The Justice Department was grilled by an appeals court panel Monday over its bid to pause restrictions on immigration raids in Los Angeles that were put in place by a federal district court order.
A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, made up of Judges Ronald Gould, Marsha Berzon, and Jennifer Sung — two appointees of former President Bill Clinton and one appointee of former President Joe Biden — expressed skepticism over the DOJ’s arguments for a stay pending appeal of the lower court’s order.
The Justice Department asked the appeals court panel to stay an injunction from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, which blocked federal immigration officers from relying on apparent race, language spoken, location, or job as sole reasons to inquire about a person’s immigration status.
DOJ lawyer Jacob Roth faced intense scrutiny from the panel during the nearly 90-minute hearing. The questioning largely stemmed from Judges Berzon and Sung about how the scope of the lower court’s injunction limits immigration enforcement and what the Justice Department alleges was unlawful about the lower court’s ruling.
The DOJ lawyer argued that suspicion for conducting immigration enforcement using one of the four factors restricted by the injunction always comes with additional context, and that cases should not be restricted with a blanket formula for Fourth Amendment concerns.
“The locations are always going to be informed by some context or background or experience or surveillance or intelligence or experience in the field, they’re going to be picked for some reason,” Roth said during the hearing.
The DOJ lawyer called the lower court’s injunction “fundamentally flawed on multiple levels” and argued that the district court did not find the suing parties had a “real immediate threat of a suspicionless stop” sufficient to grant the injunction.
Roth was sharply questioned by the skeptical panel for the majority of the hearing, but the lawyer representing the people suing the Trump administration over immigration operation tactics did present his argument to the judges.
Mohammad Tajsar, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California who represented the people challenging immigration enforcement in Los Angeles, argued the appeals court should uphold the injunction.
Tajsar pointed to comments by Department of Homeland Security officials stating that immigration enforcement will continue as evidence that it is not an emergency for the appeals court to pause the lower court’s injunction.
COURTS STILL FINDING WAYS TO ISSUE SWEEPING INJUNCTIONS MONTH AFTER SUPREME COURT RULING
“It’s not clear why we’re on an emergency sort of posture here. The problem is, for them, nothing will change, but for us, everything will change,” Tajsar said. “There are more than there are more than a dozen cities and counties who have come into this court and said that there’s an extraordinary amount of fear and trepidation and injury that’s happened throughout Southern California.”
The appeals court panel did not offer a timeline for a decision on the motion for stay at the conclusion of the hearing, but said it would rule quickly. If the appeals court declines to grant the Trump administration’s stay of the order, the Justice Department could seek an appeal to the Supreme Court.