(Reuters) -The city of Los Angeles and other Southern California municipalities are joining a lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s administration aimed at halting immigration raids that have spread panic among immigrant communities and sparked widespread protests.
The lawsuit, filed last week by the American Civil Liberties Union, accuses federal agents of using unlawful police tactics such as racial profiling to meet immigration arrest quotas set by the administration.
The legal action by Los Angeles marks its first formal effort to halt the raids after the administration sued the city in June for limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
“These unconstitutional roundups and raids cannot be allowed to continue,” Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto told reporters on Tuesday night, flanked by officials from municipalities joining the lawsuit including Los Angeles County, Pasadena, Santa Monica, Culver City, Pico Rivera, Montebello, Monterey Park and West Hollywood.
Trump called National Guard troops and U.S. Marines into Los Angeles in June in response to protests against the immigration raids, marking an extraordinary use of military force to support civilian police operations within the United States. The raids are part of the Republican president’s hardline approach toward immigration.
Troops have continued to work alongside federal agents, with National Guard forces on Monday sweeping through MacArthur Park near downtown Los Angeles in an operation criticized by the city’s Mayor Karen Bass.
According to the ACLU lawsuit, federal immigration authorities have carried out illegal actions in Southern California that include warrantless arrests by masked, anonymous agents and denying legal counsel to people held in a “dungeonlike” facility.
(Reporting by Andrew Hay; Editing by Will Dunham)
