Immigration raids violate Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights of thousands of people
LOS ANGELES – Last night, Southern California residents, workers, and advocacy groups across various industries sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in federal court for abducting and disappearing community members using unlawful stop and arrest practices and confining individuals at a federal building in illegal conditions while denying them access to attorneys.
The suit brought by five individual workers as well as three membership organizations and a legal services provider—The Los Angeles Worker Center Network, United Farm Workers (UFW), the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), and Immigrant Defenders Law Center—alleges that DHS has unconstitutionally arrested and detained people in order to meet arbitrary arrest quotas set by the Trump administration.
“Since June 6th, marauding, masked goons have descended upon Los Angeles, terrorizing our brown communities and tearing up the Constitution in the process,” said Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, representing the plaintiffs. “No matter their status or the color of their skin, everyone is guaranteed Constitutional rights to protect them from illegal stops. We will hold DHS accountable.”
The plaintiffs seek to represent two classes of individuals, people who have been or will be subjected to unlawful practices of 1) suspicionless stops and 2) warrantless arrests without evaluations of flight risk.
Plaintiffs are requesting the court certify the case as a class action and issue preliminary and permanent injunctions stopping further violations of Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights.
“These raids have targeted the most vulnerable members of our workforce, essential workers who are the backbone of our local economy,” said Armando Gudino, executive director of the Los Angeles Worker Center Network. “We cannot allow racial profiling, warrantless arrests, and denial of due process to become the standard operating procedure in our communities.”
Since June 6, the federal government has unleashed immigration agents onto the streets, worksites, and neighborhoods of Los Angeles and surrounding counties, creating a siege and immigration dragnet over the region. The suit notes, “one of the clearest patterns that have emerged in the raids in Southern California […] has been stops and interrogations […] on the basis of apparent race and ethnicity.”
“Members of the Southern California community have been whisked away and disappeared into a grossly overcrowded dungeon-like facility lacking food, medical care, basic hygiene, and beds,” said Mark Rosenbaum, senior special counsel for strategic litigation at Public Counsel, representing the plaintiffs. “The objective of this draconian crackdown is to eviscerate basic rights to due process and to shield from public view the horrifying ways ICE and Border Patrol agents treat citizens and residents who have been stigmatized by our government as violent criminals based on skin color alone. This lawsuit is in part about putting an end to that big lie.”
Agents have been abducting individuals en masse and taking them to the basement of a federal building in downtown L.A. commonly referred to as “B-18,” which lacks beds, showers, or medical facilities. The facility was designed to hold a small number of people temporarily so they can be processed and released, or processed and transported to a long-term detention facility.
“We have heard from over 100 families of Individuals taken to B-18 and other detention centers that attest to their loved ones being kept in overcrowded, cold, and inhumane conditions. They are held in small windowless rooms with dozens or more other detainees, in extremely cramped quarters while being verbally humiliated and pressured into signing papers they don’t understand,” said Angelica Salas, executive director at CHIRLA. “Angelenos held in those conditions are routinely deprived of food, water, clean clothing, baths, and access to information and counsel which can have dire consequences on their chances to get reunited with their families.”
The ongoing raids have led to the disappearance of more than 1,500 people. The suit details how federal agents consistently refuse to identify themselves or what agency they are with when asked, using anonymity as a tactic to shield lawlessness.
“The raids in the greater Los Angeles area have not been limited to the urban center; we have also seen horrific instances of Border Patrol agents chasing down farm workers in the fields of Ventura County. The spouse of a UFW member was among those unjustly detained,” said UFW President Teresa Romero. “Now the very workers who feed America go to work in fear. Their American-born children are scared not knowing if their parents will come home. Farm workers deserve better. We’ve seen these unconstitutional and unamerican tactics before, with Border Patrol targeting random farm workers and anyone with brown skin in Kern County during their large sweep in January. We sued then and we are suing now.”
The plaintiffs are represented by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, Public Counsel, Law Offices of Stacy Tolchin, UC Irvine School of Law Immigrant and Racial Justice Solidarity Clinic, National Day Laborer Organizing Network, ACLU Foundations of Northern California and San Diego & Imperial Counties, Hecker Fink LLP, Martinez Aguilasocho Law, Inc, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), and Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
“The federal government is waging a campaign of terror across Southern California, abducting community members off the streets and warehousing them in deplorable conditions away from their loved ones, all while denying them access to legal counsel,” said Alvaro M. Huerta, director of litigation & advocacy at Immigrant Defenders Law Center. “It’s blatantly unconstitutional, cruelly inhumane, and a violation of any common decency. If the Trump administration insists on trampling Angelenos’ rights, we’ll see them in court.”
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