LOS ANGELES, September 20 — A federal court has blocked the Trump administration from carrying out warrantless immigration arrests without first determining whether a person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained, granting a preliminary injunction in Vasquez Perdomo v. Mullin. The ruling, issued September 16, also certified a class of individuals who, since June 6, 2025, have been or will be arrested by federal agents for alleged immigration violations without a warrant and without an individualized escape risk assessment.
The order requires federal agents to assess escape risk before making a warrantless arrest. In its order, the court found that federal immigration agents are “regularly abstaining from conducting a likelihood of escape analysis at all.” The court further noted that “plaintiffs have demonstrated that the policy is ongoing,” and that testimony by Department of Homeland Security agents supported the conclusion that the practice stemmed from an illegal warrantless arrest policy rather than “isolated instances of agents going rogue.”
The Legal Standard at Issue
Under federal law, immigration agents may make a warrantless civil immigration arrest only when they have probable cause to believe both that a person is undocumented and that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. The court’s injunction enforces that two-part requirement, finding that agents had been skipping the escape-risk analysis altogether.
Mayra Joachin, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and deputy director of its Immigrants’ Rights Project, said: “This ruling is one of the most important decisions to date in the community’s effort to end the federal government’s cruel and illegal practice of abducting people and separating them from their families.” Joachin added that the order “should put an end to hundreds–if not more–of unlawful arrests that continue throughout Southern California,” and said the ACLU “will closely monitor compliance with this court order, and expect the federal government to abide by it.”
Reaction From Labor and Worker Groups
Lauren Michel Wilfong, staff attorney at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said the administration “jettisoned federal law in order to achieve its goal of mass deportation at any cost, disappearing Angeleno community members in a matter of moments as they go about their daily lives.” Wilfong credited the sworn testimony of dozens of plaintiffs and class members who came forward about their unlawful arrests, saying the court “rightfully recognized that DHS is violating the law as a matter of policy.” She said NDLON will “continue fighting alongside our plaintiffs, workers and immigrant communities to ensure that everyone can go about their daily lives without fear of being arbitrarily stopped or arrested.” Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers, said the decision “reaffirms that these illegal, racist raids targeting working class people should have never happened,” and described the ruling as imposing “important legal restraints on the Trump administration’s ability to terrorize California’s immigrant workers.” Armando Gudino, executive director of the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, said: “Every worker deserves to go to work with dignity and without fear of being unlawfully detained.
No one should have their safety or basic rights threatened simply because of where they work, the language they speak, or the color of their skin.” The case now moves into a compliance phase. The court’s order requires agents to conduct escape-risk assessments before any warrantless arrest, and the ACLU has said it will monitor whether the government follows through.
What this signals for the broader enforcement landscape is a judicial check on the administration’s arrest practices — one that will be tested in the coming weeks as advocates watch whether the policy actually changes on the ground.
