Of 113 arrest records the government handed over in discovery, nearly 80 per cent had either no escape-risk assessment at all or leaned on boilerplate language. That finding sat at the center of a ruling from a Los Angeles federal court on Sept. 16, which now limits when immigration agents in Southern California can make arrests without a warrant.
U.S. District Judge Maame Frimpong granted a preliminary injunction in Vasquez Perdomo v. Mullin. Agents must get a warrant before a civil immigration arrest unless they determine the person is likely to escape before one can be obtained. The judge found that agents are “regularly abstaining from conducting a likelihood of escape analysis at all.” She also rejected the government’s request to hold the order for two weeks while it weighs an appeal. It covers Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
The court certified a class of people who, since June 6, 2025, have been or will be arrested by federal agents on suspected immigration violations without a warrant and without an individualized escape-risk assessment.
What the law requires, and what the court found
Federal law lets agents make a warrantless civil immigration arrest only with probable cause to believe two things: that the person is undocumented, and that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. The court found the second step was being skipped. “Plaintiffs have demonstrated that the policy is ongoing,” it wrote, and testimony from the Department of Homeland Security’s own agents pointed to a policy rather than “isolated instances of agents going rogue.”
Immigration authorities confirmed under oath that their practice is not to arrest people without independently assessing escape risk. Yet agents routinely failed to ask about jobs, families, homes and other community ties, which bear on that question.
DHS had a short response when asked about the injunction earlier. “Our agents are focused on protecting the American people — not entertaining performative outrage,” it said.
Plaintiffs and advocates respond
The suit was brought by five Latino workers and three membership groups, CHIRLA, LAWCN and the United Farm Workers, along with legal services provider Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
Mayra Joachin, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, called it “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.” She said the order “should put an end to hundreds — if not more — of unlawful arrests that continue throughout Southern California,” and that the ACLU would monitor compliance.
Lauren Michel Wilfong, a staff attorney with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said the administration “jettisoned federal law in order to achieve its goal of mass deportation at any cost.” She credited the sworn testimony of dozens of plaintiffs and class members. United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero said the decision “reaffirms that these illegal, racist raids targeting working class people should have never happened.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’s statement, quoted in the local report, described families living for more than a year with the fear that “a trip to work, a walk down the street, or a goodbye in the morning could end with a loved one being taken away.” Angelica Salas of CHIRLA, a plaintiff, said the order gives the community “breathing room,” while cautioning that this is “but one step in the pursuit of justice.”
Sources
- LA federal judge blocks immigration agents from carrying out warrantless arrests in SoCal
- Breaking: Federal Court Blocks Unlawful Warrantless Immigration Arrests in Southern California – ACLU of Socal
