Overview
- U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong denied the government's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, allowing the challenge to continue after a written ruling on Aug. 12 found the plaintiffs’ claims sufficient to proceed.
- In a tentative ruling Thursday, Frimpong said agents must make individualized, pre-arrest determinations of flight risk before carrying out warrantless arrests in Los Angeles and nearby counties, and some reports say she issued an order to that effect.
- Plaintiffs relied on discovery including 113 arrest narratives, body camera video and text messages that they say show nearly 80% of arrest records lacked meaningful escape-risk assessments or used boilerplate language and include footage that contradicts agents’ reports.
- The Department of Justice told the court it has no written or unwritten policy of mass warrantless arrests and asked the judge to stay any new order so it can consider an appeal.
- The requirement to document flight risk rests on a long-standing 1946 federal rule that warrants are unnecessary only when an officer has probable cause of unlawful presence and a real chance the person will escape, and similar rulings in other districts mean this could narrow how DHS, ICE and Border Patrol conduct sweeps and affect families and workers caught up in raids.