Newly unsealed court records allege that federal immigration agents used racial slurs while carrying out sweeps across Los Angeles last year, evidence that attorneys say bolsters claims the operations relied on racial profiling rather than individualized suspicion.
The documents were filed Monday as part of a motion for a preliminary injunction in Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, several advocacy groups and private attorneys. The filing argues that federal agents have continued a pattern of “suspicionless and discriminatory” stops throughout the Central District of California, even after last summer’s widely publicized street operations wound down. In a deposition included in the filing, one ICE agent acknowledged that current enforcement is essentially “the same thing” as the earlier campaign, known as “Operation at Large,” just “with a different name.”
The evidence, gathered through months of court-ordered discovery, includes body-camera footage and sworn agent testimony obtained after U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong required the disclosures. That order followed a September decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to stay an earlier temporary restraining order in the case.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs contend the new material contradicts the federal government’s earlier assurances to the Supreme Court that agents based stops on specific intelligence rather than race or ethnicity.
Among the disclosures: body-camera video from a Home Depot parking lot in Hollywood shows a Border Patrol agent saying, “There was a guy, I’m pretty sure he’s wet, he was just sitting in that minivan” — using a slur for people believed to be undocumented immigrants. Other text messages cited in the filing include an agent instructing colleagues to “plug us in wherever you see some tonks and we’ll jump out,” and another describing seeing “tonks everywhere selling food.”
“Tonks” is a term with a disturbing origin — reportedly derived from the sound made when a heavy object, such as a flashlight, strikes a person’s head. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, formally discouraged agents from using the word in 2019, citing its offensive nature, according to internal communications previously obtained through public records requests.
In another deposition cited in the filing, an agent described the kind of person who draws suspicion simply as an “older Hispanic male.” Plaintiffs’ attorneys argue that such statements show agents were not conducting the kind of individualized assessments required under the Fourth Amendment before detaining someone, and instead targeted people they assumed were low-income and Latino — sweeping up U.S. citizens in the process.
The filing also cites a May 2025 directive from ICE headquarters urging field agents to “turn the creativity knob up to 11” in order to increase arrests of so-called “collaterals” — individuals encountered during an operation who were not the original target.
According to the ACLU, this approach wasn’t the result of individual agents acting outside their authority but rather a strategy encouraged by leadership. “This was not a rogue method of operationalizing agency orders; it was precisely what agency leadership desired,” the filing states.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys also noted that ICE significantly expanded its enforcement teams in Southern California, aided in part by recruitment materials that have drawn criticism for containing what experts described as white nationalist imagery and messaging. Some plaintiffs — including U.S. citizens — say they have been stopped by agents more than once.
Much of the evidence relies on communications retrieved from agents’ personal cell phones, though many of the agents involved in the Los Angeles operations have not yet turned their devices over for review. Last month, Frimpong held a tense hearing to consider whether to hold the federal government in contempt for failing to comply with an order requiring the surrender of agent phones for forensic examination.
According to statements made in court, more than half of the roughly 1,400 Border Patrol agents involved in the Los Angeles operations acknowledged using personal phones while on duty. Federal officials said agents were asked to upload relevant data to a government server as part of an agreement with their union intended to avoid workplace disputes. However, only 88 agents volunteered their personal phones for forensic imaging, and none of those phones have yet been processed.
Plaintiffs argue the government should face sanctions for what they characterize as an outright refusal to comply, citing officials’ own admission that they would not enforce the order out of concern that agents might object.
Progress on reviewing government-issued phones has been similarly slow. Attorneys for the federal government told the court that only three government phones are being imaged every two weeks, with an estimated 200 to 300 devices still awaiting review — a pace that could take nearly four years to complete.
“There’s enough to suggest that this is a system-wide practice of identifying people through racial slurs,” said Mayra Joachín, an attorney with the ACLU involved in the case.
CalMatters has reached out to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for comment.
Original source: CalMatters
