Before the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and before children’s parades were interrupted by tear gas in Chicago, Latino families in Los Angeles were targeted by President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda.
Los Angeles was the “tipping point,” Public Counsel’s Senior Special Counsel for Strategic Litigation Mark Rosenbaum told Daily Kos.
“Racial profiling” by Pedro Molina
For the Trump administration, these deportations are their widespread effort to clear out years of neglect from an open border policy that Democrats failed to address.
For many others, it's simply racial profiling.
“You've got citizens being arrested, being violated. It's why citizens are carrying passports,” Rosenbaum told us. “Persons with legal status are staying in their homes and not doing constitutionally protected activities like worship, going to school, going to businesses. [The administration is] treating all individuals based on their skin color as the enemy.”
In the case of Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, a hefty list of law firms has banded together to prove that in the court of law.
Since the Department of Homeland Security sent in ICE agents, and later deployed hundreds of active military to the streets of Los Angeles in June 2025, Latino families in particular have felt the impact.
Videos of senior citizens being pulled from their homes in their underwear circulated the internet along with clips of pregnant women being manhandled by masked men. Trojan-horse style raids of ICE agents barreling out of rental vans to arrest immigrants outside of Home Depots became a summer talking point.
People hold a vigil at Fruitvale Station in Oakland, Calif. to show solidarity with demonstrations against ICE raids, on Tuesday, June 10, 2025.
As the violence unfolded in the name of protecting U.S. citizens from whom the White House had deemed dangerous immigrants, Latino families—citizens included—shuttered their windows and called in sick. They missed graduations and began carrying their passports on every outing.
Now, the ACLU, Public Counsel, and nine other law firms are representing hundreds, if not more, to point out the activities of the administration on paper. According to Rosenbaum, their goal with the case is to clearly expose the racial profiling.
Not just that, he said, but to show that the administration’s goal has been to “subordinate and remove a community” and to “treat a particular community in ways that demonizes stereotypes.”
While this lawsuit was initially filed in July 2025, a new amendment filed last month highlights claims that federal agents were leaning on discriminatory practices to carry out their arrests.
Eva Bitran, the director of immigrants’ rights at the ACLU of Southern California, told us that their many conversations with federal agents throughout the investigation “made it clear that race plays a role in the deportations.”
Then again, she told us, "This administration has said from the beginning that race plays a role, and in fact, their position at the Supreme Court when we were defending our temporary restraining order was that it's fine for race to play a role in enforcement operations."
However, like many fights with the Trump administration, the White House hasn’t been quick to admit their faults. More so, they have pushed to have this case dismissed—unsuccessfully.
And while the fight for justice continues, Latino families are still being targeted regardless of how long the legal case drags on, and Rosenbaum realizes that not everyone has the time to spare. In 2025 alone, 32 people died in ICE custody. The next hearing is expected for the summer.
“People's lives and communities are hanging in the balance. And waiting multiple years for this to get resolved means there'd be too many casualties along the way,” Rosenbaum told us.
But as changing news cycles shift attention to and from Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, and the many other cities across the country where Latino families have been targeted—the legal battle to fight for their rights continues.
“It’s not a lawyer's fight, it's a community's fight,” Rosenbaum said. “It's a fight for the soul of the nation.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional information from the ACLU.
