Dive Brief:
-
The city of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County and seven other cities within the county filed a motion to intervene in a federal class action lawsuit alleging federal agents engaged in “unconstitutional and unlawful immigration raids by targeting Angelenos based on their perceived race and ethnicity and also denying detainees constitutionally mandated due process,” LA Mayor Karen Bass announced Tuesday.
- Culver City, Montbello, Monterey Park, Pasadena, Pico Rivera, Santa Monica and West Hollywood joined the lawsuit, filed last week by immigration and civil rights groups, asking the court to prevent the federal government from engaging in stops, roundups and raids that have been taking place in Los Angeles since June 6.
-
The announcement follows a flurry of legal activity surrounding federal immigration enforcement. On June 30, a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit alleged Los Angeles’s “sanctuary city” policies are illegal, and on Monday California Attorney General Rob Bonta led a multistate coalition supporting plaintiffs seeking a temporary restraining order to stop U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection sweeps in Los Angeles.
Dive Insight:
President Donald Trump deployed federalized California Army National Guard troops and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles in June after protests erupted in response to federal immigration raids.
On Monday, Bass confronted federal agents as they marched through LA’s MacArthur Park accompanied by military-like vehicles. “Minutes before, there were more than 20 kids playing — then, the MILITARY comes through,” Bass posted on X. “The SECOND I heard about this, I went to the park to speak to the person in charge and tell them it needed to end NOW.”
“The federal government has concentrated thousands of armed immigration agents, many of whom lack visible identification, and military troops in our communities, conducting unconstitutional raids, roundups and anonymous detentions, sowing fear and chaos among our residents,” Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto said in a statement. “Today’s motion to intervene shows we will not stand by and allow these raids to continue or to become the standard operating procedure in our communities.”
Bass said in a statement that the Trump administration “is treating Los Angeles as a test case for how far it can go in driving its political agenda forward while pushing the Constitution aside.”
The actions of immigration enforcement agents are hurting the local economy, small business owners and community members, Santa Monica Mayor Lana Negrete said in a statement. “That is why Santa Monica is joining other cities to put a stop to the illegal racial profiling tactics that are sowing fear, panic and division.”
On June 30, the Department of Justice sued Bass, the City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles City Council, stating that its “sanctuary city” policy is illegal under federal law and its “refusal to cooperate with federal immigration authorities contributed to the recent lawlessness, rioting, looting, and vandalism that was so severe that it required the federal government to deploy the California National Guard and the United States Marines to quell the chaos,” according to a DOJ press release.
“Jurisdictions like Los Angeles that flout federal law by prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens are undermining law enforcement at every level — it ends under President Trump,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
