Pasadena, LA, Baldwin Park plaintiffs allege local immigration raids target Latinos
LOS ANGELES — Plaintiffs in a closely watched lawsuit that emerged out of an immigration raid in Pasadena amended their complaint against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Thurday, alleging that the Trump administration’s Southern California crackdowns are not just unlawful, but deliberately designed to target Latino communities.
Residents, workers and advocacy groups sued the DHS in July 2025, alleging unconstitutional stop and detention practices by agents tied to arbitrary enforcement quotas.
The case — Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, et al., v. Kristi Noem — is named for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and for Perdomo, one of the three detained at a Pasadena bus stop on the morning of June 18.
Four cars suddenly stopped at the spot, and six masked and armed federal agents emerged and converged, detaining the men without immediately identifying themselves, according to the initial lawsuit filed by Public Counsel and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Along with Jorge Hernandez Viramontes, of Baldwin Park — questioned and detained from his job at an Orange County car wash — and Jason Brian Gavidia, an East L.A. resident stopped and questioned, from an L.A. County tow yard, they are lead plaintiffs.
A Los Angeles federal judge initially issued a temporary restraining order limiting certain enforcement actions that held for all of Southern California. But in August 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the government’s request to stay that order while litigation proceeds, allowing the challenged practices to continue.
The amended complaint filed in Los Angeles federal court includes two new claims:
— Equal protection: The government is intentionally discriminating against Latino communities in California, choosing whom to stop and which locations to raid based on race, and treating Latino people differently because of their apparent ethnicity; and
— Unreasonable tactics: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol use highly intrusive tactics in carrying out their raids — such as handcuffing, confinement, moving people to a secondary location, and prolonged detention. Agents are quick to both show and use force, often arriving with weapons drawn and using force even when community members are already compliant. These tactics are unreasonable and turn encounters into unlawful arrests, the plaintiffs allege.
A message seeking comment from DHS/ICE was not immediately answered Thursday.
Trump administration officials have previously defended the stepped-up enforcement on a number of levels, saying the crackdown is necessary to maintain the rule of law, to capture violent criminals in the country illegally, and to reverse the flood of people who poured over the U.S. Mexico border during the Biden administration.
However, Eva Bitran, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California’s immigrants’ rights director, said the stops are “discriminatory in design and execution. ICE and Border Patrol’s racist agenda extends from DHS leadership down to rank-and-file officers who deliberately target Latino community members — often with great force — because of their race. Our community suffers the consequences of this unconstitutional conduct.”
“This violence against immigrant communities is not an accident—it is the objective,” said Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the Pasadena-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON). “What we are witnessing in Southern California is a coordinated campaign to terrorize workers, separate families, and push entire communities into the shadows. The Constitution does not allow the government to treat brown skin as inherently suspicious.
The suit was originally brought in June 2025 by the five individual Latino workers and three membership organizations — the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, United Farm Workers, and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights —as well as Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a legal services provider.