9th Appeals Court upholds restrictions on ICE raids in Los Angeles

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court decision restricting ICE from targeting individuals for investigation based on job, appearance, or spoken language.

The decision means that ICE agents are required to have specific probable cause instead of a general suspicion about an individual’s citizenship.

This decision backs a decision by U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong blocking ICE from making arrests based on the aforementioned factors.

The panel wrote, “We agree with the district court that, in the context of the Central District of California, the four enumerated factors at issue — apparent race, ethnicity, speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent, particular location and type of work, even when considered together — describe only a broad profile and do not demonstrate reasonable suspicion for any particular stop.”

This decision will kneecap much of ICE’s workplace raid operations, as targeting specific job sites is an effective tactic to find illegal immigrants. However, ICE isn’t taking this decision lying down and plans for more workplace raids are steaming ahead.

Trump Immigration Agenda Can’t Be Stopped

The lawsuit was mostly based on a statement from a Los Angeles deputy immigration commander that ICE was targeting “certain types of businesses, including carwashes, because past experiences have demonstrated that illegal aliens utilize and seek work at these locations.”

As part of ICE’s extensive raids in southern California, agents have been raiding Home Depots, car washes, bus stops, and in one highly publicized case, a marijuana farm in Ventura County that employed minors alongside sexual predators.

ICE’s mission is an important one, but not to the leftist judges like Judge Frimpong, who was appointed by President Biden, and the judges on the notoriously leftist 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

They would rather make ICE’s job harder and defend illegal immigrants and the abusive business owners exploiting cheap labor and endangering minors.

Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who is sending money to illegal immigrants, hailed the decision as a victory, saying, “The Temporary Restraining Order that has been protecting our communities from immigration agents using racial profiling and other illegal tactics when conducting their cruel and aggressive enforcement raids and sweeps will remain in place for now.”

Of course, this ruling won’t truly stop Trump’s aggressive deportation operations, but it still demonstrates the damage that leftist judges can do by blocking the will of the American people.

White House Response

For the most part, the White House has been quiet about this particular case, which will go back to a lower court for another hearing in September.

White House aide Stephen Miller took to X to say, “The ruling has just been issued. A communist judge in LA has ordered ICE to report directly to her and radical left NGOs — not the president. This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people.”

Leftist district judges still hold a lot of power to obstruct the Trump agenda but it seems likely that should this case advance to the Supreme Court, conservative justices will likely nuke this faulty ruling that has effectively declared certain areas as “safe zones” for illegal immigrants.