After a month of militarized raids and racial profiling throughout Southern California, Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of California’s Central District, in response to a class-action lawsuit filed by community organizations and detained workers, delivered the Trump administration a major blow. She issued an order that prohibits federal agents from targeting individuals based on their race and ethnicity; whether they speak Spanish or English with an accent; their location such as a car wash, department store parking lot, or other worksite; or their occupation, such as landscapers or street vendors.
The Trump administration appealed, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday upheld the temporary restraining order. The order had brought relative calm to the region in recent weeks, slowing what had been near-daily operations to occasional isolated incidents. But the Trump administration’s Southern California campaign was not over.
Since Friday’s decision to uphold the temporary restraining order, federal agents have raided at least five other worksites in Los Angeles County, according to organizers and witnesses who spoke to The Intercept. Although it’s unclear whether federal agents had warrants for the operations, the raids did not appear to be aimed at any specific individuals and took place at worksites that had been previously targeted, all with predominantly immigrant and Latino workforces.
“Basically everything that they said not to do in the [temporary restraining order] was on a to-do checklist for today,” said a labor day organizer at the MacArthur Park Home Depot on Wednesday who was not authorized to speak with the media. “Racial profiling, check. Going to a Home Depot, check. That was on purpose to undermine the courts and to undermine the power of the law.”
The organizer said witnesses had reported seeing agents brandishing firearms at bystanders in front of the Home Depot, including at U.S. citizens. “There’s so many violations to the Constitution, not just to migrants,” he said.
Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California, or IDEPSCA, which advocates for the rights of day laborers and immigrants, said it is still working to confirm how many people were detained at the Hollywood Home Depot on Monday. During that raid, federal agents used a horn that tamaleros use to call people over to buy tamales in an attempt to lure people to detain them, said Maegan Ortiz, executive director of IDEPSCA, in a video posted on social media.
