ICE agents accused of racial profiling, illegal arrests in LA

U.S. Attorney Bilal A. Essayli, along with several other federal officials and agencies, were accused in a lawsuit Wednesday of enforcing unconstitutional immigration searches and arrests over the past month.

Mark D. Rosenbaum of Public Counsel is the lead attorney for the plaintiffs -- five workers who claimed they were unlawfully seized or arrested during the Los Angeles County immigration operations over the past month.

They seek to represent a class that has been, or will be, subjected to the allegedly unlawful immigration stops and detainments by federal agents. The complaint compared these practices to kidnappings and categorized the situation as unjust racial targeting because of their Latino ethnicity and day laborer occupations.

"The objective of this draconian crackdown is to eviscerate basic rights to due process and to shield from public view the horrifying ways ICE and Border Patrol agents treat citizens and residents who have been stigmatized by our government as violent criminals based on skin color alone," Rosenbaum said in a statement.

"This lawsuit is, in part, about putting an end to that big lie."

The complaint by social justice organizations and a group of people detained for alleged illegal entry into the U.S., claims the government has been holding detainees in "dungeon-like" facilities while depriving them of legal counsel.

"Since June 6th, marauding, masked goons have descended upon Los Angeles, terrorizing our brown communities, and tearing up the Constitution in the process," American Civil Liberties Union attorney Mohammad K. Tajsar said in a statement on behalf of the plaintiffs. "No matter their status or the color of their skin, everyone is guaranteed Constitutional rights to protect them from illegal stops."

Named in the complaint, along with Essayli, are Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi and many other officials of the Border Patrol and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Essayli's office declined to comment on the lawsuit. Media representatives for ICE deferred comment to the Department of Homeland Security, whose media department did not respond to an email by press deadline.

The case was initiated last month by a petition filed by the three arrested individual plaintiffs who, according to the complaint, have been Pasadena residents for decades and are still in custody at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center.

They claimed they were unlawfully detained without reason by armed and masked agents at a bus stop in Pasadena on their way to work. Vasquez Perdomo et al. v. Noem et al., 2:25-cv-05606 (C.D. Cal., filed June 20, 2025).

Rosenbaum, Tajsar and Pasadena attorney Stacy E. Tolchin signed the complaint.

"To petitioner-plaintiff [Pedro Vasquez Perdomo], it felt like a kidnapping. He tried to leave but was swiftly surrounded, grabbed, handcuffed, and put into one of the vehicles," the complaint stated.

The two other individual plaintiffs, one who was allegedly seized while working on his car at a tow yard and the other while working at a car wash, claimed agents did not identify themselves or show warrants before they were interrogated. According to the complaint, the two men are U.S. citizens.

"In these interactions, agents typically have no prior information about the individual and no warrant of any kind," the complaint alleged.

"If agents make an arrest, contrary to federal law, they do not make any determination of whether a person poses a risk of flight before a warrant can be obtained. Also contrary to federal law, the agents do not identify themselves or explain why the individual is being arrested."

The uptick in arrests for immigration law violations was strengthened in May when Essayli launched "Operation Guardian Angel," a new task force in the Central District of California that allowed his office to find jailed illegal immigrants and charge them with re-entry felonies.

While the complaint doesn't explicitly name the task force, it alleges Essayli in late May directed law enforcement agencies under his authority within the Department of Justice to conduct "knock and talks" - a warrantless investigative technique that a federal judge last year found was being abused by ICE in Southern California.

In the case, Kidd v. Mayorkas, U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II issued a summary judgment order that found ICE's "knock and talk" tactics in the Los Angeles area were unconstitutional because the agents sought arrests on constitutionally protected properties. Kidd et al. v. Mayorkas et al., 2:20-cv-03512 (C.D. Cal., filed April 16, 2020).

"In sum, defendants in this case have demonstrated a willingness to bypass constitutional, statutory and regulatory requirements when it comes to immigration enforcement," the complaint stated.

"When their practices have come under scrutiny, rather than take the opportunity to conform their conduct to the law, they have evaded accountability by replicating those practices in another geographic area, declining to document what they do, and directing other federal partners not under court order to take over tasks that have been found to be unconstitutional."

Joining the individual plaintiffs are these organizations: the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, the United Farm Workers union, and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. The Immigrant Defenders Law Center is also a plaintiff in the case. They claim they've been denied access to those in detention.

The 65-page complaint lists eight counts against the federal entities, including several Fourth and Fifth Amendment violations, as well as an unlawful denial of counsel.