Newsom responds after court blocks indiscriminate immigration stops in California
How did your country report this? Share your view in the comments.
Diverging Reports Breakdown
Gavin Newsom Says ‘Justice Prevailed’ After Judge Blocks Indiscriminate Immigration Stops
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) cheered on a federal judge who ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to stop indiscriminate immigration arrests in several California counties. “California stands with the law and the Constitution — and I call on the Trump Administration to do the same,” Newsom wrote on X. U.S. District Court Judge Maame E. Frimpong blocked the Trump administration from conducting what advocates called unconstitutional tactics in immigration raids. The White House says it plans to appeal the order, claiming “no federal judge has the authority to dictate immigration policy.” “We expect this gross overstep of judicial authority to be corrected on appeal,’’ a White House spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times. ‘This is a win for Los Angeles and it is a wins for cities all across the nation’ – Mayor Karen Bass. � “L.A. has been under assault as masked men snatch people off the street and chase people through parking lots and summer camps.’
“Justice prevailed today,” Newsom wrote on X. “The court’s decision puts a temporary stop to federal immigration officials violating people’s rights and racial profiling.”
Newsom then concluded with a request for Trump.
“California stands with the law and the Constitution — and I call on the Trump Administration to do the same,” he said.
Justice prevailed today.
The court’s decision puts a temporary stop to federal immigration officials violating people’s rights and racial profiling.
California stands with the law and the Constitution — and I call on the Trump Administration to do the same. https://t.co/z63Paoi1Kq — Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) July 12, 2025
U.S. District Court Judge Maame E. Frimpong blocked the Trump administration from conducting what advocates called unconstitutional tactics in immigration raids. Those advocates brought a lawsuit against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other immigration officials.
The emergency order blocks immigration officials from making arrests solely based on apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent, the work a person does, or presence at a particular location, such as a day laborer pick-up site.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called Frimpong’s order “a win for Los Angeles” and “a win for cities all across the nation.”
L.A. has been under assault as masked men snatch people off the street and chase people through parking lots and summer camps.
But today, the Court ruled in favor of the United States Constitution.
This is a win for Los Angeles and it is a win for cities all across the nation. pic.twitter.com/MrCkwQFb13 — Mayor Karen Bass (@MayorOfLA) July 12, 2025
Frimpong also barred immigration officials from restricting attorney access at a Los Angeles immigration detention facility known as B-18 after several lawyers raised alarms about not being able to speak with their clients.
“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,” Frimpong wrote in her ruling.
The White House says it plans to appeal Frimpong’s order, claiming “no federal judge has the authority to dictate immigration policy.”
“Enforcement operations require careful planning and execution; skills far beyond the purview or jurisdiction of any judge,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, told the Los Angeles Times. “We expect this gross overstep of judicial authority to be corrected on appeal.”
Frimpong’s order comes amid several Trump-appointed immigration officials promoting constitutionally questionable immigration enforcement practices. Trump border czar Tom Homan recently boasted on Fox News that immigration law enforcers don’t need “probable cause” to “briefly detain” someone.
“They just go through the observations, get articulable facts based on their location, their occupation, their physical appearance, their actions,” Homan said.
Earlier in June, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller,instructed ICE agents to focus their raids on Home Depot and 7-Eleven locations as a way to increase arrest numbers.
Newsom called out Miller and the Trump administration’s cruel immigration enforcement methods in a separate Friday post from his press office, calling their agenda “one of chaos, cruelty and fear.”
“Instead of targeting the most dangerous people, federal officials have been arbitrarily detaining Americans and hardworking people, ripping families apart, and disappearing people into cruel detention to meet outrageous arrest quotas without regard to due process and constitutional rights that protect all of us from cruelty and injustice,” Newsom wrote. “That should stop now.”
NEW: @CAGovernor Gavin Newsom on this victory for justice and rights tonight:
“Justice prevailed today — the court’s decision puts a temporary stop to federal immigration officials violating people’s rights and racial profiling.”
“Stephen Miller’s immigration agenda is one of… https://t.co/QkSD7gEywc — Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) July 12, 2025
Related…
Gavin Newsom’s Press Office Calls Stephen Miller A ‘Fascist Cuck’ Amid Rumors About His Wife And Elon Musk
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s official press account called President Donald Trump’s top immigration adviser Stephen Miller a “fascist cuck” on Friday. The comments were a possible reference to unsubstantiated online rumors that Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, had become romantically involved with billionaire Elon Musk. The term “cuck,” which derives from the word ‘cuckold,’ is used to describe a person whose spouse is engaging in sexual activity with another person. The official X account for the Democratic party reacted to this by posting an image known as the “Cuck chair” meme, which is meant to represent a hotel room chair where a person would sit.
The online feud Friday sparked when Miller called U.S. District Court Judge Maame E. Frimpong a “communist” on X after she ordered the Trump administration to stop conducting indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests.
The ruling has just been issued. A communist judge in LA has ordered ICE to report directly to her and radical left NGOs — not the president. This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people. https://t.co/pkEjl7lEP4 — Stephen Miller (@StephenM) July 12, 2025
“This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people,” Miller wrote.
ADVERTISEMENT
In response to Miller’s statement, Newsom’s press office called the White House deputy chief of staff a different “c” word.
“This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the Constitution, and his attempt to replace the sovereignty of the people with autocracy,” the office wrote on X.
This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the Constitution, and his attempt to replace the sovereignty of the people with autocracy.
Sorry the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen.
Cry harder. https://t.co/3a4pvYftxb — Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) July 12, 2025
The term “cuck,” which derives from the word “cuckold,” is used to describe a person whose spouse is engaging in sexual activity with another person. It’s also used as a more general insult towards men, suggesting weakness.
The comments were a possible reference to unsubstantiated online rumors that Miller’s wife, Katie Miller — who Musk selected as a Department of Government Efficiency official — had become romantically involved with the billionaire during his time as a special government employee.
ADVERTISEMENT
When Musk stepped down from DOGE, Katie Miller also left, opting to take a new job at Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI.
Around the time his wife left DOGE, Miller posted on X defending Trump’s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which had been slammed heavily by Musk.
The official X account for the Democratic party reacted to this by posting an image known as the “cuck chair” meme, which is meant to represent a hotel room chair where a person would sit while watching their partner have sex with someone else.
On Friday, Newsom cheered on Frimpong’s ruling, saying ‘justice prevailed’ and that “California stands with the law and the Constitution,” calling on the “Trump Administration to do the same.”
ADVERTISEMENT
“Sorry the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen,” his press office wrote on Friday. “Cry harder.”
Related…
Gavin Newsom’s Press Office Calls Stephen Miller A ‘Fascist Cuck’ Amid Rumors About His Wife And Elon Musk
For two decades, HuffPost has been fearless, unflinching and relentless in pursuit of the truth. Support our mission to keep us around for the next 20 — we can’t do this without you.
We remain committed to providing you with the unflinching, fact-based journalism everyone deserves.
Thank you again for your support along the way. We’re truly grateful for readers like you! Your initial support helped get us here and bolstered our newsroom, which kept us strong during uncertain times. Now as we continue, we need your help more than ever. We hope you will join us once again.
Federal judge halts indiscriminate immigration stops in Los Angeles and beyond
Ruling by U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong is widely hailed by immigrant rights groups and California Democrats. The White House said it would challenge the ruling. The orders cover Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. If adhered to, the ruling would stop immigration agents from roving around Home Depots and car washes, stopping brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking day laborers and others to arrest on immigration charges. The judge has not yet ruled on a request by Los Angeles city, county and seven other municipalities to join the lawsuit against the Trump administration. The ruling came at a particularly fraught moment as details of the largest work-site enforcement raid since the crackdown began to emerge. A man who fell 30 feet from a greenhouse roof during the raid was gravely injured and the FBI is investigating whether shots were fired at federal agents during the protest.“Justice prevailed today,” Gov. Gavin Newsom posted about the ruling on Friday evening.
In a searing ruling against the Trump administration, a federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests that advocates say have terrorized Angelenos, forced people into hiding and damaged the local economy.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, an appointee of President Biden, was widely hailed by immigrant rights groups and California Democrats, who have been in a pitched battle with the administration over recent sweeps through Southern California immigrant neighborhoods.
Advertisement
If adhered to, the ruling would stop immigration agents from roving around Home Depots and car washes, stopping brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking day laborers and others to arrest on immigration charges, as they have been for the past month.
“Justice prevailed today,” Gov. Gavin Newsom posted about the ruling on X Friday evening.
“The court’s decision puts a temporary stop to federal immigration officials violating people’s rights and racial profiling,” he wrote. “California stands with the law and the Constitution — and I call on the Trump Administration to do the same.”
The orders cover Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. Following the ruling, groups that have been monitoring the immigration sweeps reported none as of Saturday afternoon.
Advertisement
The White House said it would challenge the ruling.
“No federal judge has the authority to dictate immigration policy — that authority rests with Congress and the President,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman. “Enforcement operations require careful planning and execution; skills far beyond the purview or jurisdiction of any judge. We expect this gross overstep of judicial authority to be corrected on appeal.”
In her ruling, Frimpong said she found a sufficient amount of evidence that agents were using race, language, a person’s vocation or the location they are at, such as a car wash, Home Depot, swap meet or row of street vendors, to form “reasonable suspicion” — the legal standard needed to detain someone. Frimpong said the reliance on those factors, either alone or in combination does not meet the requirements of the 4th Amendment.
“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,” she said.
Advertisement
Frimpong ordered federal agents not to use those factors to establish reasonable suspicion to detain people. And that all those in custody at a downtown detention facility known as B-18 must be given 24-hour access to lawyers and a confidential phone line.
U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, who has brought charges against protesters at the raids, blasted the ruling on X.
“We strongly disagree with the allegations in the lawsuit and maintain that our agents have never detained individuals without proper legal justification,” he wrote. “Our federal agents will continue to enforce the law and abide by the U.S. Constitution.”
Advertisement
The ruling came at a particularly fraught moment as details of the largest work-site enforcement raid since the crackdown began to emerge.
Agents arrested around 200 suspected undocumented immigrants at two cannabis operations on Thursday, and prompted a tense standoff between authorities and hundreds of protesters in Ventura County. A man who fell 30 feet from a greenhouse roof during the raid was gravely injured and the FBI is investigating whether shots were fired at federal agents during the protest.
Although the order is temporary, the coalition will seek a preliminary injunction that would make it more permanent. The judge has not yet ruled on a request by Los Angeles city, county and seven other municipalities to join the lawsuit.
Advertisement
“Los Angeles has been under assault by the Trump Administration as masked men grab people off the street, chase working people through parking lots and march through children’s summer camps,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement Friday evening. “We went to court against the administration because we will never accept these outrageous and un-American acts as normal.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, Public Counsel, other groups and private attorneys filed the lawsuit on behalf of several immigrant rights groups, three immigrants picked up at a bus stop and two U.S. citizens, one of whom was held despite showing agents his identification .
“I think it’s the most important decision in the history of the country about limitations on what immigration authorities can do when they carry out operations,” said Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer with Public Counsel. “It means that they can’t racially profile, they can’t treat car wash workers and nannies as illegally in the country just because of who they are. It means that those whom they sweep into detention have to have access to attorneys right away. And it means that the Constitution is not a dirty word. It’s brought the rule of law back to Los Angeles.”
The plaintiffs argued in their complaint that immigration agents cornered brown-skinned people in Home Depot parking lots, at carwashes and at bus stops across Southern California in a show of force without establishing reasonable suspicion that they had violated immigration laws. They allege agents didn’t identify themselves, as required under federal law, and made unlawful warrantless arrests.
Advertisement
Once someone was in custody, the complaint argues, their constitutional rights were further violated by being held in “deplorable” conditions at B-18 without access to a lawyer, or regular food and water.
Frimpong firmly agreed with the plaintiffs, saying they were likely to succeed in trial.
Since June 6, immigration agents have arrested nearly 2,800 undocumented individuals, according to data released by the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday. A Times analysis of arrest data from June 1 to 10 found that 69% of those arrested during that period had no criminal conviction and 58% had never been charged with a crime.
The sweeps have paralyzed parts of the city where high numbers of immigrants work.
Earlier in the day, before the order was issued, Tom Homan, Trump’s chief advisor on border policy, responded to the tentative ruling, telling Fox News: “If the judge makes a decision against what the officers are trained, against what the law is based upon,” he said that it would “shut down operations.”
Advertisement
He echoed government attorneys who argued that agents, in deciding whether to stop a person, can consider location, vocation, clothing, whether they run, and other factors.
“ICE officers and Border Patrol don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them,” he said. “They just need the totality of the circumstances.”
He said agents receive training on the 4th Amendment every six months.
Justice Department attorney Sean Skedzielewski, in an hours-long hearing Thursday afternoon, said he would seek a $30-million bond, should the order be granted in order to train agents to comply with it. Frimpong wrote in her decision she would reject the government’s request, since the restraining order doesn’t require training, only “compliance with existing law.”
Advertisement
During the hearing, Frimpong took issue with Skedzielewski’s lack of specific evidence to refute accusations of indiscriminate targeting.
When he argued that “these are sophisticated operations” and seemed to say that arrests stemmed from particular people who were being targeted, she questioned how that could be true.
In other cases where local and federal law enforcement are targeting people for crimes, the judge pointed out, there are reports after an arrest “as to why they arrested this person, how they happened to be where they were and what they did.”
Advertisement
“There doesn’t seem to be anything like that here, which makes it difficult for the court to accept your description of what is happening, because there is no proof that that is what is happening as opposed to what the plaintiffs are saying is happening,” Frimpong said.
Skedzielewski argued the lack of evidence is why the court should not grant a temporary restraining order. The government, he argued, had only “a couple days” to try to identify individuals mentioned in the court filings.
“We just haven’t had a chance to identify in many cases who the people stopped even were, let alone — over a holiday weekend — get ahold of the agents,” he said.
Advertisement
Frimpong didn’t seem moved and questioned the government’s reliance on two high-ranking officials who have played a key role in the raids in Southern California: Kyle Harvick, a Border Patrol agent in charge of El Centro, and Andre Quinones, deputy field office director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Their declarations, she said, were “very general” and “did not really engage with the pretty high volume of evidence that the plaintiffs have put in the record of the things we have all seen and heard on the news.”
“If there’s any one of these people and there was a report about ‘this is how we identified this tow yard, parking lot and so on,’ that would have been helpful,” Frimpong said. “It’s hard for the court to believe that in the time that you had, you couldn’t have done that.”
Advertisement
Skedzielewski said the evidence is replete with instances of stops, but “it is not replete with any evidence that those stops or that the agents in any way failed to follow the law.”
He said agents’ actions were “above board.”
Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, told the judge that agents cannot solely use a person’s workplace, their location or the particular work they’re doing as reasons to stop people.
Tajsar added that it was because of the government’s “misunderstanding of the law” that they’d made so many stops of U.S. citizens, including Brian Gavidia, a named plaintiff who was detained by Border Patrol agents outside of a tow yard in Montebello.
Advertisement
Tajsar said Gavidia, who was present in the courtroom during the hearing, was stopped “for no other reason than the fact that he’s Latino and was working at a tow yard” in a predominantly Latino area.
“Because of this fundamental misunderstanding of the law from the government, we have seen so many unconstitutional and unlawful arrests,” Tajsar said.
Tajsar also pushed back on the government attorneys saying they didn’t have enough time, stating that “they had time and they have all the evidence.”
Advertisement
In the court filing of the county and cities trying to join the suit, including Pasadena, Montebello, Monterey Park, Santa Monica, Culver City, Pico Rivera and West Hollywood, they countered that the raids haven’t actually been about immigration enforcement, but are instead politically driven “to make an example” of the region for “implementing policies that President Donald J. Trump dislikes.”
They cited Trump’s post on his social media platform where he calls on immigration officials to do “all in their power” to achieve “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History” by expanding efforts to detain and deport people in Los Angeles and other cities that are “the core of Democrat power.”
Late Friday evening, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, a Santa Monica native widely viewed as the architect of the sweeping immigration crackdown, responded to the order on X.
Advertisement
“A communist judge in LA has ordered ICE to report directly to her and radical left NGOs — not the president,” he wrote. “This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people.”
Judge Orders Trump Administration to Halt Indiscriminate Immigration Stops, Arrests in California
The American Civil Liberties Union says the recent wave of immigration enforcement has been driven by an “arbitrary arrest quota” The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says “enforcement operations are highly targeted, and officers do their due diligence” Lawyers from Immigrant Defenders Law Center and other groups say they also have been denied access to a facility in downtown LA known as “B-18” It will also require officials to open B-18 to visitation by attorneys seven days a week and provide detainees access to confidential phone calls with attorneys, the court documents say. The order will temporarily prevent the government from solely using apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, presence at a location such as a tow yard or car wash, or someone’s occupation as the basis for reasonable suspicion to stop someone. The judge issued a preliminary injunction in April against warrantless arrests in a large swath of eastern California.
When detaining the three day laborers who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit, all immigration agents knew about them is that they were Latino and were dressed in construction work clothes, the filing in the lawsuit said. It goes on to describe raids at swap meets and Home Depots where witnesses say federal agents grabbed anyone who “looked Hispanic.”
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in an email that “any claims that individuals have been ‘targeted’ by law enforcement because of their skin color are disgusting and categorically FALSE.”
McLaughlin said “enforcement operations are highly targeted, and officers do their due diligence” before making arrests.
After the ruling, she said “a district judge is undermining the will of the American people.”
ACLU attorney Mohammad Tajsar said Brian Gavidia, one of the U.S. citizens who was detained, was “physically assaulted … for no other reason than he was Latino and working at a tow yard in a predominantly Latin American neighborhood.”
Tajsar asked why immigration agents detained everyone at a car wash except two white workers, according to a declaration by a car wash worker, if race wasn’t involved.
Tajsar also said advocates in the Bay Area should take note.
“If ICE and Border Patrol engage in these practices, say in Alameda County or in San Francisco, there is a really good legal footing for communities to actually go to court to prevent this from happening,” he said.
Representing the government, attorney Sean Skedzielewski said there was no evidence that federal immigration agents considered race in their arrests, and that they only considered appearance as part of the “totality of the circumstances,” including prior surveillance and interactions with people in the field.
In some cases, they also operated off “targeted, individualized packages,” he said.
“The Department of Homeland Security has policy and training to ensure compliance with the Fourth Amendment,” Skedzielewski said.
Order opens facility to lawyer visits
Lawyers from Immigrant Defenders Law Center and other groups say they also have been denied access to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in downtown LA known as “B-18” on several occasions since June, according to court documents.
Public Counsel lawyer Mark Rosenbaum said in one incident on June 7 attorneys “attempted to shout out basic rights” at a bus of people detained by immigration agents in downtown L.A. when the government drivers honked their horns to drown them out and chemical munitions akin to tear gas were deployed.
Skedzielewski said access was only restricted to “protect the employees and the detainees” during violent protests and it has since been restored.
Rosenbaum said lawyers were denied access even on days without any demonstrations nearby, and that the people detained are also not given sufficient access to phones or informed that lawyers were available to them.
He said the facility lacks adequate food and beds, which he called “coercive” to getting people to sign papers to agree to leave the country before consulting an attorney.
Friday’s order will temporarily prevent the government from solely using apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, presence at a location such as a tow yard or car wash, or someone’s occupation as the basis for reasonable suspicion to stop someone. It will also require officials to open B-18 to visitation by attorneys seven days a week and provide detainees access to confidential phone calls with attorneys.
Attorneys general for 18 Democratic states also filed briefs in support of the orders.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents were already barred from making warrantless arrests in a large swath of eastern California after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction in April.
This story includes reporting from KQED’s Keith Mizuguchi.