There are many legal challenges to President Trump’s immigrants sweeping across California, leading to at least 3,000 arrests.
However, one lawsuit could dramatically change the policy.
Arbitration
A coalition of civil rights groups and private lawyers sued the federal government, challenging the case of three immigrants and two U.S. citizens that sparked widespread protests since early June.
On Friday, US District Judge Mame Mensa Frimon, an appointee to President Biden, temporarily blocked federal agents in Southland from using racial profiling to carry out immigrant arrests after finding sufficient evidence that agents were using race, people’s jobs or places.
Flimon has determined that using race, ethnicity, language, accent, place, or employment as an excuse for immigration enforcement is prohibited by the Fourth Amendment, which protects unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.
This order covers Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties.
The judge also ordered that all people in custody at the Downtown Detention Center known as the B-18 should be given 24-hour access to lawyers and confidential telephone lines.
On Monday, the administration called on federal appeals courts to maintain the judge’s order and block the roving patrol, allowing attacks to resume across seven California counties.
“It is unacceptable for district judges to “restructure” federal immigration enforcement activities on their own,” the appeal argued. “This judicial acquisition cannot bear it.”
What experts say
Legal experts say it’s difficult to say how successful the federal government will be in staying on temporary orders given the current political situation.
“This differs from many other types of Trump lawsuits because the law is so clear in the discovery of facts by the district court,” said UC Berkeley Law Dean Irwin Kemelinski. “So, following basic legal principles, this is a very weak case for the government on appeal, but it’s very difficult to predict what will happen because everything is so ideological.”
In the past, jurists say it is very rare for an appeal court to consider such an order. However, recent events suggest that it is not from the realm of possibility.
The courts support Trump’s immigration policy in other cases.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the federal government to allow convicted offenders to be forced into “third countries.”
That same month, a judge in the federal district ruled 6 to 3 to limit his ability to issue national orders that hamper the president’s policies.
In June, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided to leave the Los Angeles army in the hands of the Trump administration while California objections filed a lawsuit in federal court. California was appealing for the development.
Ahilan Arulanantham, professor of practice and co-director at the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, said it was not an easy case for the government.
“I think one of the things that makes this case a little more difficult for the government than some of the other shadow cases is that it actually affects citizens in an important way,” he said. “Obviously, immigration agents don’t know beforehand when they approach someone, whether they’re citizens or non-citizens.”
What’s next?
Frimpong’s ruling is currently under appeal.
The plaintiffs allegedly cornered brown-skinned people in their home depot parking lots, car washes and bus stops in Southern California without establishing reasonable suspicion that immigrants were violating immigration laws. They allegedly made illegal arrests without a warrant, claiming that the agent failed to identify himself, as required under federal law.
The government’s lawyers argued that “ethnicity could be a factor in supporting reasonable doubt in appropriate circumstances. For example, if an agent is acting on tips to identify that ethnicity, even if it is not relevant in other circumstances,” the lawyers said.
The lawyer said he allegedly spoke Spanish, was in a particular place, or that his job could “contribute to reasonable doubt at least in some circumstances.”
Government lawyers said Frimon’s injunction was the first step to bring immigration enforcement under judicial surveillance and “cannot be defended at any level.” They asked the High Court to suspend the order while the appeal was heard.
The government is also suing another injunction imposed by a federal judge in the Eastern District of California after Border Patrol agents stopped during a few days of operation in Central Valley in January and arrested dozens of farm workers and workers, including US citizens.
The incident is likely to be heard later this year.
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