Karen Bass claims the Trump administration is using Los Angeles as a ‘test case’ while joining ACLU lawsuit against DHS.
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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Tuesday announced that her city will be joining the class-action lawsuit to stop what she says is “the unconstitutional reckless raids in the LA region.”
Bass said Los Angeles was joining the lawsuit because the Trump administration is treating the city “as a test case for how far it can go in driving its political agenda forward while pushing the Constitution aside.”
“The City of Los Angeles, along with the County, cities, organizations and Angelenos across L.A., is taking the Administration to court to stop its clear violation of the United States Constitution and federal law,” Bass said in a press release. “We will not be intimidated – we are making Los Angeles the example of how people who believe in American values will stand together and stand united.”
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Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto said the lawsuit is intended to send a message to the Trump administration that the city will not allow the raids to become “standard operating procedure.”
“The federal government has concentrated thousands of armed immigration agents, many of whom lack visible identification, and military troops in our communities, conducting unconstitutional raids, roundups and anonymous detentions, sowing fear and chaos among our residents,” said Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto. “Today’s motion to intervene shows we will not stand by and allow these raids to continue or to become the standard operating procedure in our communities.”
A coalition of individual immigrants and immigrant advocacy organizations, led by The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of California and the non-profit Public Counsel, filed the original class-action lawsuit “Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem,” against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) demanding an immediate halt to what it describes as unlawful immigration raids across the Los Angeles area targeting migrants with “brown skin.”
The non-profit accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of carrying out unconstitutional raids and then keeping migrants in inhumane conditions without beds and deprived of food and legal counsel. Homeland Security has denied all the claims in the lawsuit, saying that any accusations of racial profiling are “disgusting and categorically false.”