Trump admin torches activist judge for ‘untenable’ immigration order

After another activist judge acted to “usurp” executive authority, President Donald Trump’s administration submitted a scathing appeal against the “judicial takeover.”

Friday out of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Biden-appointed Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong sided with the ACLU, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D), and other leftists in issuing a temporary restraining order against immigration enforcement.

Monday, the Trump administration fired back against what it considered an “untenable order” that allegedly overstepped the separation of powers and threatened to impose a “Damocles sword of contempt over every immigration stop.”

“This was originally a routine habeas action filed by three individual aliens seeking release from immigration detention,” began the filing from the Justice Department. “But, apparently seeking to manipulate the process of judicial assignment, the original petitioners’ counsel then filed an amended complaint adding a host of new individual and organizational plaintiffs, leveling systemic challenges to federal immigration enforcement in the Los Angeles area.”

“And a day later, on the eve of the July 4 holiday, they filed an ’emergency’ ex parte motion asking the court to impose a straight-jacket injunction that would vastly restrict the government’s ability to stop and detain anyone on suspicion of being unlawfully present in the United States,” the attorneys continued.

As had been reported, Judge Frimpong temporarily blocked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents from carrying out arrests at places frequented by illegal aliens — like Home Depots — and required law enforcement to have a reasonable suspicion of a violation of immigration law before conducting a stop against anyone in the Los Angeles area.

Activist judge blocks sweeping ICE raids, declaring Home Depot a de facto sanctuary for illegals https://t.co/xuR8OXsJrE via @BIZPACReview

— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) July 12, 2025

Additionally, the court gave two business days for the administration to respond to the hundreds of pages of discovery, leading the filing to state, “The result is a sweeping, district-wide injunction that threatens to hobble lawful immigration enforcement by hanging a Damocles sword of contempt over every immigration stop.”

“The government seeks an immediate stay of that untenable order pending appeal, and an administrative stay in the meantime,” the document added.

Further, the attorneys argued, “Immediate relief is warranted here not only because of the magnitude of the court’s legal errors, but also their practical consequences for the separation of powers and the government’s sovereign prerogatives.”

“It is untenable for a district judge to single-handedly ‘restructure the operations’ of federal immigration enforcement and usurp ‘ongoing judicial supervision of an agency normally, and properly, overseen by the executive branch,’” the filing continued as only a couple weeks earlier the Supreme Court ruled against the sweeping injunctions that lower courts had been issuing while Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was slammed for “embracing an imperial judiciary.”

“And make no mistake, that is exactly what this district court is doing. Indeed, the current injunction is only the start; the court has ordered the government to show cause why it should not also be required to develop policies, compel agents to undergo training, and even share records of each and every stop with the ACLU going forward,” the defense argued. “This judicial takeover cannot be allowed to stand.”

Staff Writer

Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.

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