Several Hispanics and progressive organizations in New York filed a class action lawsuit on Wednesday against the Trump administration over allegations that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is illegally targeting people for arrest due to their race.
“Across the state, roving bands of masked and heavily-armed federal agents, both on foot and in unmarked cars, are indiscriminately stopping and arresting thousands of Black and Brown people, the vast majority of whom are Latino, based solely on their perceived race and ethnicity,” the New York lawsuit reads. “The Constitution forbids this type of stereotyping: ‘even noncitizens must be treated equally as individuals, and not as members of racial, ethnic, or religious groups.’”
ICE stands accused of violating the Fourth and Fifth amendments, which grant people due process and protection from unreasonable searches and seizures in their interactions with law enforcement.
Eight individual Hispanic plaintiffs and a coalition of civil liberties groups filed the lawsuit against the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, is similar to a lawsuit brought against ICE in the District of Columbia. It comes as ICE continues to face intense scrutiny for how it operates, after the agency faced bipartisan pushback over how it handled multiple lethal encounters with U.S. citizens in Minnesota earlier this year.
The plaintiffs are seeking to halt what they described as “suspicionless stops and warrantless immigration arrests without probable cause.” Multiple plaintiffs named in the lawsuit were arrested without a warrant, despite following all laws at the time of their detention, according to the filing, which alleged that in the first six months of 2026, ICE arrested 2,888 noncitizens in the greater New York City area, more than triple the number of arrests in the last six months of the Biden administration. The rate of arrests has only increased since then, according to court documents.
New York Attorney General Letitia James weighed in on the new lawsuit, telling multiple outlets that “New Yorkers should be able to go about their daily lives without fear of being targeted by masked federal agents because of the color of their skin.”
The plaintiffs claimed that, during the Trump administration, ICE has established checkpoints in multiple Queens neighborhoods where “agents hid in unmarked cars near commercial thoroughfares and at busy intersections, jumping out to stop and arrest Latinos as they walked by while permitting non-Latinos to pass undisturbed.”
“On the sidewalks of Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island, parking lots in Buffalo, and elsewhere throughout the State, agents categorically stop Black and Brown individuals who appear to be Latino, while permitting non-Latino white people to pass undisturbed,” the lawsuit reads.
The DHS denied accusations that ICE racially profiles to carry out arrests in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
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“Any allegations ICE law enforcement engages in racial profiling are FALSE,” a spokesperson said. “ICE has authority for lawful arrests under 8 USC 1357. Law enforcement officers use ‘reasonable suspicion’ to investigate immigration status and probable cause to make arrests consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court has already vindicated us on these practices.”
The lawsuit was filed by the Legal Aid Society, the New York Civil Liberties Union, Make the Road New York, and Covington & Burling.