If you were driving through California this summer using Google Maps or Waze and saw a warning for "icy road ahead," you might have been understandably confused. No, folks, it's not climate change (not yet, anyway). It's the feds.
Apparently, some people have started reporting "icy" conditions on these navigation apps for the presence of ICE officers. This seems to be in direct response to a national crackdown on illegal immigration, with the fast rise of ICE stops on not only roads and sidewalks but also businesses and other workplaces.
The concern over racial profiling seems fair, given that ICE agents have often been stopping people without any "reasonable suspicion," a relatively low legal standard generally required for traffic stops. In many cases, it seemed the only justification for a stop would be racial or ethnic profiling, residing or being in certain areas, having an occupation highly associated with migrant labor (such as gardening or construction), or speaking Spanish or accented English.
According to ICE, its agents exercise their authority under immigration law, working to maintain order and public safety — but many immigration attorneys and immigrant rights groups are skeptical.
All this provides context for an important case before the U.S. Supreme Court: Noem v. Perdomo.
Who’s Suing and Why
Multiple plaintiffs banded together to sue the federal government over immigration practices. They include several individuals who were personally targeted:
- Three residents of Pasadena, CA, who were arrested at a bus stop and taken to a detention center
- A man who was arrested at his workplace (a car wash) despite claiming to be a U.S. citizen
- A man detained and questioned at his workplace (a towing center) despite explaining that he was a U.S. citizen
Immigrant rights nonprofits are joining as well, such as the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, United Farm Workers of America, and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. The plaintiffs brought the case to a federal judge, asking for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to stop the allegedly illegal practices.
Because the plaintiffs are asking for a temporary restraining order (TRO), the court also had to consider whether the government would suffer irreparable harm if the injunction remained in effect, including interference with immigration enforcement and the threat of contempt for agents. On the flip side, the court also looked at whether the plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm without the injunction: would not granting it increase the likelihood of future unconstitutional detentions?
District Judge Freezes ICE
Federal judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of the Central District of California was assigned the case. On July 11, Judge Frimpong granted the TRO against federal immigration enforcement officials.
The order enjoined federal agents from conducting detentive stops anywhere within the district unless they had reasonable suspicion that the person to be stopped was in violation of U.S. immigration law. Crucially, the order specified that agents could not rely solely (either individually or in combination) on four broad factors to form reasonable suspicion: apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or accented English, presence at certain locations (such as bus stops, car washes, day laborer sites, and similar places), or the type of work one does.
The Fourth Amendment requires that investigative stops be supported by reasonable suspicion based on the totality of the circumstances. The court looked at extensive evidence indicating that federal agents had engaged in a practice of making stops based only on these factors, including sworn declarations and documented patterns of enforcement during “Operation At Large.”
The TRO applied district-wide, covering all potential detentive stops within the Central District’s jurisdiction, and was intended to prevent further constitutional violations while litigation continued. But the federal government appealed Judge Frimpong's ruling to the Ninth Circuit. The appeals court didn't budge, either. Among other things, the court found that such stops based only on those broad factors did not satisfy Fourth Amendment reasonable suspicion requirements. It allowed the TRO to remain in effect.
Enter the Supreme Court
Now, the government is taking its Hail Mary: asking the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and reverse the lower courts' rulings so it can continue its immigration practices.
It's important to point out the matters that are already settled. It is not in dispute that all individuals, regardless of their immigration status, have rights guaranteed by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. Nor is it disputed that it's unlawful to make arrests based solely on race, to aggressively interrogate them, and to detain them without a warrant, their consent, or reasonable suspicion that they lack legal status. The parties also agree that it's unlawful to deny detainees access to attorneys, and that the federal government may legally conduct large-scale operations in Los Angeles.
The Government's Defense
The government argues that the district court’s injunction seriously interferes with its ability to enforce immigration laws throughout the Central District of California, which is the nation’s most populous federal judicial district and a major hub for immigration enforcement. The government claims this goes beyond merely protecting constitutional rights; it amounts to the judiciary taking over core executive functions that are constitutionally and statutorily assigned to the executive branch. In their words, a single district judge is now “micromanaging law enforcement” by imposing detailed rules and oversight on how agents may conduct stops, even threatening contempt for routine enforcement actions.
They argue that the injunction is legally flawed in several respects. For one, they say the plaintiffs lack standing because the risk of future unlawful stops is too speculative and generalized. Even if the individuals or organizational members were previously stopped without reasonable suspicion, the government argues, there's no proof that they are likely to be wronged in a similar way again (which is required for an injunction). With 20 million people in the Central District of California, there is no concrete reason to believe any particular plaintiff will be stopped again solely on those grounds.
Next, the government argues that there's been a misapplication of Fourth Amendment standards at the courts below because those judges imposed a "categorical rule" prohibiting federal immigration agents from relying solely on the four factors previously mentioned. According to the government, this approach contradicts Supreme Court precedent, which requires that reasonable suspicion be determined based on the “totality of the circumstances” rather than excluding particular factors as categorically insufficient.
The government clarified that speaking Spanish by itself is not enough to justify detaining someone. It agreed that when immigration officers briefly detain individuals suspected of being in the country illegally, those stops must comply with the Fourth Amendment’s reasonable suspicion requirement. However, the government emphasized that this standard is not demanding. Citing the Supreme Court’s 1989 decision in United States v. Sokolow, the government explained that reasonable suspicion requires only a “fair probability” — a threshold considerably lower than a preponderance of the evidence and much less than 50% certainty.
The government argued that immigration officers could meet the Fourth Amendment’s low reasonable suspicion standard in the Central District of California because of the district’s unique demographics. Specifically, the government noted that approximately one in ten residents is estimated to be unlawfully present; that many locations in the district regularly employ undocumented individuals in jobs such as day labor, landscaping, and construction; that the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants in the area are from Mexico or Central America; and that many of these individuals speak only Spanish.
The government also argues that the injunction is unlawfully broad because it applies to millions of people in the district who are not parties to the lawsuit. It claims that this kind of sweeping relief is prohibited by another recent SCOTUS decision called Trump v. CASA, Inc., which held that federal courts may not issue “universal” injunctions that extend beyond providing complete relief to the actual plaintiffs before the court.
What to Expect
It is, perhaps, more likely than not that SCOTUS will grant the government’s request to stay Judge Frimpong’s injunction. The current Republican-majority Supreme Court has shown strong deference to executive branch priorities in immigration enforcement and has regularly stayed or overturned lower court orders that broadly restrict federal immigration operations. Any decision would be temporary, of course, until the litigation on the merits plays out in lower courts. But with something this large and pressing, we can probably expect a short-term green light from SCOTUS any day now.
Related Resources:
- Congressional Democrats Sues DHS and ICE After Being Blocked from Detention Centers (FindLaw's Federal Courts)
- Top 3 Rights to Know If Stopped by ICE (FindLaw's Law and Daily Life)
- DHS Called Out in Non-Authorized Use of Intellectual Property for ICE Promotions (FindLaw's Legally Weird)
