The Trump administration has asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to block a federal injunction that limits how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents can conduct immigration sweeps across Southern California. The injunction, issued after lawsuits from local residents and advocacy groups, restricts ICE from targeting people based on their ethnicity, language, accent, or location. The sweeps, which began last month, focused on sites such as Home Depot parking lots, car washes, and bus stops, leading to widespread protests when citizens and legal residents were detained alongside undocumented immigrants.
During a virtual hearing, the three-judge panel pressed Deputy Assistant Attorney General Yaakov Roth on whether ICE had quotas for daily arrests and on the tactics used during the raids. Judges questioned whether operations that rely on locations with high numbers of Hispanic day laborers amount to profiling and violate the Fourth Amendment. Roth denied that ICE engaged in profiling, insisting agents act on reasonable suspicion and that many encounters were consensual. Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued that the mass, armed presence of agents makes such encounters coercive and that these sweeps unfairly target legal residents. The panel indicated a decision will be issued soon and asked for clarification on whether ICE field offices had been given an arrest target of 3,000 people per day.