Judge orders ICE to show reasonable suspicion before stops in Southern California

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a preliminary injunction on Wednesday that bars Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Southern California from detaining individuals based solely on their appearance or class. The ruling requires agents to establish individualized reasonable suspicion before making an immigration stop. The order applies to the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo counties.

The decision follows a year-long legal battle that began when the ACLU of Southern California and other groups filed a lawsuit. The plaintiffs sought to end what they described as unlawful stops and arrests during a sweeping immigration crackdown. Last year, the Supreme Court stayed an earlier order that barred stops based on race, language, location, or employment. However, Judge Frimpong noted that the new request differed from that prior case in its evidence and legal theories.

The government began turning over discovery materials to the plaintiffs over the past year. This process produced what the court described as a mountain of evidence. The record includes body camera footage and text messages in which agents used terms such as “tonk” and “wet” to refer to Latinos. In one video from a June 2025 raid at a Home Depot in Hollywood, an agent pointed out a man in a minivan as “pretty sure he’s wet.” A separate text chain showed an agent referring to “tonks everywhere selling food.”

Judge Frimpong wrote that the evidence showed agents were not following the law in practice, despite the government’s claims that it trains agents to do so. She cited accounts of Latino U.S. citizens whose attempts to prove their citizenship were rejected. One car wash worker stated that an agent refused to let him retrieve his passport. The order notes that agents detained Latino workers and customers while leaving white people nearby alone.

The Trump administration filed a notice of appeal on Wednesday, seeking review by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Department of Justice attorney Daniel Mummolo argued during a September hearing that the state of the record was the same as what the Supreme Court originally considered. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the new ruling.

The order exempts stops at ports of entry, checkpoints, and functional equivalents of the border. It also requires agents to stop making civil arrests without a warrant unless they first determine that a person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. Judge Frimpong emphasized that the ruling is not a final determination that the government maintains an unlawful policy, but rather a finding that the plaintiffs are likely to prove such a policy exists.

Mohammad Tajsar, director of immigrants’ rights at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, said the order recognizes that agents were racially profiling as many people as possible. He stated that the plaintiffs would closely monitor the government’s compliance with the injunction. The discovery process also revealed that ICE headquarters instructed field offices in late May 2025 to begin arresting “collaterals,” or non-targets, en masse.

Attorneys described a shift from individualized investigations to “roving patrols” where agents drive without searching for a particular target. Text messages detailed “soft counts” of “possibles” based on location drive-bys. A veteran ICE agent told the court in a deposition that the operations were not designed in good faith to arrest identified targets. The government frequently did not arrest its supposed targets, even as it arrested numerous others in the same locations.

The new evidence had not been available when the Supreme Court stayed the earlier order. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, in a concurring opinion last year, wrote that apparent ethnicity can be a relevant factor when considered alongside other salient factors. Judge Frimpong noted that the Supreme Court did not explain its reasons for the stay and that Kavanaugh’s concurrence was not binding precedent.