By Erik Larson, Bloomberg
The Trump administration told a federal appeals court that legitimate immigration enforcement efforts in Los Angeles will be hurt by a temporary order that halted the the use of racial profiling to target individuals for detention.
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The July 11 order bars US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from stopping and questioning individuals without reasonable suspicion that they’re in the US illegally. The judge said that agents’ suspicion can’t be based on a person’s race or ethnicity, language or accent, presence in a specific location, or the type of work they do.
But in a court filing late Wednesday, the US Justice Department argued that those four factors can play a valid role in law enforcement.
“The government agrees that each of the enumerated factors, taken alone, would seldom if ever supply reasonable suspicion,” the Trump administration said in the filing. “But in the real world, factors do not appear in a vacuum or in stylized hypotheticals.”
The San Francisco-based appeals court will hear arguments on Monday on the Trump administration’s request to pause the temporary order issued by US District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong in Los Angeles. It came in a lawsuit by a group of Southern California residents, workers and advocacy groups who accused President Donald Trump’s administration of terrorizing the population with heavy handed and unconstitutional tactics.
Judge Criticized
The case and the judge have been widely criticized by Trump administration officials who are carrying out the president’s orders to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called the judge an “idiot,” while Stephen Miller, Trump’s top immigration advisor and deputy chief of staff, called the judge a “communist.”
Justice Department lawyers blasted the judge’s temporary order, saying it doesn’t accurately reflect existing law, according to the filing. The four factors at issue in the case “can never combine to provide reasonable suspicion for an investigatory stop,” the US argued.
The four factors “certainly could furnish reasonable suspicion” when combined with “agents’ experience, recent surveillance and intelligence, and other contextual data points,” the US said.
The lawsuit alleges that ICE agents have been rampantly violating the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures. They say the practice is terrorizing Latinos in the region, including US citizens who now fear being whisked away to detention centers and potentially deported.
‘Unprecedented’
Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer at Public Counsel who is a lead attorney in the lawsuit, said the Justice Department’s filing was “unprecedented” because it is seeking to permit ICE agents to engage in racial profiling.
“The order the judge issued in this case is pretty modest — simply saying you cannot rely on racial profiling and someone’s accent or job,” Rosenbaum said in an interview. “The United States has never argued in any court anywhere that they have a right to do that.”
Rosenbaum said Trump and his officials are falsely claiming that the migrant sweeps are targeting murderers, rapists and other criminals. He said undocumented immigrants who’ve committed crimes can easily be located and deported, and that the sweeps in reality are targeting law-abiding residents.
The case is Pedro Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, 25-4312, US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (San Francisco).
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