A federal judge issued a tentative ruling Thursday suggesting she would order the Trump administration to stop illegal cessation and arrests, while advocates say terrorist attacks on Angelinos, forcing some immigrants to hide and damage the local economy.
The ruling is not made public, but is expected to final orders on Friday to the core cases in the battle for Trump’s massive deportation plan. Last week’s lawsuit filed by immigration rights groups tried to stop federal agents from stopping and arresting brown-skinned people without a possible cause, and then placing them in “dungeon-like” conditions without having to contact lawyers.
Before an hour-long hearing in downtown Los Angeles federal court, Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong provided a lengthy ruling for attorneys based on an earlier court application in the case. A tentative ruling is not uncommon, Frimpong said she is providing both parties with “understanding of how I view the case.”
The ruling suggested that Frimpong would approve two temporary restraining orders, one covering docks and arrests and the other to ensure that detainees have the right to legal counsel.
“It’s really a tentative, not final,” Frimpong said, adding that things could change based on the arguments she heard from her lawyers Thursday afternoon. “It is my intention to issue my ruling tomorrow given the urgency and weight of the matter in question.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, public legal counsel, other groups and private attorneys filed lawsuits on behalf of several immigration rights groups, with three immigrants picking up at bus stops and two U.S. citizens, one of whom was detained despite showing his identity to the agents.
Throughout the hearing, Frimpong appeared to have defy any indiscriminate allegations against government lawyer Sean Skedzielewski and his lack of concrete evidence.
After he argued that “these are complex actions”, she imposed arrest methods on Skedzielewski and appeared to say that the arrest was targeted by a specific person.
The judge noted that other local and federal law enforcement targeted crimes, there were reports of “why they arrested this person, how they happened to be, how they encountered it.”
“There doesn’t seem to be anything like that here, which makes it difficult for the court to accept your description of what is going on because there is no evidence that it is what is going on, not what the plaintiff said is going on.”
Skedzielewski believes that the lack of evidence is the reason why the court should not approve the interim restraining order. He believes that the government has only “a few days” to try to identify the individuals mentioned in the court application.
“We just don’t have the chance to identify people who people stop in many cases, let alone win the agency on a holiday weekend,” he said.
Frimpong didn’t seem to be moved. President Biden’s appointment questioned the administration’s reliance on two senior officials who played a key role in the Southern California raid: Kyle Harvick, who is in charge of El Centro’s Border Patrol and Andre Quinones, deputy field office director for immigration and customs enforcement.
Their manifesto, she said, was “very average” and “had no real involvement in the records of what the plaintiffs saw and heard in the news.”
“If there were any of these people and there was a report about ‘this is what we determined this trailer, parking lot, etc., it would be helpful,” Frimpong said. “It’s hard for the court to believe that you can’t do that in that time you have.”
Skedzielewski said the evidence was full of cessation, but “there is no evidence that those cessation or in any way fail to comply with the law.”
He said the agents’ actions were “above the board.”
Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney for the Southern California ACLU, told the judge that agents cannot use only one person’s workplace, their location, or the specific work they are doing to stop people.
Tajsar added that it was precisely because of the government’s “misunderstanding of the law” that they made so many stops on U.S. citizens, including Brian Gavidia, a plaintiff named Plaintiff who was detained by a Border Patrol outside the Montebello trailer house.
Tajisar said Gavidia, who attended the court during the hearing, was stopped in the Latino area, which was mainly Latino area, “no other reason except for the fact that he is Latino, working in the trailer tract.
“We have seen a lot of unconstitutional and illegal arrests due to this basic misunderstanding of the law by the government,” Tajsar said.
Tajsar also postponed to the government that they didn’t have enough time to say “they have time and have all the evidence.”
This week, the city and county of Los Angeles, as well as Pasadena, Montebello, Monterey Park, Santa Monica, Culver City, Pico Rivera and West Hollywood – attempting to join the lawsuit.
In their court documents, cities and counties refuted that the attacks were not actually about immigration enforcement, but politically taking “a role model as an example” to “implement policies that Donald J. Trump disliked.”
They quoted Trump’s post on his social media platform, where he called on immigration officials to “go out all out” to achieve “the largest massive deportation program in history” by expanding efforts to detain and deport Los Angeles and other cities that are “central to the democratic power.”
U.S. Department of Justice lawyers believe that detention is legal and that no injunction can be widely used.
“The government has legal and significant interest in ensuring the implementation of immigration laws, and any restrictions will seriously violate the President’s Article 2 authority,” the government lawyer wrote.
Immigration agents have arrested nearly 2,700 undocumented people since the operation began on June 6, according to data released by DHS on Tuesday. Extensive arrests have paralyzed parts of the city, where there are a lot of immigration work, such as the flower district in the city center.
These cities believe that “illegal attacks” are preventing them from performing critical law enforcement functions because they “transfer limited resources to determine whether armed personnel leaving unmarked vehicles are covered up, unidentified federal agents, or cover up, unidentified criminals.”
