In a dramatic escalation of the legal and political battle over immigration enforcement in California, thirteen additional cities have joined a growing coalition led by Los Angeles to challenge the federal government’s controversial “roving” immigration raids. The coalition’s lawsuit, which now includes cities like Pasadena, Santa Monica, Culver City, Pico Rivera, Montebello, Monterey Park, and West Hollywood, alleges that federal agents have engaged in unconstitutional, racially motivated stops and raids targeting Latino communities across Southern California.
The dispute centers on enforcement tactics used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) since June 6, 2025. According to the Los Angeles Times, these agencies have conducted aggressive operations at car washes, parking lots where day laborers congregate, and garment factories—locations where immigrant workers are likely to be found. The raids have sparked widespread fear and disruption, prompting city leaders and civil rights groups to take swift legal action.
“Since these illegal raids started in L.A. on June 6, I have maintained that every person in the United States, regardless of immigration status, is entitled to constitutional protection from the types of enforcement activities we have seen,” Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto declared during a City Hall news conference on August 8, 2025. “We will always stand up to protect our communities and to uphold the rule of law.”
The legal action, originally filed last month by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Public Counsel, and other civil rights attorneys, accuses ICE and CBP of conducting stops and roundups “without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.” The coalition’s complaint has quickly grown to include cities from across the region—Long Beach, Pomona, South Gate, Lynwood, Huntington Park, Paramount, Bell Gardens, Beverly Hills, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, and Oxnard—reflecting the widespread concern about federal tactics.
Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse voiced the anxieties of his city and others, noting that the raids have “discouraged community participation, reduced access to essential services and negatively impacted the local economy.” He further highlighted the unsettling use of masked law enforcement officers, which has “raised concerns about false detainment by impersonators and undermined public trust.” Rowse emphasized that while the city supports the enforcement of established laws, it “strongly objects to the methods being used and is filing a petition to intervene … joining other jurisdictions in defending constitutionally protected rights and ensuring accountability in enforcement practices.”
The legal battle intensified after U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order last month, barring federal authorities from conducting the so-called “roving raids” in Los Angeles and eight other California counties. Judge Frimpong’s order was based on what she described as “a mountain of evidence” that the government’s aggressive enforcement tactics likely violated people’s Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures, as reported by CalMatters.
Specifically, the restraining order prohibits federal immigration officers from relying on race, ethnicity, language, or location/employment—either alone or in combination—as factors for reasonable suspicion. The decision was a significant blow to the Trump administration’s approach, which had argued that these factors could legitimately be used to identify individuals for immigration enforcement.
In an emergency appeal filed on August 7, 2025, the Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the restraining order, arguing that it poses a “straitjacket” on agents and “threatens to upend immigration officials’ ability to enforce the immigration laws … by hanging the prospect of contempt over every investigative stop of suspected illegal aliens.” The administration’s brief, according to The New Republic, went so far as to assert that “apparent ethnicity can be a factor supporting reasonable suspicion in appropriate circumstances,” and that “officers might reasonably rely on the fact that someone exclusively speaks Spanish to support reasonable suspicion that the person is here illegally.”
The administration also claimed—without citation—that about 10 percent of the Central District of California’s population is illegally present, justifying heightened enforcement. The brief insisted that ICE agents “are entitled to rely on these factors when ramping up enforcement of immigration laws in the District.” Critics, including civil rights groups and immigrant advocates, have condemned the argument as blatant racial profiling.
“This is basically a racial profiling case: Can Latinos be shaken down in their communities and where they live because they look Latino?” Kevin R. Johnson, director of the Aoki Center on Critical Race and Nation Studies at UC Davis School of Law, told CalMatters. He noted that the federal government’s own filings acknowledge the use of ethnicity and language as enforcement triggers, a stance that has alarmed many in California’s diverse communities.
The legal struggle has already seen several twists. Last week, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the federal government’s request to reverse the restraining order. In response, the Trump administration turned to the Supreme Court, seeking emergency relief. The high court’s decision—expected in the coming weeks—could have far-reaching consequences for how immigration laws are enforced not only in California but potentially nationwide.
Meanwhile, the impact of the raids and the legal uncertainty continues to reverberate throughout Southern California. According to CalMatters, since the start of the raids in June, heavily armed agents—sometimes masked and dressed in military-style uniforms—have detained immigrants and U.S. citizens alike at Home Depots, Latino markets, and other community gathering spots. In some cases, agents filmed the arrests and shared the videos on social media, set to hip hop music. Even after the restraining order, federal agents found ways to continue their operations, including a recent “Trojan Horse” raid where officers hid inside a Penske truck before ambushing people at a Home Depot in Sacramento. That operation resulted in the arrest of 16 individuals from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, who led the LA operations, has made clear the administration’s intent to persist. “There is no sanctuary anywhere,” Bovino declared after a July 17 raid in Sacramento. “We’re here to stay. We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to affect this mission and secure the homeland.”
For immigrant communities and their allies, the stakes could hardly be higher. As Mohammad Tajsar, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, put it: “The federal government has now gone running to the Supreme Court asking it to undo a narrow court order—applicable in only one judicial district—that merely compels them to follow the Constitution.”
A hearing on a preliminary injunction is scheduled for September 24, 2025. If granted, it could extend the protections currently in place, shielding communities from what many see as discriminatory and destabilizing enforcement practices—at least as the legal fight continues its way through the courts.
As the Supreme Court weighs its next move, the outcome will shape not only the daily reality for millions of Californians but also the national debate over the boundaries between public safety, civil rights, and immigration enforcement in America.