Judge bars immigration stops based on apparent race across Southern California; government appeals

The Trump administration on Wednesday, Oct. 28, appealed a preliminary injunction that bars federal immigration agents across the Central District of California from making detentive stops based on racial stereotyping, and asked for a stay. It filed an amended notice of appeal Friday, Oct. 30.¹ U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued the injunction under seal Friday, Oct. 23, in Vasquez Perdomo v. Mullin, No. 2:25-cv-05605, then filed a public version with one redaction.² The district takes in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.³

What the order requires

• Except at a port of entry, checkpoint or other functional equivalent of the border, agents may not enforce a policy of detentive stops in the district based on racial stereotyping rather than an individualized, pre-stop assessment of reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country in violation of immigration law.
• Agents must weigh the totality of the circumstances and may not rely only on a person's apparent status as Latino and low-income or working class, even when a sought-after target is described that way.
• The judge denied, without prejudice, a request to require documentation and reporting of all stops. She required no bond and declined the government's request to delay the injunction 14 days.²

In a separate order, Frimpong certified two classes of people stopped, or to be stopped, in the district since June 6, 2025: those stopped at least partly because of apparent Latino race, color or ethnicity, and those stopped for immigration enforcement based on apparent status as both low-income or working class and Latino.⁴

The court's findings

The judge found that the plaintiffs had shown, at this stage, that they are likely to prove the government has a policy in the Los Angeles area of stopping people for immigration purposes because they look Latino, or Latino and working class, in violation of the Fourth Amendment and the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment. The order states it is “not a final decision” on whether such a policy exists.²

The moving plaintiffs are five individuals, the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, United Farm Workers and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. Twenty-one cities and Los Angeles County joined the motion.²

The Supreme Court on Sept. 8, 2025, stayed a temporary restraining order Frimpong issued in the case July 11, 2025; three justices dissented.⁵ Frimpong wrote that the new request “materially differs” from that order in its terms, evidence and legal theories, and that because the stay came without an opinion of the Court, she could not rely on guesses about its reasoning as precedent.²

What each side says

Justice Department lawyers wrote that the injunction “gravely hinders the government's ability to conduct immigration stops” and argued that the plaintiffs lack standing and that no unwritten policy exists. They said agents may consider apparent ethnicity and perceived occupation among other factors, “but not apparent ethnicity alone,” and that the order does not define “working-class” or “low-income.” They asked for a ruling by 5 p.m. Pacific time Nov. 2 and said they would then seek relief from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.⁶

The plaintiffs, opposing a stay Oct. 29, wrote that the order “bars Defendants' reliance on an apparent demographic profile as a substitute for reasonable suspicion.”⁷

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement carried by City News Service on KESQ that its agents “are focused on protecting the American people -- not entertaining performative outrage.”⁸

What the records do not show

• Whether Frimpong has ruled on the stay request; none appeared on the docket as of Friday afternoon.¹
• Whether the 9th Circuit has acted on the appeal.
• How many stops, if any, agents have made or changed since the order took effect.
• The text under the order's one redaction.