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WASHINGTON (CN) — A coalition of immigrant rights groups and D.C. residents filed a class action against the Trump administration Thursday challenging the government’s policy of making warrantless immigration arrests following the president’s federal crackdown in August.
A group of four residents who were arrested, detained and ultimately released under the policy brought the 36-page lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, requesting a federal judge deem the military-aided sweeps illegal.
On Aug. 11, President Donald Trump invoked Section 740 of the Home Rule Act — a 1973 federal statute granting local control of D.C. to a city government — to effectively federalize the Metropolitan Police Department by declaring a “crime emergency.”
Under the emergency, Trump activated the D.C. National Guard throughout the city, leading several Republican governors to deploy their own National Guard troops. Federal agents began patrolling the streets with MPD officers, as the troops are not generally authorized to make arrests despite being the face of the crackdown.
Agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Security and FBI have arrested over 3,000 people as of Monday since the federal takeover began last month.
“Over the past month and a half, plain-clothed, masked and armed federal agents have flooded the streets of the nation’s capital, indiscriminately arresting without warrants and without probable cause District whom the agents perceive to be Latino,” the coalition wrote. “Federal agents systematically arrest individuals in these immigration sweeps without a warrant and without any individualized assessment that they are in the United States unlawfully and/or that they are likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.”
Once arrested, the coalition says, individuals are taken to faraway ICE detention centers where they have difficulty reaching their family or lawyers.
In certain cases, officials “belatedly realize” that there is no legal basis to continue detaining individuals and release them. However brief, the coalition notes, their detention leaves an indelible mark, as the individuals suffer significant physical and psychological harm and are left with the fear they’ll be wrongfully arrested again.
“Defendants’ policy and practice of making immigration arrests without a warrant and without probable cause have sown terror in Latino and other communities across the District and violate unequivocal statutory restrictions on warrantless arrests,” the coalition says.
José Molina, a 47-year-old man from El Salvador, has lived in D.C. for 25 years and has maintained valid Temporary Protected Status since 2001.
On Aug. 21, as Molina was walking to his work truck to begin his day, two cars filled with plainclothed and unidentified federal agents pulled up next to him and handcuffed him without asking any questions such as his name, his identification or his immigration status.
The agents detained him overnight at a processing center in Chantilly, Virginia, before an ICE supervisor realized Molina had valid TPS status, which statutorily prohibits ICE from detaining him, and released him.
N.S., an anonymous 51-year-old man from Venezuela, has lived in D.C. since 2024 with a pending asylum application for fear of persecution if he returned to Venezuela.
On Aug. 12, an agent with a DEA vest and ICE hat stopped N.S. in a Home Depot parking lot, where he had just finished shopping, and arrested him without a warrant or asking any questions. N.S. was held in various detention centers around the country for four weeks before agents released him on his own recognizance.
The coalition is represented by attorney Sean Berman of Covington Burling, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union for the District of Columbia, the ACLU, Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, CASA, National Immigration Project and the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.
Madeline Gates, associate counsel at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee, slammed the Trump administration’s policy in a statement announcing the suit.
“The federal government has created a culture of fear in D.C., including among U.S. citizens and immigrants with legal status,” Gates said. “People are justifiably afraid to go to work or even to walk their kids to school. We are determined to end this unlawful policy.”
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin slammed the lawsuit in an email to Courthouse News, calling allegations of racial profiling by DHS law enforcement officers “disgusting, reckless and categorically false.”
“What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S.— not their skin color, race or ethnicity,” McLaughlin said. “Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, DHS law enforcement uses ‘reasonable suspicion’ to make arrests. There are no ‘indiscriminate stops’ being made.”
McLaughlin further denounced “this type of garbage” as contributing to ICE agents facing a “1000%” increase in assaults, pointing to Wednesday’s shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas that killed one detainee and wounded two others.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
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