Inset: President-elect Donald Trump on “Meet the Press” Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024 (NBC News/YouTube). Background: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducting a raid (Fox News/YouTube).
An appeals court in California scolded the Trump administration for providing no evidence — “not even a bald assertion” — to indicate that undocumented immigrants are present and seeking work in “any of the public places or types of businesses” that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been conducting “roving patrols” and arrests at in recent months.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit chided Justice Department lawyers in a 61-page ruling Friday, in which the panel denied a DOJ request to temporarily halt a lower court judge’s injunction blocking “discriminatory” ICEÂ raids in the Los Angeles area and other parts of Southern California from taking place. In her July 11 order, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong barred ICE agents from detaining individuals without reasonable suspicion and in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s safeguard against unreasonable seizures by the government.
The 9th Circuit panel of three judges said Friday it agreed with the district court that the Trump administration was conducting seizures based on four factors: apparent race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; particular location; and type of work one does. Even when considered together, the factors “describe only a broad profile” and do not demonstrate reasonable suspicion for a particular stop, the panel said.
“Defendants select certain types of public places and businesses because their ‘past experiences’ indicate that illegal immigrants are present at and seek work at those locations,” the 9th Circuit said, citing Frimpong’s order.
“Defendants, however, provide no evidence — not even a bald assertion — that any of the public places or types of businesses they are targeting are used exclusively, or even predominantly, by individuals illegally in the country,” the per curiam opinion from U.S. Circuit Judges Ronald M. Gould and Marsha S. Berzon, both Bill Clinton appointees, and U.S. Circuit Judge Jennifer Sung, who was put on the bench by Joe Biden. “Consequently, the fact that a person is present at a business (such as a carwash) or other location (such as a bus stop) ‘does little to arouse reasonable suspicion,’ even when paired with officers’ knowledge that illegal immigrants have frequented or sought work at that location.”
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Like location, the 9th Circuit said the “type of work one does” is marginally relevant to establishing reasonable suspicion, “even if it is work commonly performed by immigrants without legal status.” An employer hiring a large number of undocumented workers also does not create reasonable suspicion as to each individual employee, per the appellate court.
“Defendants argue that, with more time, they will be able to prove that ‘reasonable suspicion did exist’ for some of the stops described in the record,” the 9th Circuit pointed out. “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 Trump administration asked the 9th Circuit last month for permission to continue warrantless arrests in Southern California as part of its controversial immigration enforcement efforts.
In a 51-page filing, the DOJ requested emergency relief in the form of an immediate administrative stay, as well as a broader stay pending appeal of the underlying case, to pause the temporary restraining order issued by Frimpong, a Joe Biden appointee. The crux of the dispute has been both the factual way ICE agents are conducting immigration sweeps in the nation’s second largest city and the executive branch’s basic legal authority to conduct such sweeps. One of the government’s central arguments is that it was not given enough time to prepare.
The ACLU and other advocacy groups suing Homeland Security and Secretary Kristi Noem on behalf of individuals who were allegedly stopped and arrested during ICE raids in Los Angeles have propped up Frimpong’s order and praised the lower court for reviewing a “mountain of evidence” documenting the government’s alleged practice of violating the Fourth Amendment with its raids.
The Trump administration has argued that the TRO is “confusing” and a “vague follow-the-law injunction,” and therefore “will have a chilling effect” on immigration enforcement.
The 9th Circuit stated that Frimpong’s order “cures it,” per the Friday ruling.
“Defendants can no longer profess to be confused about whether the TRO prohibits them from considering the four factors at all — it does not,” the panel said, later adding: “[W]e conclude that Defendants have failed to establish that they will be ‘chilled’ from their enforcement efforts at all, let alone in a manner that constitutes the ‘irreparable injury’ required to support a stay pending appeal.”
