A California federal judge on Thursday signaled that she is likely to order immigration agents to stop arresting people without warrants unless they determine they are likely to escape.
In a tentative ruling, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong appeared inclined to grant a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s immigration raids in Southern California.
By law, before making civil immigration arrests agents must have probable cause that a person is unlawfully present and that the person might escape before a warrant is issued.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs filed a motion for the injunction to block the Department of Homeland Security’s alleged mass warrantless arrest policy.
Daniel Mummolo, with the Department of Justice, pushed back during a hearing on the motion Thursday, telling Frimpong that that policy “does not exist either in written or unwritten form.”
“We would urge the court to reverse its tentative ruling,” he said. “We think the preliminary injunction should be denied.”
In the event that Frimpong grants the injunction, Mummolo asked her to stay the order by 14 days so they could consider appealing the ruling to the 9th circuit court.
It’s unclear when Frimpong will issue her ruling.
The tentative ruling was made as part of a lawsuit filed last year by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Public Counsel and other groups and private attorneys calling to end unlawful stops and arrests and for the protection of due process and access to counsel rights for people in immigration detention.
Laura Perry Stone with Munger, Tolles & Olson, one of the law firms representing the plaintiffs, asked the judge to clarify her final ruling to ensure that immigration agents have to consider both whether a person is likely to leave a location before a warrant can be obtained and also the likelihood that the person can be found at a second identifiable location.
“Both prongs … are essential,” Perry Stone said.
Requiring only the first prong, she said, would obliterate any need for agents to make an assessment of a person’s ties to the community.
Federal judges in Portland, Colorado, Washington D.C. and the Eastern District of California have also blocked similar warrantless arrest practices.
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