.Sara Worth, another attorney for the plaintiffs, argued that the so-called targeted operations, in which ICE agents are looking for a particular individual, are pretextual. The agents will stop any individual who looks Latino — even though he or she may look nothing like the person they are looking for — and claim mistaken identity, she claimed.Most of the plaintiffs’ arguments at the hearing, however, focused on fine-tuning the preliminary injunction Frimpong outlined in her tentative decision.Frimpong earlier this month issued a separate preliminary injunction that prohibits ICE agents from making civil immigration arrests without a warrant if they don’t first make an assessment that there’s probable cause the person is both unlawfully present and likely to escape.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads