In summary
The lawsuit says federal agents are stopping people only for being Latino, placing them in ‘deplorable conditions’ and not allowing them to speak with an attorney.
A lawsuit filed Wednesday by civil and immigration rights groups accuses federal authorities of unleashing an unconstitutional siege by snatching workers and U.S. citizens off Southern California streets and denying them food, water and the right to speak with an attorney.
The federal class action lawsuit aims to immediately stop immigration agents from conducting military-style raids across L.A. that prioritize “numbers, pure numbers,” according to the complaint. It also seeks to get access to counsel for those arrested who are now being held in overcrowded “dungeon-like” facilities where the conditions are deplorable and unconstitutional, the filing says.
Federal agents in combat gear, some masked and armed with rifles, have stormed swap meets, car washes, bus stops, and churches since early June, grabbing people off sidewalks and dragging away mothers, workers, day laborers, and U.S. citizens without explanation, the complaint alleges. Civil rights groups, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, say the raids have been part of an illegal mass-arrest campaign driven by the Trump administration’s nationwide deportation quota policy.
“Such seizures look less like lawful arrests and more like brazen, midday kidnappings,” the lawsuit states.
In late May, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller issued a directive to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to make 3,000 immigration-related arrests every day, and stated there would be “consequences for not hitting arrest targets,” the lawsuit says, referencing a story in the Wall Street Journal.
“Since early June, this District has been under siege,” the complaint states. The lawsuit is brought by the ACLU, Public Counsel, and Immigrant Defenders Law Center, among others. It names Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other top officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol, and the FBI as defendants.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the raids have been “highly targeted.”
“Any claims that individuals have been ‘targeted’ by law enforcement because of their skin color are disgusting and categorically FALSE,” she wrote in an email. “These type (sic) of smears are designed to demonize and villainize our brave ICE law enforcement. This kind of garbage has led to a more than 700 percent increase in the assaults on enforcement officers. Politicians, activists, and “journalists” must turn the temperature down and tone down their rhetoric.”
Federal officials made similar claims about similar raids conducted in Kern County in January. After the ACLU challenged the raids in court, a federal judge later found they likely violated the Constitution’s ban on unreasonable searches, issuing a preliminary injunction banning those raids in the Central Valley.
The new suit makes the same arguments about the Los Angeles raids.
“This is not hard stuff, you don’t have to be a constitutional scholar. Every student in elementary school learns the basic rules,” said Mark Rosenbaum of Public Counsel, a civil rights law firm that helped bring the suit, at a Wednesday press conference. “You can’t stop individuals on the street because of the color of their skin.”
‘They don’t care if you have papers’
Filed on behalf of five individuals and four advocacy groups, including the United Farm Workers, the filing documents a sprawling crackdown that has targeted dozens of locations across Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, and Santa Barbara counties, terrorizing mostly Latino neighborhoods in the process. Among those locations are at least 15 Home Depot parking lots, nine car washes, a Santa Ana park, a swap meet in Santa Fe Springs, and several churches.
The suit argues that agents are detaining people solely based on their race, clothing or occupation, which would be a violation of the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and the Fifth Amendment guarantees of due process.
“They don’t care if you have papers, as long as you look like what they want you to look like, they’ll take you,” recalled one witness who saw agents take away a dark-skinned man who only spoke Spanish from the Downey Memorial Christian Church on June 11.
Another witness said she saw federal agents pulling people from the bathrooms during a military-style raid at a popular Los Angeles swap meet with 60 heavily armed agents. Videos taken from the scene of that crackdown show armed agents dressed in camouflage, some of whom wore masks concealing their identities. Border Patrol made a video boasting about its actions there.
“If you looked Hispanic in any way, they just took you,” the witness said, according to the complaint.
In Culver City, agents descended on a car wash on June 8 dressed in either camouflage fatigues or plainclothes, driving unmarked cars. One witness saw an agent carrying an assault rifle while running after a customer across a four-lane road. Other terrified customers shouted, “Don’t shoot!” In Westchester, that same day, armed agents in camouflage and helmets tackled a fruit vendor to the ground, according to the suit.
In Orange County, on June 6, agents surrounded and questioned Latino men painting a house while ignoring white neighbors in nearby yards.
U.S. citizens taken
Among those detained was Heidi Plummer, a U.S. citizen who got caught up in an immigration raid while taking a walk through a park in Santa Ana on June 14. She was handcuffed, put in a vehicle with others, and taken to a station and held for an hour and a half before she was released, the complaint states.
Andrea Velez, another U.S. citizen, was being dropped off at work in downtown Los Angeles when she was grabbed without explanation and without anyone asking her for her identification. Her mother, who witnessed the attack, said it looked like “they’re kidnapping her.”
“The only thing wrong with her … was the color of her skin,” said her mother, according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege federal agents have no prior information about the people they’re detaining, nor any warrants. They allege the agents are arresting people without considering whether or not they pose a flight risk before a warrant can be obtained, in violation of federal law. They also claim the agents are not identifying themselves or telling people why they’re being arrested, also in violation of federal law.
Detention ‘conditions are deplorable and unconstitutional’
ICE detention capacity is buckling under the surge in arrests, causing the agency to hold people in a basement area in Los Angeles known as “B-18.” The basement is meant to be a short-term processing center for ICE, but now people are facing prolonged confinement there without access to attorneys, according to the complaint. The Immigration and Nationality Act says people have the right to call an attorney while in immigration detention.
There, detainees have reported having little access to food or water. They say the holding areas have been so crowded that there hasn’t been space to sit or lay down.
“In these dungeon-like facilities, conditions are deplorable and unconstitutional,” the complaint states. Facing the awful conditions at that site and others, some people have been pressured into accepting “voluntary departure,” the complaint says, which helps federal authorities continue to arrest more people.
McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for Homeland Security, denied the accusations in the lawsuit about conditions inside ICE facilities.
“Any claim that there are subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false. In fact, ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens,” McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin said all detainees are provided proper meals that are certified by dieticians, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and family members.
“This is the best healthcare that many aliens have received in their entire lives,” she added.
The 65-page complaint asks the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to block federal immigration agents from continuing the raids, declare their tactics unconstitutional, and allow access to counsel for those who have been swept up and detained.
“Despite the fear and risks associated with speaking publicly,” the lawsuit says, the plaintiffs are “taking courageous action to enforce the rule of law.”
The organizations that are part of the lawsuit are: the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, United Farm Workers and the Immigrant Defenders Law Center. The legal team includes attorneys from the ACLU of Southern California, ACLU NorCal, LA-based Public Counsel, and UC Irvine School of Law Immigrant and Racial Justice Solidarity Clinic.