LOS ANGELES (CNS) – Plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration in Los Angeles to address the media Monday, days after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the administration’s bid to stay a temporary restraining order halting the government’s roving enforcement patrols.
The 10 a.m. news conference will be held at the American Civil Liberties Union office in downtown Los Angeles.
Federal attorneys had argued that U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi- Mensah Frimpong was incorrect in her July 14 ruling that the patrols were illegally conducted without reasonable suspicion. U.S. Department of Justice Attorney Jacob Roth insisted that the immigration stops — which began June 6 in the Los Angeles area but were largely halted by Frimpong’s order — were perfectly legal, carefully targeted and conducted with probable cause to make arrests.
“The officers are instructed to find reasonable suspicion before an arrest,” Roth told the panel, adding that Frimpong’s restraining order “is fundamentally flawed on multiple levels.”
However, the three-member Court of Appeals panel, all Democratic appointees, appeared skeptical during last Monday’s oral arguments, and that was borne out by Friday’s ruling.
“If, as Defendants suggest, they are not conducting stops that lack reasonable suspicion, they can hardly claim to be irreparably harmed by an injunction aimed at preventing a subset of stops not supported by reasonable suspicion ,” the panel wrote.
An eventual appeal to the Supreme Court is expected, where six of the nine justices were appointed by Republican presidents.
President Trump had not personally commented on the ruling as of Sunday, but White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson took issue with the ruling.
“No federal judge has the authority to dictate immigration policy — that authority rests with Congress and the president,” Jackson said in a statement to City News Service. “Enforcement operations require careful planning and execution; skills far beyond the purview or jurisdiction of any judge. The Trump administration looks forward to continuing to implement its immigration policies lawfully.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether the raids would continue.
“This is a victory for Los Angeles, and this is a victory because the people of Los Angeles stood together,” Mayor Karen Bass told reporters Friday night outside Getty House, her official residence.
“I think the administration might have believed that this was going to divide our city, that our city was going to go at each other in division, but we did not. We stood strong, and I am very happy to say that us standing strong … gave the court the resolve to uphold this decision.”
The rulings stem from Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, a lawsuit filed July 2 by five individual plaintiffs and four plaintiff organizations, the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, United Farm Workers, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, and Immigrant Defenders Law Center. The plaintiffs allege that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is operating a program of “abducting and disappearing” community members using unlawful arrest tactics, then confining detainees in illegal conditions while denying access to attorneys.
The suit also claims that federal officials have unconstitutionally arrested and detained people in order to meet arbitrary arrest quotas set by the Trump administration.
U.S. officials have denied the presence of a quota.
“Yesterday’s ruling by the Ninth Circuit is a critical victory for the rule of law and for communities across Los Angeles County,” Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair Pro Tem Hilda Solis said Saturday. “It reaffirms what we have long known to be true: indiscriminate and warrantless immigration raids must end.
“The Trump administration’s enforcement actions, driven by an artificial quota and political motives rather than public safety, have caused lasting harm. Families have been torn apart. Children are afraid to go to school. Older adults are hesitant to seek medical care. Small businesses that form the backbone of our neighborhoods are struggling. These are not isolated incidents. They are the direct result of policies carried out by a president who believes he is above the law.”
Judges Marsha Berzon, Jennifer Sung and Ronald Gould declared, “There is no predicate action that the individual plaintiffs would need to take, other than simply going about their lives, to potentially be subject to the challenged stops.”
Trump administration officials have defended the raids, pointing to the president’s many statements during the 2024 campaign pledging to carry out mass deportations of those here illegally, and touting the alleged criminal records of some detainees.
Frimpong has scheduled a hearing in the case on Sept. 24.
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