Los Angeles joins federal immigration case against Trump administration

Los Angeles and seven nearby cities will join a federal class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration that alleges the federal government is using illegal tactics while conducting sweeping immigration raids across the county.

The case, filed last week last week by immigration and civil rights organizations in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, asks the court to prevent the federal government from using “unlawful tactics to achieve its intended arrest numbers” in Los Angeles, including racial profiling and excessive use of force.

“I don’t want to say it’s my pleasure to be here with you, because it’s not,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said at a Tuesday news conference with City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto and several mayors from around Los Angeles County.

Feldstein-Soto said that June 6 — when federal officers began ramped-up enforcement in the region, sparking protests — marked the beginning of a “completely frightening and new reality” for Angelenos.

“We are concerned about how they are carrying out immigration enforcement. We are not interfering with immigration enforcement,” she said.

The city’s move comes a day after heavily armed federal forces descended on the city’s MacArthur Park, raising the tensions between California officials and the Trump administration.

“I got alerted that there was an ICE operation, military intervention — who knows — at MacArthur Park. I turned around. We went to the park,” Bass said on Monday. “I could see a helicopter in the air. I think it was a Black Hawk helicopter. And I saw military tanks.”

The mayor’s office said it is not aware of any arrests made at Monday’s showing. A senior DHS official declined to comment on “ongoing enforcement operations.”

Attorney General Rob Bonta, along with 17 other states, filed an amicus brief in the lawsuit Monday, asking a court to block federal agents from using what they say are unconstitutional and unlawful stops during immigration sweeps, sometimes detaining legal residents.

“The actions of ICE and CBP during the raids in Los Angeles are part of a cruel and familiar pattern of attacks on our immigrant communities by an administration that thrives on fear and division,” Bonta said in a statement. Bass has for weeks been calling on Trump to pull federal agents, National Guard and Marines from Los Angeles, saying their presence has stoked widespread fear and outrage in the city.

Jeannette Zanipatin, director of policy and advocacy at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, estimated on Monday that more than 2,300 Angelenos have been “uprooted from their homes and communities.”

Previous efforts to challenge the Trump administration over the federal presence in Los Angeles have not been successful. In June, a federal appeals courtblocked Gov. Gavin Newsom’s effort to reclaim control of 4,000 National Guard troops after they were deployed by Trump.