A federal judge has found the Department of Homeland Security in contempt of court, accusing the agency of dragging its feet on an order to turn over digital copies of communications from personal cell phones used by immigration agents during last year’s controversial enforcement operations in the Los Angeles area.
U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, who sits in the Central District of California, issued the ruling Tuesday after finding that DHS had failed to comply with a January order directing the agency to expedite the imaging of personal cell phones belonging to more than 800 agents who took part in the 2025 immigration raids across Los Angeles.
As part of the contempt finding, Frimpong ordered the federal government to pay $500 a day until it complies with the discovery order, along with covering the legal costs plaintiffs’ attorneys have incurred trying to obtain the records.
The dispute came to a head in June, when DHS attorneys acknowledged in court that the records still had not been handed over. They told the judge that government-issued devices were being processed at a pace of roughly three phones every two weeks — a timeline that plaintiffs’ lawyers pointed out would take close to four years to finish.
The case stems from Operation At Large, the name given to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement push in Los Angeles last year. Attorneys representing immigrants swept up in those operations argue that the withheld phone records could reveal evidence of racial profiling by federal agents during the raids.
In a filing back in May, attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union accused DHS of deliberately undermining Frimpong’s order, writing that the agency had “simply proceeded to thwart” it “by dragging their feet on imaging government-issued cell phones and by openly defying the order as to personal phones.”
Last month, ACLU lawyers went a step further, asking Frimpong to issue a separate order barring agents from detaining people based on race. In their request, they pointed to text messages and body camera footage showing agents allegedly using slurs — including the terms “wets” and “tonks” — to single out working-class Latino residents for stops, according to court filings.
“Not only are federal agents violating the Constitution on the streets, the government is violating court orders by intentionally withholding critical evidence about its immigration enforcement operations,” said Mayra Joachin, an attorney with the ACLU of Southern California.
DHS has not addressed questions about whether agents’ alleged use of the slur “tonks” violated department policy.
Following Frimpong’s contempt ruling, the agency released a written statement nearly identical to one it had issued the previous week in response to another development in the case.
“Our agents are focused on protecting the American people — not entertaining performative outrage,” the statement read. “Where is the media’s outrage for Angel families who lost a loved one to illegal alien crime?”
Original source: CalMatters
