{"id":156725,"date":"2025-07-12T13:58:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T13:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/immigration-officials-cant-stop-people-based-on-race-their-spoken-language-in-los-angeles-judge-rules-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T13:58:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T13:58:17","slug":"immigration-officials-cant-stop-people-based-on-race-their-spoken-language-in-los-angeles-judge-rules-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/immigration-officials-cant-stop-people-based-on-race-their-spoken-language-in-los-angeles-judge-rules-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Immigration officials can't stop people based on race, their spoken language in Los Angeles, judge rules – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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LOS ANGELES \u2014 A federal judge on Friday ruled that immigration officers in Southern California can’t rely solely on someone’s race or speaking Spanish to stop and detain them.
District Judge Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order after a lawsuit was filed by three men who were arrested as they waited to be picked up at a Pasadena bus stop for jobs on June 18, <\/strong>and after two others were stopped and questioned despite saying they are U.S. citizens.
Frimpong’s order bars the detention of people unless the officer or agent “has reasonable suspicion that the person to be stopped is within the United States in violation of U.S. immigration law.”
It says they may not base that suspicion solely on apparent race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; presence at a particular location like a bus stop or day laborer pick-up site; or the type of work one does.
Frimpong wrote in the ruling that most of the questions before her were \u201csimple and non-controversial.\u201d
\u201cDo all individuals \u2014 regardless of immigration status \u2014 share in the rights guaranteed by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution? Yes, they do,\u201d she wrote.
\u201cIs it illegal to conduct roving patrols which identify people based upon race alone, aggressively question them, and then detain them without a warrant, without their consent, and without reasonable suspicion that they are without status? Yes, it is,\u201d she wrote.
Frimpong issued another order that lawyers be granted access to an area in a a federal building in Los Angeles where those detained by immigration authorities are held, and to allow those detained phone access with legal counsel.
The lawsuit, filed against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and others, was filed as the federal government under President Donald Trump has aggressively made immigration arrests in Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California called the restraining order a victory for rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.
\u201cNo matter the color of their skin, what language they speak, or where they work, everyone is guaranteed constitutional rights to protect them from unlawful stops,” Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, said in a statement<\/a>.
“While it does not take a federal judge to recognize that marauding bands of masked, rifle-toting goons have been violating ordinary people\u2019s rights throughout Southern California, we are hopeful that today\u2019s ruling will be a step toward accountability for the federal government\u2019s flagrant lawlessness that we have all been witnessing,” Tajsar said.
Two of the people who sued said they were stopped and questioned by immigration officers despite explaining that they are U.S. citizens. One works at a car wash in Orange County that has been visited three times by immigration agents, most recently on June 18, according to the suit. That worker was questioned that day even after he told them he was a U.S. citizen, the suit says.
The three men arrested in Pasadena say that immigration officials did not identify themselves and did not show any warrants, according to court documents.
A U.S. citizen said the was approached at a tow yard on June 12, an agent demanded to know “what hospital were you born in?”, he said he did not know but is a U.S. citizen and could show ID, and he was pushed against a metal fence and his arm was twisted, according to the the claims cited in the ruling. He was released but his ID was taken and never returned, it says.
Frimpong wrote in Friday’s ruling that one of the only two issues before her was whether the people suing were \u201clikely to succeed in proving that the federal government is indeed conducting roving patrols without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers?\u201d
\u201cThis Court decides \u2014 based on all the evidence presented \u2014 that they are,\u201d she wrote.
She wrote that the second question was what to do about it, and that the request that the federal government be made to stop that conduct was reasonable.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats, have objected to the federal immigration actions in Southern California. Bass has said they are they are motivated by a political agenda \u201cof provoking fear and terror.\u201d
Bass said in a statement after Friday’s decision that the court “ruled in favor of the United States Constitution, of American values and decency.”
“Los Angeles has been under assault by the Trump Administration as masked men grab people off the street, chase working people through parking lots and march through children\u2019s summer camps,” she said.
Newsom said the ruling stops what he called the violation of people’s rights and racial profiling. He said the Trump administration has been arbitrarily detaining people.
“Stephen Miller\u2019s immigration agenda is one of chaos, cruelty and fear,” Newsom said in a statement<\/a>, referring to the White House deputy chief of staff and immigration hardliner.
The Trump administration has defended the crackdown on people in the country without authorization as an enforcement of immigration laws. Noem and DHS officials have said that people accused or convicted of serious crimes have been deported under it. Trump ran on a campaign that promised deportations.
The judge’s temporary restraining order also requires the government to provide training for agents operating in the Central District of California, which covers the Los Angeles and other areas, among other requirements.
Phil Helsel is a reporter for NBC News.
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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ProfileSectionsLocaltvFeaturedMore From NBCFollow NBC News news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeLOS ANGELES \u2014 A federal judge on Friday ruled that immigration officers in Southern California can’t rely solely on someone’s race or speaking Spanish to stop and detain them.District Judge Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order after a lawsuit was filed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":156726,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}