LOS ANGELES – On Monday, a year after federal immigration agents launched sweeping raids across Southern California, three plaintiff organizations in Vasquez Perdomo v. Mullin moved for a preliminary injunction to stop the government’s illegal and ongoing practice of warrantless arrests.
The motion argues that agents continue to make arrests without first establishing that the people they arrest are likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained, as required by federal law.
"Since last summer, the government has based its violent deportation machine on an illegal policy: arrest people and ask questions later,” said Stephanie Padilla, staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. “Today’s filing asks a federal judge to stop the unlawful practice now.”
Courts in Colorado, Illinois, and Washington D.C. have already blocked similar warrantless arrest practices yet the practices continue throughout Southern California.
DHS’s mass warrantless arrest policy violates both the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
“Farm workers across California’s Central District are going to work in the fields and greenhouses every morning without knowing if they will come home that night,” said Teresa Romero, president of UFW, a plaintiff in the case. “These hard working people fear unjust detention or deportation simply because of the color of their skin, the language they speak, or the type of job they work. The Trump administration’s racist raids and sweeps violate the rights and liberties America was founded on and threaten the workers America is fed by. This must end now, for the sake of our families, our food, and our constitution.
Residents, workers, and advocacy groups sued DHS last July alleging unconstitutional stop and detention practices based on contrived enforcement quotas.
“Federal law unequivocally requires case-by-case, fact-based determinations before civil immigration arrests can be carried out without a warrant,” said Armando Gudiño, executive director of Los Angeles Worker Center Network (LAWCN), a plaintiff in the case. “It does not authorize sweeping assumptions that entire communities are likely to flee, and constitutional and legal protections must be fully upheld for every person."
The suit was originally brought by five individual Latino workers and three membership organizations—LAWCN, United Farm Workers (UFW), and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA)—as well as Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a legal services provider.
The plaintiffs are represented by the ACLU SoCal, UC Irvine School of Law Immigrant and Racial Justice Solidarity Clinic, National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), Munger Tolles & Olson LLP, Public Counsel, Law Offices of Stacy Tolchin, ACLU Foundations of Northern California and San Diego & Imperial Counties, Hecker Fink LLP, Martinez Aguilasocho Law, Inc., CHIRLA, and Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
Read the motion: https://www.aclusocal.org/app/uploads/2026/06/529-Notice-of-Motion-and-Motion-for-Preliminary-Injunction-re-Warrantless-Arrests.pdf
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