Latino Workers Took ICE to Court Over Illegal Warrantless Arrests and a Federal Judge Just Ruled in Their Favor

A federal court has granted a preliminary injunction blocking the government from continuing its practice of conducting warrantless immigration arrests without first determining whether a person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained, according to the ACLU of Southern California, which represented plaintiffs in the case. The ruling in Vasquez Perdomo v. Mullin, which advocates are describing as one of the most consequential legal decisions in the ongoing fight over immigration enforcement in Southern California, also resulted in the court certifying a class of individuals who have been or will be arrested by federal agents for alleged immigration violations without a warrant and without an individualized escape risk assessment, covering arrests made since June 6th, 2025.

The court found that federal immigration agents are regularly skipping the escape risk analysis entirely, and that the evidence presented by plaintiffs demonstrated the policy is ongoing and systemic rather than a product of individual agents acting outside their authority. Sworn testimony from the government’s own agents supported that conclusion.

What Federal Law Actually Requires

Under federal law, immigration agents may make a warrantless civil immigration arrest only when they have probable cause to believe both that a person is undocumented and that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. That two-part requirement exists for a reason, and the court found that immigration authorities have been systematically ignoring the second part of it.

Evidence obtained during the case showed that of a sample of 113 arrest records produced by the government in discovery, nearly eighty percent either contained no escape risk assessment at all or relied largely on boilerplate language. Immigration authorities confirmed in sworn testimony that their practice is not to arrest individuals without independently assessing their risk of escape, which means the agencies acknowledged in court that they were not following their own stated standard. As a consequence of that gap between policy and practice, agents routinely failed to ask people about factors relevant to whether they could be arrested, including their jobs, families, homes and other community ties, which are precisely the kinds of circumstances federal law requires agents to consider.

The court order requires immigration agents to consider the totality of circumstances known to an agent before making an arrest, including escape risk, and to document their analysis of escape risk when conducting warrantless arrests in the Central District. It also specifically orders agents to stop relying on the escape risk standard set forth in a five-page memorandum from former acting director of ICE Todd Lyons, issued in January 2026, which the court found illegally suggested that merely being undocumented was sufficient to establish a likelihood of escape.

The Communities That Brought This Case Forward

The lawsuit was originally brought by five individual Latino workers and three membership organizations: the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, the Los Angeles Worker Center Network and the United Farm Workers, along with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center. The dozens of plaintiffs and class members who came forward to give sworn testimony about their own unlawful arrests were central to the court’s findings, and their willingness to go on record in a moment of widespread fear about immigration enforcement reflects a particular kind of courage.

United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero described the ruling as a reaffirmation that the raids targeting farmworkers across Southern California, which she characterized as racist attacks targeting working class people because of the color of their skin, should never have happened. She noted that the legal restraints established by the ruling will make workers safer from downtown Los Angeles to the fields of Oxnard and Coachella. Angelica Salas, executive director of CHIRLA, described the ruling as giving community members breathing room to go about their daily lives and provide for their families, while acknowledging that it represents one step in a longer pursuit of justice rather than a final resolution.

What the Ruling Means Going Forward

The preliminary injunction does not end the legal fight, and the organizations involved in the case were clear that they intend to monitor compliance with the court order closely and expect the federal government to abide by it. Mayra Joachin, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, described the ruling as one of the most important decisions to date in the community’s effort to end what she called the illegal practice of abducting people and separating them from their families, and said the order should put an end to hundreds of unlawful arrests that have been continuing throughout Southern California.

Lauren Michel Wilfong of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network described the administration as having jettisoned federal law in order to achieve mass deportation at any cost, and said the court rightfully recognized that the Department of Homeland Security was violating the law as a matter of policy rather than through isolated incidents. The plaintiffs are represented by a broad coalition of legal organizations including the ACLU of Southern California, Public Counsel, the UC Irvine School of Law Immigrant and Racial Justice Solidarity Clinic, NDLON, Munger Tolles and Olson LLP, Hecker Fink LLP, Martinez Aguilasocho Law and others.

The ruling establishes that immigration enforcement must operate within the law’s requirements rather than around them, and that communities have the legal standing and the capacity to hold enforcement agencies accountable through the courts. For the Latino workers across Southern California who have been living under the threat of warrantless arrest for over a year, the injunction is a concrete change in the legal landscape that governs their daily lives.