Judge blocks warrantless immigration arrests without escape-risk finding

A federal judge in Los Angeles has barred immigration agents from making warrantless civil arrests without first determining that a person is likely to flee before a warrant can be obtained, finding the government likely adopted a practice that bypassed a requirement of federal immigration law.

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong granted in part a preliminary injunction requiring agents to consider the circumstances of each arrest and document the facts supporting any finding that a person is likely to escape. The order also bars agents from treating unlawful immigration status alone as sufficient evidence of flight risk.

"The Government is regularly abstaining from conducting a likelihood of escape analysis at all," Frimpong wrote. "Put another way, it matters little that such an analysis could be individualized and wide-ranging when Defendants, as a policy matter, are not conducting the analysis."

Federal law permits immigration officers to make warrantless arrests when they have reason to believe a person is unlawfully in the country and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has interpreted "reason to believe" as requiring probable cause.

The injunction came in Vasquez Perdomo v. Mullin, 2:25-cv-05605, a class action brought by individual workers and organizations including the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, United Farm Workers and Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. The court certified a class covering people who have been or will be arrested since June 6, 2025, without a warrant and without an individualized escape-risk assessment.

Frimpong found evidence that agents relied on three related practices: failing to conduct escape-risk assessments, treating unlawful immigration status as sufficient to establish flight risk and making inaccurate assertions to justify arrests.

The record included internal ICE text messages. One agent wrote, "We have been instructed to encounter[,] ask for id[;] if they are not us citizen[,] apprehend them." An ICE deportation officer testified that agents "are able to take a collateral into custody as long as we are able to establish alienage."

Plaintiffs reviewed 871 government-produced documents involving 113 arrestees and found 41 contained no reference to escape risk. Of the 72 that did, 48 closely followed a template.

They also presented video evidence that they said contradicted several written arrest narratives. In one instance, a report described a car wash worker's "flight from law enforcement," while video showed him standing in place until an agent called him over.

Frimpong concluded that allowing unlawful status alone to establish flight risk would effectively eliminate the statute's separate escape requirement.

The judge stopped short, however, of granting all the relief plaintiffs sought. She declined to invalidate a January 2026 ICE memorandum in its entirety and rejected their argument that the memo's definition of "likely to escape" was itself unlawful.

Frimpong also declined to prohibit boilerplate language in escape-risk assessments, although she said boilerplate unsupported by an actual individualized analysis is impermissible. She rejected a request to require officers to inquire about community ties and declined to find that workplace arrests categorically prevent agents from establishing escape risk.

Mayra Joachin, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, said the order could prevent hundreds of warrantless arrests.

"By requiring immigration agents to follow the law's requirement to make escape risk determinations before they can arrest someone without a warrant, this court order should put an end to hundreds -- if not more -- of unlawful arrests that continue throughout Southern California," Joachin said.

Annie Lai, director of the Immigrant and Racial Justice Solidarity Clinic at UC Irvine School of Law, said the ruling did not end the broader legal fight over immigration enforcement.

"That fight is as urgent as ever," Lai said. "Even as we celebrate this court order and the courage of all those who are willing to hold the government accountable, we know there is much hard work ahead."

ICE referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security, whose spokesperson said in an email to the Daily Journal that ICE has authority for lawful arrests where authorized under 8 USC 1357.

"Law enforcement officers use 'reasonable suspicion' to investigate immigration status and probable cause to make arrests consistent with the statute and the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution," the spokesperson wrote. "The Supreme Court has already vindicated us on these practices."

Vasquez Perdomo v. Mullin, 2:25-cv-05605 (C.D. Cal., filed June 20, 2025).