In late May 2025, the Trump administration set an arbitrary quota of 3,000 people a day to carry out its mass deportation agenda.  Shortly after, in a pattern of highly coordinated, unlawful immigration raids unfolded across Southern California. Agents—often driving unmarked cars, while wearing masks, and refusing to identify themselves — approached individuals at homes, in public spaces, at workplaces or near courthouses and detained them, sometimes violently, on the spot, and many times without a warrant.  

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Even people who were in immigration proceedings and complying with the law, U.S. citizens, and people with lawful status were stopped, questioned, and detained. This mass enforcement campaign has upended families, traumatized communities, and undermined the rule of law. The government has offered no justification beyond vague security claims and has refused to disclose proof that their actions are justified under the law. 

What's Happening?

We're fighting back.

On July 2, 2025, five individual workers as well as three membership organizations and a legal services provider—The Los Angeles Worker Center Network, United Farm Workers (UFW), the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), and Immigrant Defenders Law Center—filed a lawsuit, Vasquez-Perdomo v. Noem which alleges that DHS has unconstitutionally arrested and detained people in order to meet arbitrary arrest quotas set by the Trump administration, all while denying them access to legal counsel. 

Immigrant Defenders Law Center, alongside  the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, Public Counsel, The Law Offices of Stacy Tolchin, UC Irvine School of Law Immigrant and Racial Justice Solidarity Clinic, National Day Laborer Organizing Network, ACLU Foundations of Northern California and San Diego & Imperial Counties, Hecker Fink LLP, Martinez Aguilasocho Law, Inc, and The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA)  are representing the plaintiffs. The lawsuit asserts that immigration agencies violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution by unlawfully stopping individuals based on race and carrying out arrests without warrants or individualized assessment of flight risk, probable cause, or due process, and then denying these individuals access to counsel. 

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The named plaintiffs include immigrants who were wrongfully detained and subjected to racial profiling. Their stories reflect a broader crisis of government overreach and constitutional violations. This case seeks not only to stop these unlawful practices, but to affirm core principles of our democracy: that no one is above the Constitution, all people must have access to counsel, and no one should be targeted because of how they look, what language they speak, or where they work.