Race-Based Immigration Stops: LA Judge Issues Injunction

A federal judge in Los Angeles has partly granted an injunction against race-based immigration stops, but because her order is sealed, no one outside the case can yet say what agents may no longer do.

A federal judge partly granted a preliminary injunction against race-based immigration stops by federal agents across the Central District of California on Oct. 23, according to City News Service, as published by MyNewsLA; as of Sunday no other established outlet had reported the ruling. U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong also certified a class in Vasquez Perdomo v. Mullin, the lawsuit Latino workers, residents and immigrant advocacy groups brought over the enforcement campaign that began in Los Angeles in June 2025. Both orders are sealed, the outlet reported, so the exact limits on agents are not public.

The secrecy matters because the Supreme Court paused this same judge’s first attempt to rein in roving stops a little over a year ago, and the plaintiffs told the court in September that masked, armed agents still patrol the region. The district spans seven counties, including Los Angeles County, home to 9.69 million people as of July 1, 2025, by Census Bureau estimates; in the bureau’s 2020-2024 survey figures, 33.4 percent of county residents were born abroad. It also includes Santa Barbara County, where ICE agents this week detained and injured a U.S. citizen near Santa Maria High School after agents said they believed he matched their target’s description.

A narrower request than the order the justices froze

The plaintiffs did not ask Frimpong to revive her 2025 order, which barred stops based on four factors: apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or accented English, presence at places such as car washes and bus stops, and type of work. Their July 27 motion instead targeted what it calls a race-based policy shown in the discovery record. It asked the court to:

Require individualized suspicion: bar detentive stops in the district without a pre-stop, individualized assessment of reasonable suspicion that the person is unlawfully present.
Limit reliance on ethnicity: bar agents from relying on perceived Latino ethnicity unless they have a known target description and a reasonable basis to believe the person is that target.
Add documentation: impose record-keeping requirements so compliance can be checked.

Which of those terms survived the partial grant is unknown. The record behind them is far fuller than the one the justices saw: agent depositions, body camera footage and about 40 declarations from putative class members, including U.S. citizens and green card holders. One officer estimated that 25 to 40 percent of his team’s arrests were of people other than their targets, according to the motion, which says the government keeps no aggregate data on stops.

In a statement to MyNewsLA, DHS said its agents are “focused on protecting the American people” and not on “entertaining performative outrage.” Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, a plaintiff, told the outlet the arrests “were about skin color.”

Kavanaugh’s concurrence still sets the terms

The Supreme Court’s Sept. 8, 2025 stay in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo came without a majority opinion. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, concurring, wrote that the plaintiffs likely lacked standing to seek a forward-looking injunction, and that while “apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion,” it can be a relevant factor alongside others. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

At a Sept. 24 hearing, a Justice Department lawyer urged Frimpong to follow that guidance, arguing that “on this record, it’s hard to believe that any of these plaintiffs face a real threat of imminent harm,” Courthouse News reported. The plaintiffs’ answer is repeat stops of named plaintiffs and members of the plaintiff groups, plus organizational standing, which the concurrence did not address. The request also appears built to sit inside Kavanaugh’s line: it would not forbid agents from noticing ethnicity, only from relying on it without a specific target.

An appeal is the likely next step, with standing again the battleground. On Aug. 24 a Ninth Circuit panel paused a similar injunction against Border Patrol stops in the Eastern District of California and told the trial court to address standing, LAist reported. This is also Frimpong’s second injunction in the case this fall; in September she barred warrantless civil immigration arrests unless agents first find probable cause that a person is unlawfully present and likely to escape, according to Courthouse News. Agents in Southern California now work under two sets of court-imposed limits, one of which the public cannot read.

Until a public or redacted version is released, no one outside the case can measure compliance against the order’s terms. The case joins other fights over street-level enforcement, from the appeal over warrantless arrest limits in Washington, D.C. to the faith groups’ challenge to ICE arrests at churches, all playing out as the agency works toward a target of 3,000 arrests a day.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds a LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Deigo and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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