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Just last month, the Los Angeles Times published an article titled “Fears of racial profiling rise as Border Patrol conducts ‘roving patrols,’ detains U.S. citizens.” The article quoted the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which said, “We are seeing ICE come into our communities to do indiscriminate mass arrests of immigrants or people who appear to them to be immigrants, largely based on racial profiling.” The Department of Homeland Security wasn’t thrilled about this article, saying in a statement, “Any claims that individuals have been ‘targeted’ by law enforcement because of their skin color are disgusting and categorically FALSE.”

Well, it only took a few short weeks for a federal judge to order the Trump administration to stop allowing ICE agents in southern California from “indiscriminately” arresting people based on — you guessed it — racial profiling.

According to USA Today, on July 2,  a group of immigration advocates and five people arrested by ICE filed a lawsuit against the DHS over what it called a “common, systematic pattern” of arresting brown people in the Los Angeles area based on their perceived race. In fact, the plaintiffs alleged that the area had come “under siege” by masked immigration agents “flooding street corners, bus stops, parking lots, agricultural sites, day laborer corners, and other places,” and arresting people or forcibly detaining them for questioning after targeting them because of their skin color, because they spoke Spanish, because they spoke English with an accent and/or because of their occupation. The suit also claimed those arrested were denied access to lawyers and held in “dungeon-like” facilities where some were “pressured” into accepting deportation. 

The judge agreed.

From USA Today:

Judge Maame Frimpong of the Central District of California wrote in her order that the group would likely succeed in proving that “the federal government is indeed conducting roving patrols without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers.” Stopping the indiscriminate arrests was a “fairly moderate request,” she wrote.

Her order granted an emergency request, and the lawsuit is ongoing.

Mohammad Tajsar, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the group that brought the lawsuit, said, “It does not take a federal judge to recognize that marauding bands of masked, rifle-toting goons have been violating ordinary people’s rights throughout Southern California.”

“We are hopeful that today’s ruling will be a step toward accountability for the federal government’s flagrant lawlessness.”

Unsurprisingly, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin feels differently, accusing Frimpong of “undermining the will of the American people,” because, once again, a Trump administration official doesn’t seem to understand that federal law enforcement is supposed to follow the law, not the “will” of Trump voters, who, by the way, are not interchangeable with “the American people.” (It’s as if MAGA math has left these people completely unaware that while just over 77 million Americans voted for President Donald Trump, just over 75 million voted for former VP Kamala Harris.)

“America’s brave men and women are removing murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, rapists,” McLaughlin claimed, conveniently ignoring the data that shows nearly half of ICE detainees either have no criminal record at all or have only been convicted of minor offenses, including traffic violations.

McLaughlin also reiterated almost verbatim the DHS’s previous denial that ICE agents are making arrests based on skin color, calling them “disgusting and categorically FALSE.”

“DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted, and officers do their due diligence,” she said.

Here’s what I wrote about that last month:

Part of the reason millions of people engaged in “No Kings” protests across the nation over the weekend is the people’s opposition to ICE tactics, which include raiding schools, workplaces and immigration courts to arrest allegedly undocumented migrants and set them up for deportation, often, without due process. Earlier this month, White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller reportedly set a new quota for ICE agents to arrest 3,000 undocumented migrants each day.

“Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” an ICE official claimed, according to a report in The Washington Examiner.

So, if ICE agents are to increase the agency’s deportation numbers by going to Home Depot, 7-Elevens and other places they might expect to find undocumented migrants, how else would they know who to target for questioning, unless they were looking for people who looked and sounded like they might not be American? 

Also, if it’s true that ICE doesn’t engage in exactly the kind of racial profiling the plaintiffs described in their lawsuit, somebody should probably tell ICE Director Tom Homan that.

 “Look, people need to understand, ICE officers and Border Patrol don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them. They just need totality of the circumstances, right? They just go through the observation, get our typical facts — based on the location, the occupation, their physical appearance, their actions,” Homan declared during a recent appearance on Fox News.

Apparently, Homan and the DHS need to sit down for a chat about their mixed messaging. Because somebody’s lying. 

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