Opinion: Judge Frimpong’s Decision a Guiding Light at a Dark Hour

The immigration agents wouldn’t leave Jorge Hernandez Viramontes and his coworkers alone. They had already visited his workplace in Orange County, California, a couple times. Then, while he was working at the car wash on June 18, on the third visit, the authorities allegedly questioned Viramontes and detained him.

But there’s a catch. Viramontes was not nabbed for a crime or even for being in the U.S. without documentation. In fact, he is a U.S. citizen.

Viramontes and others detained around the same period in California — including at least one other U.S. citizen — argue they were swept up for the color of their skin, their accents and, in some cases, for speaking Spanish. And, the plaintiffs say, they were often held without opportunity for proper legal representation.

The case happened 3,000 miles away from Boston, but residents here – immigrants and citizens alike – and all over the United States, should pay close attention. After all, this is not the first time a U.S. citizen has been allegedly nabbed and held for a period of time – even a few minutes is too long – on suspicion of being in the U.S. illegally. It happened to a Hispanic man in Florida in April. And to a disturbing number of others, according to news reports. And it’s likely not the first time someone was apparently stopped for their looks, as we suspect happened in this case. In January, Navajo people – yes, people indigenous to the land – said they were questioned and detained by ICE, according to news reports.

So the idea that Viramontes and his peers were denied their rights feels both obvious and like one more example in a disturbing trend of “immigration enforcement.”

Now, in an eerily lonely affirmation of Constitutional rights in a time of absurd and horrifying political rhetoric, a federal judge so far has sided with Viramontes and his group of plaintiffs who earlier this summer filed a suit against the highest of government officials. In the suit’s sights are Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other federal authorities.

It all started in early June, as immigration agents began descending on the area of California, repeatedly, over several weeks. In one instance, alledge the plaintiffs in the case, agents arrived in unmarked cars and pointed their guns at a group and demanded identification, but did not explain why. In another, they stopped people in a group but let those who appeared to be Caucasian go away.

“Agents and officers approach suddenly and in large numbers in military style or SWAT clothing, heavily armed with weapons displayed, masked, and with their vest displaying a generic ‘POLICE’ patch (if any display at all)” and, allegedly, the “Agents typically position themselves around individuals, aggressively engage them, and/or shout commands, making it nearly impossible for individuals to decline to answer their questions.”

Over June many hundreds of people were picked up by immigration agents in the area. Nearly 2,800 people were arrested by ICE and Customs and Border Patrol in the LA. area since early June, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. Many were allegedly processed in a cramped and crowded holding area where they were allegedly regularly denied access to lawyers — including a detainee who was scheduled to get chemotherapy treatment the next day.

In her lengthy decision, Judge Maame E. Frimpong of the U.S. District Court for Central California, ultimately found that immigration officials allegedly failed to allow access to attorneys at that federal building location — “Room B-18” — where people swept up in the raids were being held. She also found that those people nabbed were at times apparently picked up and held without any reasonable suspicion of being in the U.S. illegally or for committing any sort of crime — but for their appearance and for speaking languages other than English.

Think about that for a moment and what that means — that detainees were apparently being held as they might be in an authoritarian — or at least highly corrupt government — and that they were probably picked up in the first place not for wrongdoing but on the basis of being an ethnic or racial minority.Judge Frimpong said that it’s perfectly legal for immigration authorities to conduct “large scale” enforcement efforts like it did in its recent spectacle in L.A. But, she said, it cannot violate the Fourth Amendment (making an arrest without a reasonable cause) and Fifth Amendment (denying access to an attorney) in the process. This is true, she said, no matter what someone’s legal status is in the United States — citizen, immigrant, undocumented resident. Politicians might have you believe that rights don’t apply to “illegals” but they do. Just as someone who actually commits a crime has the right to a lawyer and the right not to be arrested simply for the color of their skin or their accent, so does everyone else in the U.S.

“Is it illegal to conduct roving patrols which identify people based upon race alone, aggressively question them, and then detain them without a warrant, without their consent, and without reasonable suspicion that they are without status? Yes, it is,” writes the judge.

In the end she tells Noem and friends to cut it out. At least in one district in California. At least, for now.And this part of the decision bears reprinting, for anyone who has forgotten such rights still exist here, in this nation, at this time:

“As required by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, Defendants shall be enjoined from conducting detentive stops in this District unless the agent or officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person to be stopped is within the United States in violation of U.S. immigration law” and that the agents “may not rely solely on the factors below, alone or in combination, to form reasonable suspicion for a detentive stop, except as permitted by law:

i. Apparent race or ethnicity;

ii. Speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent;

iii. Presence at a particular location (e.g. bus stop, car wash, tow yard, day laborer pick up site, agricultural site, etc.) or

iv. The type of work one does.”

But we’re not in the clear yet. This was but one temporary injunction, in one jurisdiction, and for one time. And, with the expected ramp up in ICE after the passage of the big U.S. spending bill and the aggressive raids and sweeps of late, the story of what happens next has yet to be written.