U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong indicated she is inclined to order agents to stop making warrantless arrests unless they first determine, individually, that a person is both likely undocumented and likely to flee before a warrant could be obtained. That standard has been required under federal law since 1946, but attorneys representing immigrants swept up in recent raids argue agents have been ignoring it altogether.

If finalized, the ruling would rank among the most consequential yet in a sprawling lawsuit challenging immigration enforcement tactics in the Los Angeles area, home to roughly 19 million people. It would force agents to fundamentally change how they approach arrests, requiring them to weigh a person’s ties to the community — including employment, housing and family — before detaining someone without a warrant.

Court records and body-camera footage cited in the case describe a pattern in which supervisors told agents to simply “go out and start detaining people,” resulting in agents targeting individuals with no knowledge of their immigration history. Many of those swept up were confronted at car washes, bus stops and other public places, with attorneys alleging agents relied on the appearance of being Latino as their main basis for stopping people.

Last month, attorneys for the plaintiffs submitted text messages and body-camera recordings showing federal agents using racist language to describe potential targets during Los Angeles-area operations, evidence they say reinforces claims that agents were profiling people based on race rather than any individualized suspicion.

Should Thursday’s tentative ruling be made permanent, Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong would become at least the fifth federal judge nationally to block the administration’s warrantless arrest practices, joining courts in Oregon, Colorado and Washington, D.C. In at least two of those cases, judges found that agents continued using the disputed tactics even after being ordered to stop.

This is not the first time the judge has intervened in the case. In July 2025, shortly after the raids began, she issued an order barring agents from detaining people based on factors such as apparent race, speaking Spanish or type of clothing worn. The U.S. Supreme Court later put that order on hold. Thursday’s ruling takes a different approach — rather than dictating who agents can stop, it would require them to document specific evidence of flight risk before making a warrantless arrest.

The latest ruling stems from a motion filed by attorneys representing immigrants detained during the Los Angeles raids, which began under then-Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino and drew national attention for their scale. Though public scrutiny has faded somewhat, the operations have continued into 2026 with less visibility.

Attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Counsel, among other organizations, reviewed 113 arrest reports submitted as evidence and found that nearly 80% contained no genuine assessment of flight risk, relying instead on boilerplate language.

In several of those reports, agents claimed a person was likely to flee because they supposedly ran from law enforcement, lived in a so-called sanctuary state, ignored commands, or simply because of their “unlawful presence in the United States.”

In multiple instances, the government’s own body-camera footage appeared to contradict the written arrest reports. In one case, an agent wrote that a man was “running in the opposite direction” during a warehouse raid in Pomona. Body-camera video, however, shows the man was not running and had significant mobility limitations, according to court filings.

In another example, an agent reported that a man was “fleeing” during an August 2025 raid at a Home Depot in the Westlake area. Video instead shows the man walking toward the agent while looking at his phone.

Federal officials have defended the warrantless arrests in sworn statements. A Border Patrol supervisor who oversaw the arrest of three men detained at a Pasadena bus stop testified that if a person “voluntarily admits” to being in the country illegally, that alone is sufficient grounds for an arrest without a warrant.

Just Walking the Dogs

As part of their motion, attorneys for the detained immigrants submitted hundreds of additional pieces of evidence, including previously unreleased body-camera footage, internal text messages and formal directives from ICE headquarters.

One video shows a group of federal agents moving through a parking lot before detaining a man walking two small, barking dogs. A woman nearby can be heard trying to explain that the man does have legal documentation — he simply didn’t have it with him because he had only stepped out to walk his dogs. An agent responds that he doesn’t understand. Another tells her, “It’s the law, ma’am,” and suggests she file a complaint with U.S. Border Patrol if she disagrees.

At no point in the footage do agents ask the man about his address, his job or whether he has family in the area — the kind of questions courts have said are required before someone can be arrested without a warrant.

Citing newly disclosed evidence, attorneys for the plaintiffs also argued that immigration officials have deliberately created poor conditions inside detention facilities to pressure detainees into agreeing to voluntary deportation.

One man, identified in a court declaration only by the initials DVV, said that while held at the ICE Processing Center in Adelanto, in San Bernardino County, he was repeatedly pressured to sign a document he did not understand.

“I asked to see the form. The second time, the agents took me to a meeting room where a man told me they would force me to sign if I refused,” DVV wrote in a sworn declaration filed with the court. “When I refused, they brought in a bigger man who said he would make me sign. It felt like they were trying to intimidate me.”

Other evidence submitted in the case points to lasting psychological harm. In one declaration, a tamale vendor who has lived in the United States for more than 30 years described the toll of being held for five months at Adelanto.

“I want to be strong and keep moving forward, but it’s very hard for me. I feel an overwhelming sadness. I’m not the same man I was before my detention. I feel like a stranger to myself. Sometimes I can’t hold back my emotions and I cry for a long time. At night, I can’t sleep,” he wrote.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Federal Judge Moves to Limit Immigration Detention Tactics Used in Los Angeles Raids appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The unanimous decision, issued Thursday, centers on Angela Hernandez, a Mexican citizen who had lived in the United States as a legal permanent resident for 19 years before her 2013 arrest on two drug trafficking charges in Kern County. At the time, Hernandez was 55 years old with a father, husband, children and grandchildren all living in the U.S.

During her plea hearing, Hernandez initialed a standard advisement form stating that a guilty plea could trigger deportation, a bar on reentry, and denial of naturalization — and that deportation was mandatory for certain offenses. A certified interpreter confirmed the document had been translated in full, and her defense attorney believed she understood its implications.

She pleaded guilty and served 27 days of a 180-day sentence. Two years later, with permission from the state parole department, she traveled to Mexico. When she attempted to return through Los Angeles International Airport, a customs official detained her and launched deportation proceedings.

Hernandez later told the court she had signed the form without grasping its consequences.

“Well, because if he’s my attorney and he tells me, ‘Sign here, initial here,’ I’m going to sign,” Hernandez testified, according to the court’s ruling. “I was also very nervous at that time.”

She spent years trying to get her conviction thrown out, arguing her attorney had failed to adequately represent her. Both a trial judge and an appellate court rejected that claim. But the state Supreme Court found legal errors in how those courts evaluated her case and reversed the rulings.

Writing for the majority, Justice Joshua Groban said that although Hernandez verbally agreed to the deportation warning during her plea hearing, her subsequent actions undercut any claim that she actually comprehended it.

“Her decisions to request and obtain permission from the parole department to leave the United States, travel to Mexico, and attempt to reenter lawfully through a port of entry support the inference that she did not ‘meaningfully understand’ the immigration consequences of her conviction,” Groban wrote.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had urged the court to uphold Hernandez’s conviction. But public defender organizations and immigrant advocacy groups filed briefs arguing that California courts have applied inconsistent standards when it comes to informing defendants about the immigration fallout of guilty pleas.

The court directed the 5th District Court of Appeal to send Hernandez’s case back to the trial court, which must now vacate her convictions.

In a separate opinion agreeing in part and dissenting in part, Justice Carol Corrigan called for Hernandez to present a fuller record once the case returns to the lower court.

“The trial court can resolve factual and credibility questions, then issue an appropriate ruling in light of all relevant evidence,” Corrigan wrote. “If the record demonstrates that the legal error impaired her ability to meaningfully understand and accept the immigration consequences of her plea, the motion should be granted.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Woman Pleaded Guilty to Drug Trafficking Charge, Then Learned Too Late She Couldn’t Return From Mexico appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The decision, handed down Thursday, centers on Angela Hernandez, a Mexican citizen who had lived in the United States as a legal permanent resident for 19 years before her 2013 arrest in Kern County on two drug charges. At the time, Hernandez was 55 years old with a father, husband, children and grandchildren all living in the U.S.

During her trial, Hernandez pleaded guilty and initialed a standard form warning that a non-citizen’s guilty plea could lead to deportation, exclusion from re-entry, or denial of naturalization. An interpreter certified that the document had been fully translated for her, and her defense attorney later told the court he believed she understood what she was signing.

But Hernandez maintains she never grasped what those consequences actually meant for her future.

“Well, because if he’s my attorney and he’s telling me, ‘Sign here, initial here,’ I’m going to sign,” Hernandez told the court, according to the ruling. “I was really nervous then too.”

Her plea resulted in a 180-day sentence, of which she served 27 days. Two years later, believing she had done nothing wrong by seeking permission, Hernandez asked the state probation department for approval to travel to Mexico — and received it. But when she tried to return home through Los Angeles International Airport, a customs official detained her and launched deportation proceedings.

Since that encounter, Hernandez has fought in court to have her original conviction reversed, arguing her attorney had failed her by not making sure she truly understood what she was agreeing to. Both a trial judge and an appellate court rejected her claims. The state’s highest court, however, saw it differently.

Writing for the majority, Justice Joshua Groban said Hernandez’s own actions after the plea — seeking permission to travel abroad, actually leaving the country, and then attempting to re-enter through an official port of entry — undercut any suggestion that she grasped the seriousness of what she’d agreed to.

“Her decisions to seek and obtain permission from the probation department to leave the United States, to travel to Mexico, and to attempt to lawfully reenter through a port of entry support an inference that she did not ‘meaningfully understand’ the immigration consequences of her conviction,” Groban wrote.

The ruling emphasized that simply checking boxes on a legal form isn’t sufficient — courts must be confident a defendant genuinely comprehends what a guilty plea could mean for their immigration status, not just that they verbally agreed to it in the moment.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had asked the court to leave Hernandez’s conviction intact. But public defender organizations and immigrant rights groups weighed in on her behalf, telling the court that California’s trial courts have applied inconsistent standards when informing defendants about the immigration risks tied to plea deals.

The Supreme Court has now ordered the 5th District Court of Appeals to send the case back to a trial court, which must vacate Hernandez’s convictions.

Justice Carol Corrigan, in a partial dissent, argued that Hernandez should still have to lay out a more complete case when her matter returns to the lower court.

“The trial court can resolve factual and credibility issues, then make a proper ruling considering all the relevant evidence,” Corrigan wrote. “If the record produced shows that legal error damaged her ability to meaningfully understand the immigration consequences of her plea and accept them, the motion should be granted.”

The case is likely to resonate with immigration attorneys and public defenders across the Inland Empire and greater Southern California, where large numbers of legal permanent residents navigate the criminal justice system each year — often without fully understanding how a single guilty plea can upend decades of life built in the United States.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Woman Who Pleaded Guilty to Drug Charge Barred From Returning After Mexico Trip appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a tentative ruling suggesting she is prepared to require agents operating in Los Angeles and surrounding communities — home to roughly 19 million residents — to make individualized assessments of flight risk before detaining someone without a warrant. If adopted, the order would force a significant shift in how agents have carried out immigration sweeps under the administration’s mass deportation push.

Federal law dating back to 1946 permits warrantless immigration arrests only when officers have probable cause both that a person is in the country illegally and that they are likely to flee before a warrant could be secured. Courts have interpreted this to mean agents must weigh factors such as a person’s job, housing situation, family ties and length of time living in the community.

But according to court records and body-camera footage reviewed in the case, supervisors overseeing raids in Southern California and elsewhere have instead instructed agents to simply “get out and start grabbing people.” Agents have been shown detaining individuals at car washes, bus stops and other public locations without first confirming their immigration status or evaluating whether they were flight risks. Attorneys representing immigrants swept up in the raids also submitted text messages last month showing agents using racial slurs to identify potential targets, arguing this showed enforcement was based largely on the appearance of being Latino.

Should Judge Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong finalize her ruling, she would become at least the fifth federal judge nationwide — joining courts in Oregon, Colorado and Washington, D.C. — to restrict the government’s use of warrantless immigration arrests. In at least two of those cases, agents were later found to have continued the practice despite court orders barring it.

This is not the judge’s first intervention in the case. In July 2025, shortly after the Los Angeles raids began, she issued an order prohibiting agents from stopping individuals based on race, Spanish-speaking ability or type of clothing — an order the U.S. Supreme Court later put on hold. Thursday’s tentative ruling takes a different approach: rather than addressing who agents may stop, it focuses on what information they must gather before deciding to make an arrest without judicial authorization.

The latest ruling stems from a motion filed by attorneys representing immigrants detained during the Los Angeles operation, which began under then-Border Patrol leader Gregory Bovino and has continued into 2026 with less media attention but similar tactics.

Lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Counsel reviewed 113 arrest reports obtained through the discovery process and found that nearly 80% either lacked any assessment of flight risk or relied on generic, copy-and-paste language. In several cases, agents cited a person’s “illegal presence in the United States,” claims that someone ran from officers, or the fact that they lived in a state with sanctuary policies as justification for skipping the warrant requirement.

In multiple instances, body-camera footage directly contradicted the written arrest narratives. During a raid at a Pomona warehouse, an agent claimed a man had been “running in the opposite direction,” but footage showed the man was not running and had limited mobility. In another case, from an August 2025 operation at a Home Depot in the Westlake district, an agent wrote that a man was “running away,” though video showed him walking toward the agent while looking at his phone.

In depositions tied to the case, federal officials defended the practice. A Border Patrol supervisor involved in the high-profile detention of three men at a Pasadena bus stop testified that a person simply acknowledging they were not a U.S. citizen was sufficient grounds for a warrantless arrest.

Newly released evidence submitted with the motion — including body-camera footage, internal text messages and directives from ICE leadership — offered additional examples of how arrests have unfolded. In one previously unreleased clip, a group of agents approach a man walking two small dogs in a parking lot. A woman nearby tells agents in Spanish that the man does have legal documentation, he simply didn’t bring it with him. When she says, “Salió a caminar sus perros” — he went out to walk his dogs — an agent responds that he doesn’t understand. Another agent tells her it’s simply “the law” and that she is welcome to file a complaint. At no point in the footage do agents ask the man where he lives, whether he has a job or whether he has family in the area — the kind of information courts have said is required before a warrantless arrest can be made.

Attorneys also raised concerns about conditions inside immigration detention facilities, arguing that poor treatment appears designed to pressure detainees into agreeing to voluntary deportation. One detainee, identified in court filings only by the initials D.V.V., said he was repeatedly pressured to sign paperwork he didn’t understand while held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County.

“I asked to see the form. The second time, the officers took me to a meeting room where a man told me they would force me to sign if I refused to sign,” he stated in a sworn declaration. “When I refused, they brought in a bigger man who said he would force me to sign. It seemed like they were trying to intimidate me.”

Another declaration described the lasting psychological toll of detention. A longtime tamale vendor who has lived in the United States for more than three decades wrote about the emotional aftermath of being held for five months at Adelanto.

“I want to be strong and move on, but I am struggling. I feel incredible sadness. I am not the same man I was before I was detained. I feel like a stranger to myself,” he wrote. “Sometimes I cannot hold in all my emotions and I just cry for a long time. At night, I can’t sleep.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Judge Set to Limit Immigration Agents’ Tactics in L.A. Raids appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The exhibit, titled “Help Wanted/Leave Now,” examines the mass deportation campaign carried out under President Eisenhower in 1954 and 1955 — an operation historians say removed roughly one million people, mostly from Latino communities across the Southwest, and remains the largest deportation effort in U.S. history. The federal government at the time gave the campaign an official name using a racial slur against Mexican immigrants.

The idea for the exhibit came from Pablo Espinoza, a former television journalist and Capitol staffer who now sits on the California Museum’s board. Years ago, while touring the museum’s exhibit on the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans with his son, Espinoza had a realization: he wanted to use that same kind of storytelling to document the 1950s deportation campaign, a piece of history he felt had largely been forgotten.

Espinoza, who immigrated from Ecuador on a student visa before building a career in Spanish-language television and later working for the Assembly Speaker’s office, said he believed he could easily have been swept up in the 1950s raids had he been living in California at the time.

“That could have happened to me. That could have happened to my son. We look the part,” he said.

For years, the timing never felt right to pitch the exhibit. Now, museum officials say, it couldn’t be more relevant.

The exhibit pairs video testimony from people deported in the 1950s with accounts from immigrants detained and removed from the country within the past year, drawing striking parallels between the two eras. Visitors will see firsthand accounts of families torn apart, aggressive detentions based on appearance, and federal agents using slurs against the people they were removing — practices that mirror recent reporting on immigration enforcement tactics in Los Angeles, where leaked texts and audio last month revealed agents using similar language during raids.

The Eisenhower-era campaign came about a decade after wartime labor shortages had prompted the federal government to expand the Bracero Program, which brought Mexican workers into the U.S. to fill agricultural jobs. But amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment — echoed decades later in Trump’s own 2024 campaign rhetoric about immigrants “taking jobs” from Americans — officials reversed course and launched sweeping deportation raids. Detainees were often crammed onto ships and trucks under brutal conditions; some died of heatstroke during transport. Today’s immigrant advocates report similarly overcrowded detention facilities with inadequate medical care.

Among the personal stories featured is that of Victor Ochoa, a longtime San Diego artist and activist who was deported as a 7-year-old U.S. citizen in 1954. Ochoa’s mother had urged the family to avoid speaking Spanish in public as deportations intensified, fearing it would draw attention. Federal agents nonetheless showed up at the family’s East Los Angeles home and gave them three days to leave the country voluntarily or face forced removal. Though Ochoa was born in the U.S., his parents were Mexican nationals, and the family chose to leave rather than risk a more violent deportation.

“I remember they scared my mother so much, and she cried after they left,” Ochoa told CalMatters.

The experience shaped the rest of his life, pushing him into decades of activism, including his role in the creation of San Diego’s Chicano Park. He credits the schools he attended in Tijuana with instilling in him a critical perspective on the United States that later influenced his work as a muralist. Ochoa said he now volunteers with groups supporting undocumented immigrants and is troubled by reports of agents detaining parents near San Diego schools, calling the current enforcement climate “more aggressive” than what he witnessed as a child.

The exhibit also features Vilma Palacios, 23, who was detained by immigration agents in June 2025 — just about a week before she was set to begin a nursing job at a hospital in New Orleans. Palacios came to the U.S. at age 6 and spent much of her childhood in Orange County before finishing high school in Louisiana and graduating from Louisiana State University. After spending six months in detention fighting her case, she ultimately agreed to be deported to Honduras.

“They said they were going after criminals and people with records, not people who have dedicated their whole lives to this country and their careers to serving the community. I never thought it would go this far,” she told CalMatters.

Palacios’ story didn’t end in Central America, however. Professional contacts from her nursing career helped her secure a hospital job in British Columbia, where she now lives. She said she views the current crackdown as a loss for the country. “These are good people being deported. There are good people in America who just want to contribute and make the country better, and they’re being sent away.”

Espinoza said his own views on immigration shifted over the years after meeting people who crossed the border simply to support their families, with no realistic path to legal status. In those situations, he said, immigration “isn’t really a choice at all — it exposes the injustice of a system that offers no path to citizenship for people who are economically vulnerable but who provide an important service to this country.”

He hopes the exhibit will move visitors the way the Japanese American incarceration exhibit once moved him and his son, Adrian, who died in 2024 at age 25. The two used to debate politics together, something Espinoza said his son claimed to dislike even though “he was always engaged.”

As the exhibit opens, Espinoza said he keeps thinking of his son. “In the end, I hope people see this with their kids and think, ‘What else can I do?'”

Original source: CalMatters

The post New Exhibit Highlights Californians Caught in Mass Deportation Raids, Decades Apart appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

“Help Wanted/Leave Now” opened this week and examines Operation Wetback, the sweeping 1950s deportation campaign carried out under President Dwight Eisenhower, alongside present-day immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump. The exhibit’s title captures the whiplash nature of U.S. immigration policy, which has long welcomed migrant labor in some periods only to expel it aggressively in others.

The display features firsthand video testimony from people swept up in the 1954 deportation effort, paired with accounts from immigrants detained and removed just last year. Among them is Vilma Palacios, who arrived in the United States at age 6 and was deported in 2025. “It was just one person stopping me that changed my whole life,” she says in the exhibit.

Visitors walking through the exhibit are likely to notice uncomfortable similarities between the two eras, including the racially charged rhetoric immigration agents used decades ago and language that continues to surface in enforcement efforts today.

One notable difference lies in how California’s political leadership has responded. In the 1950s, then-Gov. Goodwin Knight supported Eisenhower’s deportation drive, framing it as a way to protect jobs for California residents. In a 1954 letter to the Eisenhower administration, the state’s employment department director wrote, “We congratulate you and we are happy to have been of service during your wetback drive.”

That stands in sharp contrast to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration, which has taken a far more adversarial stance toward the current federal deportation push.

Pablo Espinoza, a trustee with the California Museum, said the timing of the exhibit is significant, coming as the Trump administration pushes back against the Smithsonian Institution’s portrayal of historical events tied to racism. “I think it’s fantastic that California is leading the way to bring transparency and accountability,” Espinoza said.

The exhibit invites visitors to reflect on how immigration policy has shifted over generations — and how those shifts continue to reshape lives on the ground in California today.

In other news, a hard-fought congressional race is unfolding in San Francisco to succeed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, pitting two self-described progressive Democrats against each other. San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan and state Sen. Scott Wiener may share a party label, but their visions for addressing the city’s housing crisis diverge sharply.

Wiener, a leading figure in the pro-housing YIMBY movement, has authored legislation aimed at cutting red tape for new construction and has steered billions of dollars toward affordable housing during his time chairing the Senate budget committee. He argues the state must step in when local governments fail to build enough housing to meet demand.

Chan takes a more cautious approach, having frequently opposed new development projects in San Francisco. She points to the city’s mid-20th-century “urban renewal” efforts in the Fillmore district, which displaced much of the city’s Black community, as a cautionary tale. Chan says her focus is on protecting tenants and small businesses that could be uprooted by new construction.

Meanwhile, a debate is brewing over how California schools should spend $1 billion in annual arts education funding approved by voters through 2022’s Proposition 28. Former Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner, who authored the ballot measure, is opposing Assembly Bill 2440, arguing it would weaken the funding requirements he wrote into law by giving school districts too much flexibility in how the money is spent.

Supporters of the bill counter that it would resolve confusion many districts have faced since Prop. 28 took effect, including mismatches between the state’s definition of arts education and what the measure originally intended. Some school officials have said they fear legal exposure if they misstep in how they allocate the funds — a concern underscored by Beutner’s own lawsuit last year accusing Los Angeles Unified of improperly using Prop. 28 dollars to replace, rather than supplement, existing arts funding.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Decades Apart, Same Fate: California Families Uprooted by Deportation Under Trump and Eisenhower appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

“Help Wanted/Now Leave” opened this week, documenting the 1954-55 federal deportation campaign that swept up an estimated 1 million people, most of them Latino residents of the Southwest. The exhibit’s title references the government’s own name for the operation at the time, which used a racial slur against Mexican immigrants. Museum organizers are pairing that history with video testimony from people detained and deported under President Donald Trump’s current immigration enforcement push — a campaign Trump has said would surpass the scale of the Eisenhower-era sweep.

The idea for the exhibit came from Pablo Espinoza, a member of the California Museum’s board of trustees, who first envisioned it years ago while touring the museum’s exhibit on the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans with his son. A former television journalist and Capitol staffer who has spent his career documenting Latino experiences in California, Espinoza said he recognized himself in the history of the 1950s deportations.

“That could have happened to me. That could have happened to my son. We look the part,” he said.

It took years to bring the project to fruition. Now, Espinoza said, the exhibit’s message feels more urgent than he ever anticipated.

The Eisenhower administration’s deportation campaign followed closely on the heels of World War II labor shortages that had prompted the U.S. government to expand the Bracero program, which brought Mexican laborers into the country to fill agricultural and industrial jobs. Within a decade, however, political leaders — including then-California Gov. Goodwin Knight — began casting unauthorized immigrants as competitors for jobs held by American workers, a rationale echoed in Trump’s own campaign rhetoric before his 2024 election victory.

Agents in the 1950s moved quickly, herding people onto trucks and boats bound for Mexico; some deportees died of heat exposure during the journey. Today, immigrant advocates say detainees are often held in overcrowded facilities without adequate medical care. Then, as now, witnesses have described immigration sweeps that targeted people based on how they looked or sounded rather than any specific evidence of legal status. Last month, leaked text messages and audio recordings revealed present-day immigration agents in Los Angeles using slurs strikingly similar to the language embedded in the 1950s operation’s official name.

Among the personal stories featured in the exhibit is that of Victor Ochoa, a San Diego artist and longtime activist who was deported as a 7-year-old U.S. citizen in 1954. Ochoa recalled his mother urging the family to avoid speaking Spanish in public as deportation raids intensified. Federal agents eventually arrived at their East Los Angeles home and gave the family three days to leave the country voluntarily or be forcibly removed. Though Ochoa had been born in the United States, his parents were Mexican immigrants, and the family chose to leave together rather than risk separation.

“I remember them scaring the hell out of my mom, and she cried after they left,” Ochoa said.

That experience shaped the rest of his life. Ochoa later helped found San Diego’s Chicano Park and has spent decades as a muralist and advocate for immigrant communities. He said recent reports of agents detaining parents near San Diego schools have unsettled him deeply.

“It’s meaner now,” he said, comparing the current crackdown to what his family endured in the 1950s.

The exhibit also highlights a more recent case: Vilma Palacios, a 23-year-old nursing graduate who was detained by immigration agents in June 2025, just days before she was set to begin a new job at a New Orleans hospital. Palacios had come to the United States at age 6 and grew up largely in Orange County before finishing high school in Louisiana and earning her degree from Louisiana State University. After spending six months in detention, she agreed to be deported to Honduras.

“They were saying we’re coming for criminals and people with criminal backgrounds, not people who have dedicated their whole life to the U.S. and their career to serving the community. I never thought it would get to that point,” Palacios said.

Her story didn’t end there — she eventually found work through her nursing network at a hospital in British Columbia, where she now lives. Still, she views her removal as a broader loss.

“These are good people that are being sent back,” she said. “There are good people in the U.S. that just want to contribute and make it better, that are being deported.”

For Espinoza, who came to the United States from Ecuador on a student visa before building a career in television news and later at the Assembly Speaker’s Office, the project reflects a personal evolution. He once believed immigrants should simply wait their turn for citizenship, but said his views shifted after meeting people who crossed the border out of necessity, with no realistic legal pathway available to them.

“It isn’t a choice at all, and it highlights the unfairness of an immigration system that doesn’t provide a path to citizenship for folks that are vulnerable economically yet are providing an important service to this country,” he said.

Espinoza said he hopes visitors leave the exhibit the way he did years ago at the Japanese American internment display — moved enough to reflect and act. He often thinks of his son Adrian, who died in 2024 at age 25 and who joined him on that formative museum visit years earlier.

“In the end I’m hoping maybe people see this with their children and then think, ‘What else can I do?'” Espinoza said.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Decades Apart, Californians Describe Being Caught in Immigration Raids appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

In a decision issued this week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the federal government has, for more than three decades, drawn a clear legal distinction between immigrants apprehended at the border and those detained after living inside the United States. That long-standing practice, the court said, has been abandoned under the current administration’s approach.

Historically, immigrants caught at the border have faced rapid detention and removal, often without a court hearing. Those already living within the U.S., by contrast, have generally been permitted to post bond and remain with their families while their immigration cases are pending.

The Trump administration has erased that distinction, treating both groups the same way — a shift that has packed immigration detention facilities beyond capacity and flooded federal courts with thousands of petitions from detainees seeking release, according to court records and prior CalMatters reporting.

Writing for the majority, Ninth Circuit Judge Daniel Bress — a Trump appointee — noted that some of the immigrants swept up in the policy have lived in the United States for years. While acknowledging that federal immigration statutes contain conflicting language on the issue, Bress pointed to decades of consistent government practice as the deciding factor.

“We have 30 years of action here — the government has actively treated undocumented immigrants present in the interior of the country as people entitled to bond hearings,” Bress wrote in the opinion.

The case originated with immigrants held in the Seattle area, but the ruling applies broadly across the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction, which covers much of the western United States, including California.

The panel’s decision was far from unanimous, splitting 2-1, underscoring a broader divide among federal courts nationwide over how to interpret detention law for immigrants living inside the country. Given that lower courts have reached conflicting conclusions on the matter, legal observers expect the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately be asked to weigh in and settle the question.

CalMatters reporter Lynn La contributed to this report.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Court Rules Trump’s Mass Immigrant Detention Policy Breaks With 30 Years of Legal Precedent appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

In a decision issued this week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that federal officials broke with more than three decades of established practice by refusing to hold bond hearings for many immigrants detained well inside the country’s borders, rather than at ports of entry or border crossings.

The distinction matters greatly to those caught up in the system. Immigrants apprehended right at the border can generally be detained and quickly removed without ever appearing before an immigration judge. But those picked up farther inland — often people who have lived and worked in local communities for years — have historically had the option to post bond and return home to their families while their cases proceed through the courts.

Under the current administration, that line has been erased. Immigration officials have treated interior detentions the same as border arrests, denying bond hearings across the board. The result, according to the ruling, has been overcrowded detention facilities and a surge of legal filings as detainees and their attorneys seek release through the courts — a trend that has been especially visible in Southern California, where immigration detention centers and federal courthouses have absorbed much of the burden.

Writing for the majority, 9th Circuit Judge Daniel Bress, a Trump appointee, acknowledged that federal immigration statutes contain conflicting language on the matter. But he said the government’s own history of enforcement told a clearer story than the text of the law alone.

“We have 30 years of action — the government actively treating unadmitted aliens present in the interior of the country as entitled to bond hearings,” Bress wrote in the opinion.

He also noted that many of the immigrants affected by the policy have deep roots in the United States, having lived here for extended periods before being taken into custody.

The case originated with detainees held in the Seattle area, but the ruling’s reach extends throughout the 9th Circuit’s jurisdiction, meaning it applies directly to immigration detention practices in California and the broader Inland Empire.

The court’s decision was far from unanimous, splitting 2-1 among the panel of judges — a division that reflects a broader split among federal courts nationwide on how to interpret detention law under the current administration. Because lower courts have reached inconsistent conclusions on the issue, legal observers widely expect the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately be asked to settle the question.

For now, the ruling represents a notable check on one of the administration’s signature immigration enforcement strategies, and it could reshape how detention and bond decisions are handled for immigrants held in facilities throughout the region in the months ahead.

Original source: CalMatters

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Mexican citizen Maria de Jesús Estrada Juárez was among the hundreds of thousands of people shielded from deportation under an Obama-era program allowing people brought to the U.S. as children to stay in the country if they generally stay out of trouble.

But that changed Feb. 18 when she showed up for an immigration hearing and was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and deported the next day.

“I didn’t get to say goodbye,” the 42-year-old mother said at a news conference Tuesday in Sacramento. “It all happened so fast. This has been one of the most painful experiences of my life.”

Estrada Juárez held hands with her daughter and began to choke up as she recounted those experiences.

“It’s hard to describe what it feels like to lose your mother so suddenly, especially when you believed she was safe,” said Damaris Bello, Estrada Juárez’s 22-year-old daughter. “It was like grieving someone who was still alive.”

The federal government has deported dozens of recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA, during President Donald Trump’s second term, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The events come amid the Trump administration’s reshaping of immigration policy more broadly.

Immigration advocates say Estrada Juárez’s removal highlights the need to offer more permanent protections for DACA recipients, often referred to as “Dreamers.”

The case is a rare example of a judge ordering a person’s return to the United States after being deported, said Talia Inlender, deputy director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law.

“But, perhaps unsurprisingly, it feels like this is happening with more frequency under the current administration which is prioritizing speed and quotas, rather than fairness and process, in facilitating removals,” Inlender said in a statement.

The federal administration said Estrada Juárez was deported because of a 1998 removal order when Estrada Juárez was a teenager, shortly after she arrived in the U.S. She was sent to Mexico at the time but returned to the U.S. weeks later and has had DACA status since 2013. Federal officials reinstated the 1998 order in February after arresting her.

Estrada Juárez spent the next few weeks after being deported with relatives, stressed about being separated from her daughter.

“You can’t enjoy life when the most important part of your life is not there,” she said.

U.S. District Judge Dena Coggins, who was appointed by then-President Joe Biden, issued a temporary restraining order on March 23, giving the federal government seven days to facilitate Estrada Juárez’s return to the U.S. Her deportation was a “flagrant violation” of her DACA protections and infringed upon her due process rights, Coggins wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security has defended the deportation.

“ICE follows all court orders,” a department spokesperson said in a statement. “This is yet another ruling from a Biden-appointed activist judge.”

But Estrada Juárez wasn’t aware of the 1998 order, which her lawyer argues wasn’t final.

“DACA gives you a vested right to not be deported once it’s granted,” said Stacy Tolchin, an immigration attorney based in Pasadena, California. “I really don’t understand what they’re doing.”

Bello, who was reunited with her mother Monday night, said she is recovering from the events and hopes other families don’t have to endure the same thing.

“Having her back home means everything to me,” she said. “It means we can begin to heal, to rebuild and to move forward together as a family.”

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