A federal judge has ordered immigration agents to overhaul how they conduct warrantless arrests in Los Angeles, ruling that the government has repeatedly skipped a legally required step meant to determine whether someone is actually likely to flee before agents can detain them.
The decision, issued by U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong and unsealed this week, cements a preliminary ruling she first signaled last month. It represents a significant setback for federal immigration enforcement tactics that have drawn intense scrutiny across Los Angeles since aggressive street operations swept through the region in 2025.
The case centers on a basic legal requirement: immigration officers cannot arrest someone without a warrant unless they have probable cause both that the person is undocumented and that the person is likely to escape before a warrant could be secured. Frimpong found overwhelming evidence that agents have been ignoring that second requirement altogether.
“This Court finds ample evidence that Defendants have an ongoing policy and practice of conducting warrantless arrests in violation of the requirement to conduct a likelihood-of-escape analysis,” she wrote.
One case illustrating the pattern involved a man identified only by the initials A.T., a worker at Handy J Car Wash in Los Angeles. Body camera footage from August 2025 shows a Border Patrol agent sprinting toward him as he wiped down a vehicle, then grabbing him by his shirt collar. Within ten seconds, A.T. was in handcuffs, despite telling the agent he had legal documentation. He was placed in an unmarked Dodge Charger and taken to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, where he was fingerprinted and released hours later after officials determined he was a lawful permanent resident.
The agent’s written report claimed A.T. made sudden movements suggesting he might flee — a claim the body camera footage does not support. The agent also noted that A.T. seemed “confused and unsure” when asked about his citizenship, and used that uncertainty to justify the arrest. At no point, according to the footage, did the agent attempt to check identification or ask basic background questions before making the arrest — the type of assessment the law requires.
The lawsuit that led to Frimpong’s ruling was filed last year by the American Civil Liberties Union and several advocacy organizations, following widely criticized immigration raids across Los Angeles overseen by former Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino. Attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security have said those large-scale operations ended in February. Still, nationwide arrest numbers have continued to climb under the Trump administration’s expanded deportation push, hitting nearly 50,000 arrests in July — the highest monthly total of the administration, according to the Deportation Data Project. In California, arrests during that period were up more than 15 percent compared with the same time last year.
Attorneys representing those detained say the discrepancies between agents’ official arrest narratives and body camera footage were central to their case. In one example cited in Frimpong’s ruling, an agent claimed a worker identified as E.G.G. had tried to flee — but footage instead shows the man standing in place at the car wash the entire time, from when agents entered the business to when he was called over and detained. A supervising agent is heard on the recording telling the man, “We’re going to give you a ride, and check if everything is OK. If everything is OK, we’ll let you go” — a comment attorneys say reveals a pattern of arresting first and sorting out legal status afterward.
Other footage submitted in the case appears to show agents disregarding determinations already made by immigration courts. In one recording, an agent asks a colleague whether they are still detaining individuals who hold a notice to appear before an immigration judge — a document typically issued to people who have already been found not to pose a flight risk. Another agent responds bluntly that a pending court date does not matter, saying the person is subject to what he called a “custody redetermination.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued this showed agents were not merely failing to perform their own flight-risk evaluations, but actively overriding judicial findings that a person was safe to release.
In another episode captured on video, agents jumped from a rented Penske truck to detain workers in a Home Depot parking lot in August 2025. One man, identified in court records as Tijerino-Garmendia, was reported by the arresting agent as having no identification or verified home address. But according to attorneys, the footage shows the agent never actually asked him those questions — undermining the written justification for the arrest.
Attorneys for the ACLU say such gaps were common. In a review of arrest reports connected to the case, they found that roughly 80 percent lacked any genuine flight-risk analysis, instead relying on generic, repeated language that did not reflect what agents actually observed or asked in the field.
“This ruling is one of the most important decisions to date in the community’s effort to end the federal government’s cruel and illegal practice of abducting people and separating them from their families,” said Mayra Joachin, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.
Frimpong’s order requires agents going forward to document specific, individualized facts supporting their belief that a person was likely to flee before a warrant could be obtained. She stopped short, however, of requiring agents to detail community ties — such as employment, housing or family connections — as long as flight risk can be established through other means. She also declined to require documentation in cases where agents question someone but ultimately do not make an arrest.
Similar rulings restricting warrantless immigration arrests have been issued by federal judges in Oregon, Colorado and Washington, D.C. In two of those cases, courts later found that agents continued the practice despite the orders.
The Department of Homeland Security had requested a two-week delay before the new requirements take effect, citing the possibility of an appeal. Frimpong rejected that request, stating that the government could not reasonably claim to be harmed by simply being required to follow the law.
Original source: CalMatters
