{"id":416164,"date":"2026-07-29T04:20:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T04:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/416164\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T04:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T04:20:15","slug":"ice-agents-used-racial-slurs-during-los-angeles-crackdown-court-files-show-ice-us-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/416164\/","title":{"rendered":"ICE agents used racial slurs during Los Angeles crackdown, court files show | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)"},"content":{"rendered":"

ICE agents deployed last summer to the Los Angeles area referred to the subjects of their immigration operations with racial slurs, according to newly released court documents.<\/p>\n

On 4 July 2025, an unidentified agent wrote in a text<\/a> chain, \u201cbtw tonks everywhere selling food for the 4th festivities in long beach right now\u201d, invoking an anti-immigrant slur, which the US border patrol has previously warned against<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a different string of messages sent on 2 July 2025, an agent wrote: \u201cSome of these people are stupid. Why would you post on social media that you\u2019re wet,\u201d using the abbreviated version of a slur long used to denigrate undocumented Mexicans who cross into the US by the Rio Grande, a river stretching from Colorado into the Gulf of Mexico.<\/p>\n

\u201cTonks\u201d and \u201cwet\u201d also appeared in other correspondence.<\/p>\n

The slurs were made public on Monday in a motion filed for a case five men brought against the Trump administration<\/a> in June 2025, alleging that the stop-and-arrest practices of ICE agents during the Los Angeles raids were unlawful.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for the men have requested that a federal judge bar any further detention stops based on race or socioeconomic status.<\/p>\n

In June 2025, three of the men filing the lawsuit were arrested while waiting at a bus stop to be picked up for work. A fourth plaintiff had his arm twisted and was pushed against a gate during questioning by masked immigration agents, even as he explained he was a US citizen.<\/p>\n

Maya Joachin, deputy director of immigrants\u2019 rights at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said in a press release the records evidenced \u201ca pattern of racial profiling\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cImmigration officers are flagrantly violating the law by detaining people without justification and often primarily because of the color of their skin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Angel Santiago Tafolla, an Anaheim resident and US citizen who is not among the plaintiffs, said in a court declaration provided in the Monday filing that ICE agents swept through a car wash he worked at in Orange county.<\/p>\n

He was handcuffed and put in a van before they realized he was an American citizen. \u201cOther co-workers who are light-skinned also ran, but they were not chased. I feel that I was chased because I am a darker-skinned Latino,\u201d Tafolla said.<\/p>\n

In a December deposition, an ICE officer who led the bus stop operation suggested individuals loitering for work were flagged as possibly undocumented individuals. He described their appearance as \u201colder Hispanic males\u201d.<\/p>\n

The raids were met with strong blowback from city and state officials. Tensions further flared when Donald Trump sent the national guard to Los Angeles, citing a need to \u201cliberate\u201d the city from a \u201cmigrant invasion\u201d, as protests erupted against ICE\u2019s presence.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur agents are focused on protecting the American people \u2013 not entertaining performative outrage,\u201d a spokesperson for the homeland security department said in a statement<\/a> to CalMatters regarding the new court filings.<\/p>\n

The DHS did not immediately return the Guardian\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ICE agents deployed last summer to the Los Angeles area referred to the subjects of their immigration operations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-416164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}