A Los Angeles federal judge has ordered immigration agents to stop making civil arrests without a warrant unless they first determine that a person is likely to escape before one can be obtained.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong said in an order granting a preliminary injunction that the government \u201cis regularly abstaining from conducting a likelihood of escape analysis at all\u201d when making arrests without a warrant. <\/p>\n
Frimpong\u2019s order applies in the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles and the surrounding areas, including Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. It landed on the public docket Wednesday, after it originally was filed under seal on Sept. 2. <\/p>\n
The ruling requires federal immigration agents to consider the totality of the circumstances known to them before arresting someone without a warrant.<\/p>\n
\u201cMere presence within the United States in violation of United States immigration law is not, by itself, sufficient to conclude that a person is likely to escape before a warrant for arrest can be obtained,\u201d Frimpong, an appointee of President Biden, wrote in her order. <\/p>\n
When agents make a civil immigration arrest in the district, Frimpong ordered them to document the circumstances, including the \u201cspecific, particularized facts\u201d that show probable cause, pre-arrest, that the person was likely to escape before a warrant could be obtained.<\/p>\n
Frimpong denied the government\u2019s request to stay the order for 14 days while it considered whether to appeal.<\/p>\n
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as and Customs and Border Protection, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Frimpong\u2019s ruling stems from a lawsuit filed last year by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Public Counsel and other groups and private attorneys calling to end unlawful stops and arrests. The suit also called for the protection of due process and access to counsel rights for people in immigration detention.<\/p>\n
In a June motion for the preliminary injunction, lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that agents continue to make arrests without taking necessary steps required by federal law. The lawyers asked that Frimpong bar immigration agents from arresting people in the district unless they\u2019ve conducted an escape risk analysis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis ruling is one of the most important decisions to date in the community\u2019s effort to end the federal government\u2019s cruel and illegal practice of abducting people and separating them from their families,\u201d Mayra Joach\u00edn, an attorney at the ACLU of Southern California, said in a statement. \u201cThis court order should put an end to hundreds \u2014 if not more \u2014 of unlawful arrests that continue throughout Southern California.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Frimpong did not order immigration agents to consider a person\u2019s ties to the community as part of the escape risk analysis, Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, thinks \u201cit\u2019s impossible to do this analysis without community ties.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can you say someone is an escape risk by ignoring the fact that they have U.S. citizen kids, a job here, or their wife lives here?\u201d Tajsar said.<\/p>\n
Federal judges in Portland, Colorado, Washington, D.C. and the Eastern District of California have blocked similar warrantless arrest practices.<\/p>\n
Tajsar said that after the preliminary injunction in D.C., the number of warrantless arrests \u201cessentially dried up almost completely.\u201d However, he noted that agents elsewhere have brought field warrants that they can immediately sign \u201cso they can get out from under that issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re trying to do fancy paperwork,\u201d Tajsar said, adding that if that were to happen in this district, \u201cwe\u2019ll fight back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last month, Daniel Mummolo, an attorney with the Department of Justice, pushed back during a hearing on the motion, telling Frimpong that a warrantless arrest policy \u201cdoes not exist either in written or unwritten form.\u201d Mummolo urged Frimpong to deny the preliminary injunction. <\/p>\n
Lawyers for the plaintiffs noted when seeking the injunction that a review of arrest narratives produced by the government showed that at least 89 of 113 cases \u2014 nearly 80% \u2014 contained \u201ceither no escape risk assessment whatsoever … or generally follow an escape risk template narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mummolo maintained that the \u201coverwhelming majority\u201d of the arrest records included a discussion of flight risk but added that agents were \u201cnot required to document that.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her order, Frimpong cited video footage of arrests, including one in which \u201cagents appear to follow a car, pursue an individual who exits the car, and arrest that individual, seemingly without asking the arrestee any questions.\u201d <\/p>\n
Frimpong also referenced cases in which immigration officers offered justifications for an arrest that did not match evidence from the scene. <\/p>\n
In one case, the judge noted, agents said a car wash worker was likely to escape because of \u201chis flight from law enforcement.\u201d But video of the arrest showed the man \u201cstanding in the same place from the time that the agent entered the car wash to the time that the agent called him over.\u201d The car wash worker, Frimpong wrote, \u201ccontrary to the Government\u2019s written escape risk analysis, did not flee.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frimpong said two of the plaintiff organizations are likely to be able to show \u201cthat the Government is following an illegal policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not the final decision on whether the Government is following an illegal policy,\u201d Frimpong wrote. \u201cThat will be decided later in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Los Angeles federal judge has ordered immigration agents to stop making civil arrests without a warrant unless…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7504,237,183589,5782,17232,405,105826,48,52,51,1429,47,50,49,9355,592,1437,3153,38711,1009,7943],"class_list":["post-466217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-agent","tag-arrest","tag-daniel-mummolo","tag-federal-judge","tag-frimpong","tag-government","tag-immigration-arrest","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lawyer","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-order","tag-people","tag-plaintiff","tag-preliminary-injunction","tag-private-attorney","tag-southern-california","tag-warrant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466217","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=466217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}