Immigration agents allegedly used racial slurs and engaged in profiling while conducting operations in the Los Angeles area, according to a court filing by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other legal groups. The filing details evidence from body camera footage and text messages, which plaintiffs argue demonstrate a pattern of discriminatory practices.
The evidence, submitted in a motion for a preliminary injunction, includes an agent's statement captured on body camera after a June raid at a Home Depot: "There was a guy, I’m pretty sure he’s wet he was just sitting in that minivan." Text messages reportedly revealed an agent referring to "tonks everywhere selling food," with "tonk" being a derogatory term allegedly derived from the sound of a flashlight striking a migrant. Another text exchange showed an agent saying, "Yeah, just plug us in wherever you see some tonks and we’ll jump out."
Mayra Joachín, an attorney at the ACLU of Southern California, stated that the language used by agents underscores that "what’s driving the way that immigration operations are being conducted now is a racist sentiment." She added that the presented evidence is likely only a fraction of the available information, as not all government records from agents' phones have been disclosed.
The legal filing, which pertains to both Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents, was submitted to U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong. It seeks to halt what plaintiffs describe as an "ongoing campaign of suspicionless and discriminatory detentive stops" in the Central District of California. The plaintiffs argue that the evidence contradicts the government's previous representations made in seeking a stay on an order barring stops based solely on race or ethnicity.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs allege that a shift occurred last year when ICE headquarters instructed field offices to arrest "collaterals," or individuals not specifically targeted, en masse. This, they claim, led to a "coordinated campaign of suspicionless stops based on demographic profiling," differing significantly from prior operations that focused on individualized investigations and reasonable suspicion. The motion contends that the government's "intelligence" used to justify these operations was manufactured to support raids on locations the agency was already intent on targeting.
The filing further asserts that agents relied on "roving patrols" and "soft counts" based on location drive-bys, rather than specific intelligence. Evidence cited includes an agent's deposition stating operations were not "designed in good faith" to arrest identified targets, and a lead officer's description of targets as "[o]lder Hispanic male." The plaintiffs argue this demonstrates that agents are primarily looking for Latinos, leading to the detention of individuals, including U.S. citizens, based on perceived ethnicity.
