by
David
McNew/Getty
Images)
The
Supreme
Court
is
perfectly
willing
to
let
the
Trump
administration
break
the
law,
but
trial
judges
are
not.
And
so
on
Friday,
yet
another
federal
district
court
judge
issued
an
injunction
attempting
to
rein
in
ICE’s
goon
squads.
In
a
case
captioned
Perdomo
v.
Noem,
Judge
Maami
Ewusi-Mensah
Frimpong
of
the
Central
District
of
California
issued
a
temporary
restraining
order
barring
the
the
Department
of
Homeland
Security
from
snatching
up
every
non-white
person
they
can
get
their
hands
on
and
locking
them
in
a
basement
without
access
to
food,
water,
medicine,
or
counsel.
Specifically,
she
ordered
DHS
to
stop
dispatching
“roving
patrols”
of
ICE
agents
to
arrest
people
without
cause
and
to
give
detainees
access
to
their
lawyers.
As
Judge
Frimpong
noted,
requiring
the
government
to
abide
by
the
Constitution’s
guarantees
of
process
and
access
to
counsel
should
be
“fairly
simple
and
non-controversial.”
Nevertheless,
the
Trump
administration
already
noticed
its
appeal
to
the
Ninth
Circuit
(even
though
TROs
are
not
immediately
appealable).
LA
Raiders
On
the
campaign
trail,
Donald
Trump
promised
to
be
the
deporter-in-chief.
But
in
fact,
his
deportations
got
off
to
a
slow
start,
with
fewer
than
1,000
immigrants
arrested
a
day
for
months.
This
infuriated
Stephen
Miller,
the
president’s
xenophobia
czar.
“Why
aren’t
you
at
Home
Depot?
Why
aren’t
you
at
7-Eleven?”
he
screamed
at
ICE
agents
in
May,
according
to
the
Washington
Examiner.
On
May
28,
Miller
and
DHS
Secretary
Kristi
Noem
tripled
ICE’s
quota
to
3,000
daily
arrests.
“Under
President
Trump’s
leadership,
we
are
looking
to
set
a
goal
of
a
minimum
of
3,000
arrests
for
ICE
every
day,
and
President
Trump
is
going
to
keep
pushing
to
get
that
number
up
higher
each
and
every
single
day,
so
we
can
get
all
of
the
Biden
illegals
that
were
flooded
into
our
country
for
four
years
out
of
our
country,”
Miller
boasted
to
Sean
Hannity.
A
week
later,
Trump
dispatched
ICE
to
Los
Angeles,
promising
“the
largest
Mass
Deportation
Operation
in
History.”
Since
then,
heavily
armed
ICE
agents
and
federal
officers
have
conducted
military-style
raids
on
farms
and
farmers’
markets,
car
washes,
bus
stops,
swap
meets,
churches,
and
public
parks.
The
agents,
typically
decked
out
in
body
armor
and
wearing
masks
without
any
visible
badges
or
insignia,
don’t
have
arrest
warrants,
and
routinely
refuse
to
identify
themselves.
ICE
goons
demand
proof
of
citizenship
from
anyone
who
“looks
Hispanic,”
and
they’ve
even
detained
many
citizens
who
failed
to
carry
around
their
passports.
Indeed,
the
entire
premise
of
Stephen
Miller’s
“7-Eleven”
exhortation
was
that
ICE
agents
should
go
where
immigrants
seek
work
and
racially
profile
their
way
to
meet
the
required
body
count.
But
tripling
arrests
to
meet
an
arbitrary
quota
doesn’t
magically
create
the
infrastructure
to
detain
them
in
accordance
with
the
Constitution.
Immigrants
are
being
held
in
a
temporary
processing
facility
in
the
basement
of
a
federal
building
known
as
B-18.
B-18
is
not
a
detention
facility:
It
has
no
beds,
showers,
or
medical
facilities.
Detainees
are
packed
into
“small,
windowless
rooms”
that
are
“so
cramped
that
detainees
cannot
sit,
let
alone
lie
down,
for
hours
at
a
time.”
They’ve
been
denied
food,
fresh
water,
and
medical
supplies.
That’s
torture.
Worse,
the
administration
has
also
denied
detainees
held
at
B-18
—
many
of
whom
are
citizens
and
have
broken
no
laws
—
the
right
to
counsel.
On
at
least
one
occasion,
ICE
closed
the
building
to
visitors
and
pepper-sprayed
lawyers
and
family
members
who
tried
to
get
in
to
see
detainees
being
held
there.
As
Judge
Frimpong
described
it,
“On
the
rare
occasions
when
attorneys
and
family
members
were
allowed
access
to
their
clients
or
loved
ones,
they
were
made
to
wait
hours
at
a
time
to
see
them,
and
the
resulting
visits
were
limited
to
a
mere
five
to
ten
minutes.”
Since
the
raids
began
on
June
6,
2025,
over
1,500
people
have
been
arrested
in
the
Los
Angeles
metro
area.
Hundreds
are
currently
being
held
in
that
basement.
The
best
defense
is
a
good
offense
None
of
this
is
remotely
legal,
and
the
government
hasn’t
even
attempted
to
argue
that
it
is.
DOJ
lawyers
more
or
less
conceded
in
open
court
that
it’s
unlawful
to
arrest
people
without
cause
based
solely
on
their
race
and
occupation
and
then
deny
them
access
to
counsel.
Instead,
the
government
raised
various
procedural
arguments,
complaining
that
the
plaintiffs
waited
over
a
month
to
file
their
complaint
and
“elected
not
to
file
a
new
case”
but
instead
joined
an
existing
habeas
case.
It
takes
a
particular
kind
of
chutzpah
to
deny
detainees
meaningful
access
to
a
lawyer
and
then
complain
that
they
took
too
long
to
file
their
complaint.
Judge
Frimpong
was
deeply
unimpressed:
The
Court
finds
that
Plaintiffs
acted
expeditiously
in
this
case.
…
Considering
the
totality
of
the
circumstances-in
particular,
the
alleged
ongoing
denial
of
access
to
counsel
that
continued
at
least
until
the
filing
of
the
instant
TRO…
the
Court
finds
that
Plaintiffs
acted
swiftly
to
file
the
first
amended
complaint
and
the
instant
TROs.
The
administration
also
argued
that
the
court
lacks
jurisdiction
to
hear
plaintiffs’
claims
because
of
8
U.S.C.
§
1252,
which
limits
how
detainees
may
challenge
final
orders
of
removal
issued
by
an
immigration
judge.
But
that
argument
flatly
contradicts
long-standing
Supreme
Court
precedent
as
well
as
common
sense.
Since
many
of
the
plaintiffs
in
this
case
are
US
citizens
who
have
been
unlawfully
arrested
and
detained,
they
don’t
have
immigration
proceedings
or
orders
of
removal,
final
or
otherwise.
As
Judge
Frimpong
concluded,
it
simply
“cannot
be”
the
case
that
citizens
have
no
venue
to
raise
constitutional
claims
“and
none
of
the
authority
cited
by
Defendants
says
it
is.”
The
only
other
argument
made
by
the
government
in
its
defense
was
to
“attempt
to
minimize
the
impact”
of
the
raids
by
“characteriz[ing]
them
as
limited
to
a
short
period
of
time
justified
by
nearby
civil
unrest.”
Knock
that
shit
off
Judge
Frimpong’s
TRO
has
two
components:
First,
it
mandates
that
anyone
warehoused
at
B-18
shall
have
meaningful
access
to
counsel.
The
government
must
open
B-18
for
legal
visitation
“seven
days
per
week,
for
a
minimum
of
eight
hours
per
day
on
business
days
(Monday
through
Friday),
and
a
minimum
of
four
hours
per
day
on
weekends
and
holidays.”
Detainees
must
also
be
permitted
“access
to
confidential
telephone
calls
with
attorneys,
legal
representatives,
and
legal
assistants
at
no
charge
to
the
detainee,”
and
those
calls
“shall
not
be
screened,
recorded,
or
otherwise
monitored.”
Second,
the
order
requires
ICE
to
quit
arresting
people
for
the
“crime”
of
being
Hispanic
and
standing
outside
a
convenience
store.
“As
required
by
the
Fourth
Amendment
of
the
United
States
Constitution,
Defendants
are
enjoined
from
conducting
detentive
stops
in
this
District
unless
the
agent
or
officer
has
reasonable
suspicion
that
the
person
to
be
stopped
is
within
the
United
States
in
violation
of
U.S.
immigration
law,”
she
wrote.
And
reasonable
suspicion
cannot
be
some
form
of
“he
fit
the
profile.”
Defendants
may
not
rely
solely
on
the
factors
below,
alone
or
in
combination,
to
form
reasonable
suspicion
for
a
detentive
stop,
except
as
permitted
by
law;
- Apparent
race
or
ethnicity;- Speaking
Spanish
or
speaking
English
with
an
accent;- Presence
at
a
particular
location
(e.g.,
bus
stop,
car
wash,
tow
yard,
day
laborer
pick-up
site,
agricultural
site,
etc.);
or- The
type
of
work
one
does.
As
a
remedial
measure,
the
judge
also
required
ICE
to
document
the
grounds
for
stops
occurring
in
the
district
and
retrain
officers
to
understand
the
difference
between
reasonable
suspicion
and
racial
profiling.
“The
Court
does
not
find
prejudice
to
Defendants,”
she
concluded.
“Complying
with
the
law
does
not
impose
harm,”
and
“requiring
law
enforcement
to
comply
with
the
Constitution
does
not
prevent
law
enforcement
from
enforcing
the
law.”
Bragging
about
your
crimes
The
right-wing
reaction
to
Judge
Frimpong’s
order
has
been
predictably
disingenuous.
The
most
common
take
is
to
pretend
that
a
ban
on
racial
profiling
is
actually
a
ban
on
making
arrests
at
7-
Eleven
and
Home
Depot.
“This
is
the
equivalent
of
a
judge
making
the
ruling
that
the
DEA
can’t
go
search
individuals
for
drugs
and
narcotics
on
Skid
Row
in
LA,”
babbled
whichever
central
casting
rando
is
sitting
on
the
white
couch
at
Fox
and
Friends
this
week.
“It
makes
no
sense.
They
are
carrying
out
federal
immigration
law.”
Except
that
the
DEA
can’t
just
go
search
individuals
for
drugs
and
narcotics
on
Skid
Row
in
LA!
Cops
need
reasonable
suspicion
to
arrest
and
search
people,
and
looking
like
a
drug
user
in
a
place
where
people
use
drugs
won’t
cut
it.
That
same
morning,
America’s
Nazi
uncle
Tom
Homan
beamed
in
to
lawsplain
to
Judge
Frimpong
that
ICE
is
100
percent
doing
racial
profiling.
Look,
people
need
to
understand,
ICE
officers
and
Border
Patrol
don’t
need
probable
cause
to
walk
up
to
somebody,
briefly
detain
them,
and
question
them.
They
just
need
totality
of
the
circumstances,
right?
They
just
go
through
the
observation,
get
our
typical
facts
based
on
the
location,
the
occupation,
their
physical
appearance,
their
actions.
A
uniformed
border
patrol
officer
walks
up
to
them
at
for
instance
a
Home
Depot
and
they
got
all
these
other
articulable
facts,
plus
the
person
walks
away
or
runs
away.
But
Homan
is
not
a
lawyer,
and
so
perhaps
on
Saturday
one
of
the
attorneys
at
DHS
sat
him
down
and
explained
that
he’d
just
admitted
that
ICE
agents
routinely
violate
the
Constitution.
By
Sunday,
he
was
back
on
air
with
CNN’s
Dana
Bash
explaining
that
adding
up
a
bunch
of
illegal
factors
magically
makes
it
legal
to
racially
profile
someone:
As
I
said
in
that
interview,
it’s
articulable
facts,
with
an
S.
So
appearance
can
be
just
one.
For
instance,
if
someone
has
an
MS-13
tattoo
on
their
face,
that
may
be
one
factor
to
add
to
other
factors
to
raise
reasonable
suspicion.I
want
to
be
clear
about
that
again,
because
my
words
were
taken
out
of
context.
Physical
description
cannot
be
the
sole
reason
to
detain
and
question
somebody.
That
can’t
be
the
sole
reason
to
raise
reasonable
suspicion.
It’s
a
myriad
of
factors.
And
I
could
sit
here
for
the
next
half-hour
and
give
you
all
the
factors.
So
weird
that
they
send
this
guy
on
TV
but
never
to
court!
This
argument
will
likely
go
nowhere
with
the
Ninth
Circuit.
But
the
Supreme
Court
appears
willing
to
burn
down
generations-worth
of
civil
rights
law
to
avoid
saying
“no”
to
Trump.
So
…
¯(ツ)/¯
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