Immigration brokers who descended on Los Angeles final summer season referred to Latinos utilizing slurs like “tonk” and “moist,” in accordance with physique digital camera footage and textual content messages detailed in a court docket submitting asking a federal choose to bar brokers from making stops primarily based on racial profiling.
After a June raid at House Depot in Hollywood, physique digital camera footage captured an agent saying: “There was a man, I’m fairly certain he’s moist he was simply sitting in that minivan.” A textual content chain revealed an agent referring to “tonks in every single place promoting meals” — utilizing a phrase reportedly derived from the sound an agent’s utility flashlight makes when hitting a migrant’s head. In a video, an agent mentioned, “Yeah, simply plug us in wherever you see some tonks and we’ll soar out.”
Physique digital camera footage and forensically recovered texts, which offer a window into the mindset of brokers who carried out raids all through the L.A. space, have been detailed in a movement for a preliminary injunction filed on Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union, Public Counsel, and different teams and personal attorneys in search of to bar an “ongoing marketing campaign of suspicionless and discriminatory detentive stops” within the Central District of California.
Mayra Joachín, an legal professional on the ACLU of Southern California, mentioned the language brokers used underscores that “what’s driving the best way that immigration operations are being carried out now could be a racist sentiment.”
“What we’ve seen is barely a fraction of what info there could be, as a result of not the entire authorities data from telephones have been turned over,” Joachín mentioned. “It’s additionally potential that there are numerous different telephone data that haven’t been turned over and will have much more detrimental proof for the company.”
The Division of Homeland Safety, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Safety, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The proof, pertaining to each Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol brokers, was turned over in expedited discovery ordered by U.S. District Decide Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong after the Supreme Courtroom stayed her earlier order barring stops primarily based solely on race or ethnicity, language, location or employment, both alone or together.
Plaintiffs within the case, who filed their lawsuit in June 2025, argued that the invention “flatly disproves” representations the federal government made in pursuit of the keep.
The proof reveals that “race is the predominant attribute driving Defendants’ stops, and that Defendants’ ongoing stops — together with of U.S. residents — are neither temporary nor unintrusive,” the movement states.
The plaintiffs requested Frimpong to dam brokers from “counting on an individual’s perceived Latino ethnicity to conduct detentive stops, besides in reference to a recognized goal description.”
“That is the newest effort by plaintiffs to make sure that there may be some transparency as to how immigration enforcement operations are being carried out and in addition some accountability from the officers partaking in these operations,” Joachín mentioned. “There are safeguards in place for the way immigration brokers must be conducting any operation and what we’re seeing from the proof is that they’re pushed largely by racial profiling.”
A shift beneath Trump
For years, together with throughout Trump’s first time period, ICE compiled goal lists that would come with the each day routines of the folks they sought to arrest. These operations targeted on individualized investigations of particular folks.
That modified final yr, attorneys mentioned within the movement, citing an e-mail from ICE headquarters in late Could 2025 instructing discipline workplaces to start arresting “collaterals,” or nontargets, en masse. Quickly after, plaintiffs allege, brokers “launched into a coordinated marketing campaign of suspicionless stops primarily based on demographic profiling.”
“These operations differ extensively from operations that occurred earlier than, when immigration brokers would really examine and develop articulable information sufficient to have affordable suspicion for the person who they have been to cease,” Joachín mentioned. “Now that’s not what’s occurring, it’s reasonably racism that’s actually pervasive and underlying the best way that the company is working.”
Attorneys allege that a technique the federal government executes its “coverage of race-based profiling” is thru “roving patrols,” the place they drive round with out trying to find a specific goal. In textual content chains detailed within the movement, brokers mentioned “gentle counts” of “possibles” primarily based on location drive-bys and “roaming.”
After Frimpong issued a short lived restraining order final yr, the federal government “represented to this Courtroom and the Supreme Courtroom that these operations have been primarily based on “intelligence,” the movement states.
“However discovery revealed that Defendants’ paltry ‘intelligence’ was manufactured to justify operations at public entry areas Defendants have been already intent on raiding,” in accordance with the movement. The attorneys cited a deposition from a veteran ICE agent who was assigned to take part on the operations and mentioned they weren’t “designed in good religion” to arrest the recognized targets.
In keeping with the movement, the federal government despatched intelligence-gathering groups to House Depots and automotive washes the place “they ran checks till they recognized an arbitrary quantity—sometimes a small quantity—of presumably unlawfully current people.”
“Defendants then chosen a day to raid the placement, with out regard as to whether the beforehand recognized ‘targets’ have been current,” the movement states. “Unsurprisingly, Defendants often didn’t arrest their supposed ‘targets,’ at the same time as they arrested quite a few others.”
Attorneys referenced an agent who was captured saying “[G]et out and begin grabbing folks” proper earlier than detaining a lawful everlasting resident.
The federal government asserted that ICE was making an attempt to find a goal once they approached three males, lead plaintiffs within the lawsuit, at a bus cease in Pasadena, in accordance with the movement. The intention that day, plaintiffs argue, “at all times was to arrest ‘collaterals.’” In a textual content chain cited within the movement, the lead officer that day informed a colleague to “convey additional cuffs.”
When that lead officer was later requested in an deposition concerning the look of people he appears for, he answered “[o]lder Hispanic male,” in accordance with the movement.
“In sum, the file plainly establishes that Defendants are actually in search of Latinos,” the attorneys argued.
Textual content messages and pictures
The movement accommodates a number of references to immigration brokers utilizing racial epithets such because the slur “tonk.” Steering from U.S. Customs and Border Safety in 2019 acknowledged that “the time period tonk isn’t applicable” as a result of it’s “thought of a derogatory time period and CBP doesn’t condone its use,” the Huffington Publish reported.
In a single textual content chain, an agent referred to “snatch & grabs.”
“I believe [the Border Patrol agents] solely know one option to function,” an agent mentioned in a textual content chain. “See our bodies, chase our bodies.”
It’s unclear if brokers texted some other slurs, as many telephones have but to be turned over.
At a listening to final month, Frimpong weighed whether or not to carry the federal government in contempt for not complying with a court docket order requiring them to forensically picture any cellphone utilized by an agent current at any of 15 recognized operations.
The Justice Division legal professional informed Frimpong that no private telephones had been imaged at that time, although greater than 800 officers indicated that they’d used their private telephones throughout operations.
