A federal judge issued a tentative ruling on Thursday that suggests she will order the Trump administration to halt unlawful stops and arrests that advocates say have terrorized Angelenos, forced some immigrants into hiding and damaged the local economy. <\/p>\n
The ruling was not made public, but a final order is expected Friday on the case that has become a centerpiece in the battle over Trump\u2019s mass deportation plan. The lawsuit filed by immigrant rights groups last week seeks to block federal agents from stopping and arresting brown-skinned people without probable cause and then placing them in \u201cdungeon-like\u201d conditions without access to lawyers.<\/p>\n
Ahead of an hours-long hearing in a downtown Los Angeles federal courthouse , Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong provided attorneys with a lengthy ruling based on earlier court filings in the case. Tentative rulings are not uncommon, and Frimpong said she was providing it to give both sides, \u201can understanding of how I see the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ruling suggested Frimpong would grant two temporary restraining orders, one encompassing stops and arrests and the other to ensure detainees had access to legal counsel.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is truly a tentative, it is not final,\u201d Frimpong said, adding that things could change based on arguments she heard from attorneys Thursday afternoon. \u201cMy intention coming into this hearing, given the urgency and the weight of the matters at issue, is to issue my ruling tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
The American Civil Liberties Union, Public Counsel, other groups and private attorneys brought the suit on behalf of several immigrant rights groups, three immigrants picked up at a bus stop and two U.S. citizens, one whom was held despite showing agents his identification. <\/p>\n
Throughout the hearing, Frimpong appeared to take issue with government lawyer Sean Skedzielewski and his lack of specific evidence to refute accusations of indiscriminate targeting. <\/p>\n
She pressed Skedzielewski on how agents were making arrests, after he argued that \u201cthese are sophisticated operations\u201d and seemed to say that arrests stemmed from particular people who were being targeted.<\/p>\n
In other cases where local and federal law enforcement are targeting people for crimes, the judge pointed out, there are reports after an arrest \u201cas to why they arrested this person, how they happened to be where they were and what they did.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere doesn\u2019t seem to be anything like that here, which makes it difficult for the court to accept your description of what is happening, because there is no proof that that is what is happening as opposed to what the plaintiffs are saying is happening,\u201d Frimpong said.<\/p>\n
Skedzielewski argued the lack of evidence is why the court should not grant a temporary restraining order. The government, he argued, had only \u201ca couple days\u201d to try to identify individuals mentioned in the court filings. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe just haven\u2019t had a chance to identify in many cases who the people stopped even were, let alone \u2014 over a holiday weekend \u2014 get ahold of the agents,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Frimpong didn\u2019t seem moved. The appointee of President Biden questioned the government\u2019s reliance on two high-ranking officials who have played a key role in the raids in Southern California: Kyle Harvick, a Border Patrol agent in charge of El Centro, and Andre Quinones, deputy field office director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. <\/p>\n
Their declarations, she said, were \u201cvery general\u201d and \u201cdid not really engage with the pretty high volume of evidence that the plaintiffs have put in the record of the things we have all seen and heard on the news.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIf there\u2019s any one of these people and there was a report about \u2018this is how we identified this tow yard, parking lot and so on,\u2019 that would have been helpful,\u201d Frimpong said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard for the court to believe that in the time that you had, you couldn\u2019t have done that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Skedzielewski said the evidence is replete with instances of stops, but \u201cit is not replete with any evidence that those stops or that the agents in any way failed to follow the law.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said agents\u2019 actions were \u201cabove board.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, told the judge that agents cannot solely use a person\u2019s workplace, their location or the particular work they\u2019re doing as reason to stop people.<\/p>\n
Tajsar added that it was because of the government\u2019s \u201cmisunderstanding of the law\u201d that they\u2019d made so many stop of U.S. citizens, including Brian Gavidia<\/a>, a named plaintiff who was detained by Border Patrol agents outside of a tow yard in Montebello. <\/p>\n Tajsar said Gavidia, who was present in the courtroom during the hearing, was stopped \u201cfor no other reason than the fact that he\u2019s Latino and was working at a tow yard\u201d in a predominantly Latino area.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause of this fundamental misunderstanding of the law from the government, we have seen so many unconstitutional and unlawful arrests,\u201d Tajsar said.<\/p>\n Tajsar also pushed back on the government saying they didn\u2019t have enough time, stating that \u201cthey had time and they have all the evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n