The Volokh Conspiracy
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Federal Court Rules Against Racial Profiling in "Roving" Immigration Enforcement Raids
Racial profiling is a longstanding problem, exacerbated by Trump Administration deportation policies.
On July 11, Federal District Court Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong (Central District, California) issued an important ruling imposing a temporary restraining order racial profiling in "roving" immigrant enforcement raids. Here is her summary of the issues in the case:
On June 6, 2025, federal law enforcement arrived in Los Angeles to participate in what federal officials have described as "the largest Mass Deportation Operation … in History…" The individuals and organizations who have brought this lawsuit argue that this operation had two key features, both of which were unconstitutional: "roving patrols" indiscriminately rounding up numerous individuals without reasonable suspicion and, having done so, denying these individuals access to lawyers who could help them navigate the legal process they found themselves in. On this, the federal government agrees: Roving patrols without reasonable suspicion violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and denying access to lawyers violates the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. What the federal government would have this Court believe—in the face of a mountain of evidence presented in this case—is that none of this is actually happening.
Most of the questions before this Court are fairly simple and non-controversial, and both sides in this case agree on the answers.
• May the federal government conduct immigration enforcement—even large scale immigration enforcement—in Los Angeles? Yes, it may.
• Do all individuals—regardless of immigration status—share in the rights guaranteed by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution? Yes, they do.
• Is it illegal to conduct roving patrols which identify people based upon race alone, aggressively question them, and then detain them without a warrant, without their consent, and without reasonable suspicion that they are without status? Yes, it is.
• Is it unlawful to prevent people from having access to lawyers who can help them in immigration court? Yes, it is.
There are really two questions in controversy that this Court must decide today.
First, are the individuals and organizations who brought this lawsuit likely to succeed in proving that the federal government is indeed conducting roving patrols without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers? This Court decides—based on all the evidence presented—that they are.
And second, what should be done about it? The individuals and organizations who have brought this lawsuit have made a fairly modest request: that this Court order the federal government to stop.
For the reasons stated below, the Court grants their request.
Interestingly, the Trump Administration, in this case, did not argue that their use of racial profiling is legal, but rather denied it was doing it. As Judge Frimpong explains, that denial goes against "a mountain of evidence" indicating people are being detained and denied access to counsel largely because they are or appear to be Hispanic, speak Spanish, or the like.
This case has been appealed, and there are complex procedural issues, such as the appropriate scope of the TRO. But Judge Frimpong is surely right about the basic point that extensive racial profiling has occurred, and is unconstitutional.
I should, perhaps, note that in this post, I don't try to distinguish between discrimination based on race, and that based on ethnicity (e.g. - Hispanics are more the latter than the former). The law treats these two types of discrimination the same, and there is no good moral reason to distinguish between, either. And, as a practical matter, the two often overlap, as ethnic discrimination and profiling often targets people based in part on "racial" appearance (e.g., in this case, people who look like they are Hispanic).
Racial profiling by law enforcement is a longstanding problem, one not limited to immigration enforcement. Survey data and other evidence indicates that a large majority of Black American males, and also many Black women, and Hispanics, have been victims of profiling at one time or another.
Racial profiling in immigration enforcement is particularly egregious, because it is the one area where racial discrimination is officially approved government policy, at least within so-called "border" areas, which actually encompass places where over two-thirds of the population of the United States lives. In 2014, the Obama Administration considered banning racial profiling in immigration enforcement, but - wrongly - chose not to. They made a terrible mistake, which I criticized at the time.
While the problem isn't new, it has - as the egregious facts of this case show - become worse under the second Trump Administration, with their efforts to impose daily detention quotas, and massively increase deportation, putting pressure on ICE and other agencies to deport as many people as possible. That has predictably led to an upsurge of indiscriminate arrests, most of them targeting people who have never committed any crimes, and many who are present in the US legally or even US citizens. It also, obviously, incentivizes further use of crude shortcuts, including racial profiling.
I have, for many years, argued that racial profiling is unconstitutional, and urged people - including conservatives and my fellow libertarians - to take the issue more seriously, and give it a high priority (see, e.g., here, here, and here). I summarized some of the reasons why in a 2022 post:
In previous posts, I have explained why racial profiling in immigration enforcement is harmful and unjust, and also why racial profiling is a great evil more generally, and unconstitutional, to boot. Progressives, conservatives, and libertarians all have good reason to condemn the practice.
If you're a conservative - or anyone else - committed to color-blindness in government policy (a commitment I share), you cannot make an exception for law enforcement...
If you truly believe that it is wrong for government to discriminate on the basis of race, you cannot ignore that principle when it comes to those government officials who carry badges and guns and have the power to kill and injure people. Otherwise, your position is blatantly inconsistent. Cynics will understandably suspect that your supposed opposition to discrimination only arise when whites are the victims, as in the case of affirmative action preferences in education.
I don't think I need to explain in detail why libertarians should be opposed to racial profiling in immigration enforcement, or law enforcement more generally. All our usual concerns about law enforcement abuses become even more pressing when racial discrimination enters the mix - especially if that discrimination is openly condoned by policy. And, of course, libertarians are no fans of immigration restrictions generally.
Finally, if you're a progressive, and you believe ending racial discrimination in the criminal justice system is an important priority, you cannot make an exception for immigration enforcement in so-called "border" areas [as the Obama Administration did] that actually encompass areas where the vast majority of Americans live. You especially should not do so, given the long history of racial and ethnic bias in immigration policy.
When it comes to immigration enforcement, there is a deeper problem arising from the fact that most immigration restrictions inherently restrict people's liberty based on morally arbitrary circumstances of ancestry and place of birth. For that reason, they are unjust for much the same reasons as racial discrimination is unjust - even in cases where the exclusionary policies in question are not explicitly based on race or ethnicity.
Current law and Supreme Court precedent doesn't allow a quick and easy solution to that problem, though the ultimate long-term solution is to overturn the awful Chinese Exclusion Case, which wrongly held that the federal government has a general power to bar immigration, even though no such power is enumerated anywhere in the Constitution. I describe some possible ways to do that in this article.
That probably won't happen anytime soon. In the meantime, however, there is much all three branches of government can do to curb racial profiling, in both immigration policy, and other aspects of law enforcement.
