- Body camera footage and text messages show federal agents using racial slurs like 'tonk' and 'wet' during raids in Los Angeles.
- Agents admitted in depositions that operations were based on racial profiling, not targeted intelligence, sweeping up U.S. citizens.
- A May 2025 ICE directive urged field officers to 'turn the creativity knob up to 11' and arrest more collateral non-targets.
- The ACLU and other groups filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to bar indiscriminate stops based on perceived Latino ethnicity.
- Only 88 of 1,400 Border Patrol agents volunteered personal phones for forensic imaging, and government phone imaging is extremely slow.
Newly released court documents from a federal lawsuit reveal that immigration agents conducting raids in Los Angeles last year used racial slurs, selected random locations like a Whittier car wash via Google search, and expressed concerns that their operations violated a court order. The evidence, including body camera footage and text messages, undercuts the government's argument that stops were based on specific intelligence.
What the Evidence Shows
Derogatory Language and Racial Profiling
In bodycam footage from a June 2025 raid at a Hollywood Home Depot, a Border Patrol agent says, 'There was a guy, I'm pretty sure he's wet he was just sitting in that minivan.' Text messages include references to 'tonks everywhere selling food' and 'yeah, just plug us in wherever you see some tonks and we'll jump out.' The term 'tonk' is a derogatory word reported to derive from the sound a flashlight makes when striking a migrant's skull. CBP issued guidance in 2019 stating the term is not appropriate.
In a deposition, an ICE agent stated that the suspicious appearance they look for is 'Older Hispanic male.' Another agent testified that during the August 14 operation at Governor Newsom's press conference, there were no targets at all, calling it 'purely political.'
From Targeted Enforcement to Mass Collateral Arrests
Previously, ICE compiled detailed target lists with daily routines. That changed in late May 2025 when ICE headquarters sent a directive telling field offices to 'turn the creativity knob up to 11' and arrest more 'collaterals'—people encountered who are not the original targets. The plaintiffs allege that agents then embarked on an 'ongoing campaign of suspicionless and discriminatory detentive stops.'
One ICE agent admitted in a deposition, 'We're [still] doing the same thing [as 'Operation at Large'] just with a different name.'
Local California Context
Los Angeles was the epicenter of these enforcement actions. Raids targeted Home Depots in Hollywood and Paramount, a car wash in Whittier, and even a news conference by California Governor Gavin Newsom in August 2025. Agents used Google to find the Whittier location, selecting the nearest car wash from a list. A Homeland Security spokesperson at the time claimed agents were 'focused on enforcing the law, not on [Newsom],' but the agent saw it as a 'stunt' to make a political point.
The lawsuit, Vasquez Perdomo vs. Noem, was filed in summer 2025. The Supreme Court in September 2025 temporarily lifted a lower court's restraining order against racial profiling, allowing operations to continue while the case proceeds.
Background
Immigration enforcement under President Trump's first term focused on individualized investigations. After the new administration took office, ICE shifted to mass street sweeps. The ACLU and advocacy groups have argued that these tactics violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. The recent evidence from discovery—body cameras, text messages, and depositions—shows that agents stopped and questioned people solely based on perceived Latino appearance, including U.S. citizens.
Conclusion
The new evidence strengthens the plaintiffs' argument that federal immigration agents are engaged in systematic racial profiling. With the majority of agents' phones still not surrendered and slow imaging of government devices, full transparency remains elusive. The court is expected to hear arguments on the preliminary injunction in September. The outcome could reshape how immigration enforcement is conducted in Southern California.
Sources and Materials
UPDATE 1: The evidence was ordered produced by U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong after the U.S. Supreme Court stayed an earlier temporary restraining order in the case last September.
The new court filing argues that these practices were not a rogue method of operationalizing agency orders; it was precisely what agency leadership desired. Attorneys also noted that ICE doubled the ranks of its field teams, thanks in part to recruitment ads employing white nationalist messaging.
Even after the high-profile street raids of summer 2025 ceased, agents continued the same practices under a different name.
Some plaintiffs and organizational members, including U.S. citizens, have already been stopped more than once.
During a contentious hearing last month, Judge Frimpong weighed whether to hold the federal government in contempt for failing to comply with a court order to turn over agents' cell phones.
The court is still awaiting most agents' phones: of 1,400 Border Patrol agents involved in Los Angeles operations, more than half used personal cell phones, but only 88 volunteered to turn them in for forensic imaging, and none have been imaged yet. The government revealed it is imaging only 3 government phones every 2 weeks, with an estimated 200-300 still to go—a rate that would take nearly four years to comply with the court's order. The government said it asked agents to upload any data from their personal phone to a government repository, a compromise created with its union designed to limit any workplace grievances. Plaintiffs argued that the government deserved sanctions by 'straight-up saying they will not comply with an order because their employees might complain if they do.'
UPDATE 2: Mayra Joachín, an attorney at the ACLU of Southern California, said the language agents used underscores that 'what's driving the way that immigration operations are being conducted now is a racist sentiment.' She also noted that the evidence obtained is only a fragment, as not all government records from phones have been turned over. 'It's also possible that there are many other phone records that have not been turned over and could have even more detrimental evidence for the agency,' Joachín said. An unidentified spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security responded, 'agents are focused on protecting the American people — not entertaining performative outrage. Where is the media's outrage for Angel families who lost a loved one to illegal alien crime?'
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, stated that federal law permits immigration officers to briefly detain individuals if they have reasonable suspicion based on specific articulable facts that the person is illegally in the United States, and that such stops are legal based on the 'totality of the circumstances.' Plaintiffs' lawyers did not have the latest evidence of racial slurs and profiling when the Supreme Court granted the emergency appeal, and the new evidence suggests that stops are motivated by racial bias.
The plaintiffs have asked Judge Frimpong to block agents from relying on a person's perceived Latino ethnicity to conduct detentive stops, except in connection with a known target description.