Immigrant rights groups filed suit on Wednesday seeking to block the Trump administration's "ongoing pattern and practice of flouting the Constitution and federal law" during immigration raids in the Los Angeles area — including racial profiling, warrantless arrests, and denying access to counsel to people held in a "dungeonlike" facility, The New York Times reported.
The lawsuit describes the region as "under siege" by agents carrying out "indiscriminate immigration raids flooding street corners, bus stops, parking lots, agricultural sites [and] day laborer corners."
Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, a group which is one of the litigants in the case, told the Los Angeles Times that "these guys are popping up, rampant all over the city, just taking people randomly, and we want that particular practice to end."
The other litigants include Public Counsel, the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the University of California, Irvine's law school and private law firms, The New York Times reported.
"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 complaint said, adding that many of them are menial workers described as "the lifeblood of communities across Southern California."
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin called the accusations "disgusting and categorically false" in an emailed response.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.