United States: Judge orders Trump administration to stop racial profiling in Los Angeles

She thus ruled in favor of several migrants and two American citizens, as well as the associations that helped them file a complaint in early July. They believed they had been victims of racial profiling and also denounced obstructions to accessing a lawyer while in detention. "What the federal government would have this court believe—despite the mountain of evidence presented in this case—is that none of this is actually happening," denounced the magistrate, Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong.

His ruling, which applies to Los Angeles and six other California counties, prohibits immigration enforcement from making unreasonable arrests based on four factors, alone or in combination: ethnicity, speaking Spanish or English with a foreign accent, an individual's occupation, or whether they are in a particular location—such as a bus stop, car wash, farm, or hardware store.

The intensification of immigration police raids on such places, in areas known to be frequented by Latin Americans, has been controversial in Los Angeles since the beginning of June.

California's Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, hailed the decision as "temporarily halting human rights violations and racial profiling by federal immigration officials." "Stephen Miller's (the architect of Donald Trump's anti-immigrant policies, editor's note) immigration agenda is one of chaos, cruelty, and fear. […] This must end now," Gavin Newsom added in his statement.

Much of the Latino community feels unfairly targeted, and protests have taken place over the past month, sometimes turning violent. The Trump administration has yet to announce its intentions, but an appeal of this decision seems highly likely.

"A bundle of circumstances"

Hours before this decision, Tom Homan, who was responsible for the mass deportation policy ordered by Donald Trump, defended the use of physical appearance as a criterion that could justify an arrest. Federal agents "don't need a valid reason to approach someone, briefly detain them, and question them. They just need a set of circumstances," he argued on Fox News. These elements can be "based on the location" of the stop, the person's "occupation," "their physical appearance, their actions," he added, giving the example of a person who would start running at the sight of uniformed agents leaving a hardware store.