City and county officials in Los Angeles sought to join a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration on Tuesday to stop widespread immigration raids that have prompted demonstrations and caused panic in Latino communities across Southern California.
The lawsuit, filed last week by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and other groups, accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies of using racial profiling tactics, conducting warrantless arrests, denying people access to lawyers and holding those arrested in poor conditions.
The City and County of Los Angeles were among nine municipalities that filed a motion to intervene in the case on Tuesday. The others, all in Los Angeles County, were Culver City, Montebello, Monterey Park, Pasadena, Pico Rivera, Santa Monica and West Hollywood.
“These unconstitutional roundups and raids cannot be allowed to continue,” Hydee Feldstein Soto, the Los Angeles city attorney, said at a news conference. “They cannot become the new normal.”
For weeks, local officials have called for an end to the raids, but asking to join the litigation was the first formal step they have taken to try to halt a federal operation. The request came the day after heavily armed federal agents and National Guard troops marched through MacArthur Park near downtown Los Angeles in an extraordinary show of force that drew a sharp rebuke from Mayor Karen Bass.
The city did not need federal agents “coming through, lined up in military fashion and doing absolutely nothing,” said the mayor, who joined the news conference on Tuesday.
Federal officials have denied the accusations outlined in the lawsuit and dismissed complaints about racial profiling. They have described the raids as targeted and effective, and have accused Democratic politicians and activists of demonizing federal agents.
In an emailed statement last week, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the accusations were “disgusting and categorically FALSE” and had led to an increase in assaults on officers.
Since June 6, immigrant communities in Los Angeles and throughout the region have been disrupted by an aggressive campaign carried out by armed and often masked agents from ICE, Border Patrol and other agencies. Social media videos have shown agents in marked, unmarked and military-style vehicles detaining and questioning immigrants at car washes, shopping-center parking lots, bus stops and other sites and workplaces.
In court papers, lawyers for the municipalities described the tactics as breaking with more than 70 years of immigration enforcement in the Los Angeles area that had featured “lawful arrests pursuant to warrants, naming identified individuals for specified reasons, and created little or no impact on public safety and order.” The lawyers for the municipalities said that since the federal operations began June 6, many residents, regardless of legal status, have stopped engaging in normal daily activity, including shopping or going to work.
Officials in Los Angeles and other cities have said the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has caused an economic downturn, loss of tax revenue and tens of millions of dollars in additional costs from increased demands on local law enforcement. Local officers have responded to 911 calls in which bystanders have reported possible kidnappings, incidents that ended up being immigration enforcement operations.
“We are suing under our own rights for the harm to our jurisdiction, which is not simply what is happening to our citizens, but what is happening to our tax base, our revenue base, our businesses, public safety, public order,” Ms. Feldstein Soto said.
The move by the municipalities to join the litigation came a day after the attorneys general of California and 17 other states filed a joint amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs.
Orlando Mayorquín is a Times reporter covering California. He is based in Los Angeles.
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