Trump administration to challenge ruling against immigration enforcement in Los Angeles

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says the Trump administration plans to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that the agency’s mass deportation efforts in Los Angeles are illegal.

The Friday ruling from Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpon temporarily bans the department’s agents and officers from making any immigration arrests in central California unless they first have a reasonable suspicion someone is in the country illegally.

“We will appeal and we will win,” Ms. Noem said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Judge Frimpong, a Biden appointee, said in her ruling that the immigration enforcement operations relied on race, language and a person’s line of work to form reasonable suspicion that a person was in the country illegally.

The judge highlighted a case of an arrest at a car wash. She said the agents’ experience that “undocumented individuals” use and seek work at car washes “falls woefully short of the reasonable suspicion needed to target any particular individual at any particular car wash.”

Ms. Noem said the ruling mischaracterized the immigration enforcement efforts and accused the judge of “getting political.”

During an appearance Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, Trump border czar Tom Homan said the “ruling is wrong.”

“[Judge Frimpon] is assuming that the officers don’t have reasonable suspicion,” Mr. Homan said. “They don’t need probable cause to briefly detain and question someone. They just need reasonable suspicion, and that is based on many articulable facts.”

Mr. Homan said those factors could include a person’s physical appearance, such as an MS-13 tattoo, but cannot be the sole reason.

“So, unless she is in the officer’s mind, I don’t know how she can make that decision that they are not using reasonable suspicion,” Mr. Homan said. “How does she know that?”

The ruling comes weeks after immigration enforcement operations in Los Angeles sparked protests, and President Trump deployed California National Guard troops.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other Democrats have railed against the operations, demanding that the administration back off.

Rep. Robert Garcia has claimed that 70% of the people being arrested and taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have “zero criminal record.”

They celebrated Judge Frimpon’s ruling, which cited news reports of people who “feel that the stops and arrests are overwhelmingly focused on Latinos.”

Mr. Homan accused the judge of legislating from the bench.

“I don’t think any federal judge can dictate immigration policy,” the border czar said. “That is a matter for Congress and for the president.”

Ms. Noem said the ruling “is ridiculous.”

“We never ran our operations that way,” she said. “We always built our operations, our investigations on case work, on knowing individuals we need to be targeted because they were criminals,” she said.

Ms. Noem also brushed aside the idea that most of the people rounded up were not criminals, saying ICE agents are “out there making sure we get the worst of the worst off the streets.”