Two novel challenges to the Trump administration were filed this week in Los Angeles, highlighting the tactics of federal officers in Southern California that immigrant rights groups and ordinary citizens say have been excessive, sometimes brutal and often unconstitutional.
Immigrant rights groups filed suit in federal court on Wednesday to halt what they described as unlawful enforcement actions in Southern California that include racial profiling, warrantless arrests and denying access to counsel to people held in a “dungeonlike” facility.
In a different claim, filed with federal immigration agencies late Tuesday, Job Garcia, an American citizen, said federal officers in Los Angeles tackled and wrongfully detained him for more than 24 hours after he recorded masked border agents conducting a raid. He is seeking $1 million in damages for economic losses and personal injury.
The cases are among the first challenges against dragnet tactics that have stunned immigrant communities and captured the attention of many Americans, as the Trump administration escalates its crackdown. Even a group of Republican lawmakers in California recently joined others urging President Trump to train Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other Department of Homeland Security agents on violent criminals.
“We urge you to direct ICE and D.H.S. to focus their enforcement operations on criminal immigrants,” the Republican state wrote, “and when possible, avoid the kinds of sweeping raids that instill fear and disrupt the workplace.”
Ernest Herrera, a lawyer with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which filed Mr. Garcia’s claim, said the civil right group wanted “to put a stop to Trump’s campaign of terror on U.S. citizens who are exercising their rights.”
The lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, filed before dawn on Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles, accuses the Trump administration of unleashing “indiscriminate immigration operations” that have targeted day laborers, carwash workers, farm workers, caregivers and others described as “the lifeblood of communities across Southern California.”
“Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from,” the claim said.
Both cases could have implications for how federal immigration agents are allowed to conduct operations in Los Angeles, home to the largest undocumented population in the United States. More broadly, they open a new legal battle over the Trump administration’s nationwide crackdown.
A judgment in the A.C.L.U. suit would not be binding on other cities, said Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer with the nonprofit firm Public Counsel and a counsel in that case. But, he predicted, “it will have national reverberations.”
Tricia McLaughlin, a representative for the Department of Homeland Security, called the accusations “disgusting and categorically FALSE” in an emailed response.
“These types of smears are designed to demonize and villainize our brave ICE law enforcement,” she wrote, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “This kind of garbage has led to a more than 700 percent increase in the assaults on enforcement officers.”
