In a significant legal setback for the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda, a federal appeals court on August 1, 2025, largely upheld restrictions on immigration arrests in Los Angeles and the surrounding Southern California region. The ruling maintains a temporary restraining order that limits so-called “roving” immigration patrols, emphasizing that federal agents must have reasonable suspicion before detaining individuals and cannot base arrests on race, ethnicity, language, location, or occupation.
The ruling came from a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which agreed with a lower court’s decision authored by U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong. The original injunction was issued in response to a wave of immigration raids that sparked protests and community fears near Los Angeles earlier this summer. These raids, part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on unauthorized immigration, had been criticized for appearing to rely on racial and ethnic profiling, including targeting people who spoke Spanish or had certain accents.
“If, as Defendants suggest, they are not conducting stops that lack reasonable suspicion, they can hardly claim to be irreparably harmed by an injunction aimed at preventing a subset of stops not supported by reasonable suspicion,” the Ninth Circuit judges wrote in their opinion. They affirmed that under the Fourth Amendment federal agents cannot detain people without specific, articulable suspicion that they are unlawfully in the country, and this suspicion cannot be based solely on protected characteristics such as race or language.
The court also emphasized the broad impact the lower court’s injunction seeks to address. “There is no predicate action that the individual plaintiffs would need to take, other than simply going about their lives, to potentially be subject to the challenged stops,” the opinion noted, underscoring concerns over indiscriminate arrests.
The expulsions and mass arrests initiated by the Trump administration escalated tensions in Southern California, leading to large-scale demonstrations in June. In response to isolated violence around protests, the Trump administration temporarily deployed National Guard troops and U.S. Marines to safeguard federal buildings and assist immigration enforcement agents. However, most of these forces have since been withdrawn.
Because Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents were deployed beyond traditional border areas to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, the raids reached far into urban centers such as Los Angeles. The court’s decision highlights the importance of legal safeguards requiring authorities to avoid racial profiling and to justify arrests with reasonable suspicion amid ongoing debates over immigration enforcement tactics.
Experts note that winning Fourth Amendment injunctions is difficult since plaintiffs must prove they are likely to face similar illegal stops again. The Ninth Circuit’s affirmation of the injunction is therefore considered a substantial win for immigrant rights advocates in California. The Trump administration has indicated intentions to continue challenging the judicial limitations on their deportation efforts, but the next steps in the legal process remain unclear.
This decision reinforces the judiciary’s role in checking executive authority and enforcing constitutional protections during immigration operations, particularly in regions with large Latino populations who have been most affected by the recent raids. For now, federal agents operating in Southern California must observe the restrictions requiring reasonable suspicion and prohibit detentions based on discriminatory factors.