A federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that a tactic used by federal immigration agents in Southern California to arrest people in their homes without a warrant is unconstitutional and must end.
The ruling, issued Wednesday against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, involves so-called touch-and-talk practices.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Advocates argued that the immigration agency rarely obtains court orders and instead relies on immigrants to open their doors voluntarily. Defenders of suspected officers routinely pose as police officers in order to enter and make an arrest.
Immigrant advocacy groups praised the ruling.
“It is a basic human right for immigrants to feel safe in their own homes and live without fear,” Lizbeth Abeln, acting director of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, wrote in a news release Thursday. “This will not undo the years of damage caused by ICE, but it is a good first step toward justice.”
The order applies only to the ICE Los Angeles field office, which includes Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. An expert witness said available data showed that ICE's call-and-talk methods accounted for at least 8% of arrests in 2022.
Four examples listed in the order, which occurred between 2017 and 2020, illustrate cases in which immigration agents entered constitutionally protected areas around a person's home, such as their porch, patio or backyard, to establish contact for an arrest. .
Advocates said the practice has continued since then in Los Angeles and across the country.
U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II rejected ICE's argument that its agents could enter private areas surrounding a home to knock on the door because mail carriers and delivery drivers routinely do so.
Immigration agents walk up to a resident's home without consent, and when the person answers the door, the agents “generally state that they are 'conducting an investigation,'” according to the order. ICE policies and training encourage agents to use the door and talk, calling the practice one of the four main methods of detention.
“Although a different purpose for your visit is often stated, the true 'intent' and 'real purpose' behind a 'call and talk' is to make an immigration arrest,” the judge wrote.
Officers would be allowed into those areas if their goal was simply to ask questions, Wright wrote. But he said the Constitution prohibits them from doing so “without a court order with the intent to arrest the occupier.”
“The more accurate title,” Wright wrote, “would be 'beatings and arrests.'”
The ruling stems from a 2020 class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of two local advocacy organizations, the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, as well as one individual, Osny Sorto-Vasquez Kidd.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the UC Irvine School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic and the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson represented the plaintiffs.
