U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a preliminary injunction in the Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ice injunction, barring immigration agents in Southern California from stopping people based on racial stereotypes. The order took effect last week and was made public Thursday after the Trump administration filed a notice of appeal Wednesday.
The injunction requires agents to have individualized reasonable suspicion before detaining someone for immigration enforcement. Frimpong also ordered that simply appearing Latino and working class is not enough, and she carved out stops at ports of entry, checkpoints and other functional equivalents of the border.
Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong order
Frimpong wrote that the evidence showed agents were not following the law in practice. In her order granting the preliminary injunction, she said, “The Government’s showing that it trains agents to follow the law cannot defeat the mountain of evidence that, in practice, agents do not follow the law.”
She concluded that the plaintiffs were likely to prove the practice violated the 4th Amendment and the 5th Amendment. Her ruling also said it was not a final determination that the government maintained an unlawful policy.
Justice Department appeal
August Flentje, a senior Justice Department lawyer, said the injunction “gravely hinders the government’s ability to conduct immigration stops.” In his request to stay the order pending appeal, he wrote, “Without a stay, the preliminary injunction would inflict irreparable harm on multiple federal agencies and the public interest and would create an untenable situation in which a federal court micromanages every operation and stop conducted in a District of 20 million people.”
The government’s appeal now shifts the case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will review whether the order should remain in place while the challenge moves forward. For immigration agents in Southern California, the practical rule is the one already written into the injunction: no stop based on appearance alone, and no detention without individualized reasonable suspicion except in the border-related settings Frimpong excluded.
Mohammad Tajsar statement
Mohammad Tajsar, director of immigrants’ rights at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, said Thursday that the order recognized what happened in the field. “This order recognizes that the armed goons who targeted and abducted Latino community members in Southern California were in fact simply racially profiling as many people as they could get handcuffs on, a practice that violates multiple provisions of the U.S. Constitution,” he said.
That leaves the current question on the ground: how immigration agents in Southern California change stop-and-detain practices while the appeal is pending. Until the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals acts, the injunction remains the operative rule for immigration enforcement covered by Frimpong’s order.
