A federal judge on Thursday issued a tentative ruling ordering that the government ensure immigrant detainees held in a downtown Los Angeles processing center have access to legal counsel.
The preliminary injunction would essentially extend a temporary restraining order that U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued in July, requiring federal immigration agencies to allow legal visitation at the B-18 detention facility seven days a week.
Frimpong issued her tentative ruling ahead of the hearing Thursday morning, during which she heard arguments on whether the government was continuing to violate detainees’ Fifth Amendment right to access counsel.
Mark Rosenbaum, of Public Counsel, which helped bring the lawsuit, told the judge that detainees swept up in immigration raids have been held at B-18 — intended as a processing center — in inhumane conditions, with “no beds, no showers, no heat, vending machine food at best.”
“These are inherently coercive conditions,” Rosenbaum said. “Which heighten the necessity for access to counsel, unfettered.”
Government attorney Jonathan Ross argued that “evidence shows detainees at B-18 are meeting with attorneys, they have access to counsel” and argued that “conditions of confinement are not an issue before the court.” He also said that exigent circumstances — protests that sprang up against immigration raids — shifted conditions at facility, thus impacting clients’ access to attorneys.
“That circumstance has now changed and conditions at B-18 have now normalized,” he said, adding that “the government is going to do the right thing” regardless of any order.
“The court should not be ordering the government to do what it already is,” Ross said, adding that detainees “are receiving what the Fifth Amendment requires.”
Frimpong told Ross that there were violations even after the issuance of the temporary restraining order, which she said “gives the court concern.”
Rosenbaum said the right of access to counsel is “being denied systemically and intentionally” and said the government “is not coming close to full compliance with the constitution.”
He also asked that if the judge ultimately grants the preliminary injunction that she specify that the doors of rooms where lawyers are meeting with detainees be shut, to provide confidentiality.
“It’s a big deal to get a preliminary injunction and it’s a big deal to say that the government continues to require an order that these detainees get access to counsel,” Rosenbaum said following the hearing. “In October 2025, we should not have to go to a federal judge to say that individuals who are detained by this government have access to lawyers.”
Rosenbaum said they are confident the tentative ruling will remain and that individuals “will finally get this right, but we will remain vigilant to make sure.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, Public Counsel, other groups and private attorneys filed the lawsuit on behalf of several immigrant rights groups, three immigrants picked up at a bus stop and two U.S. citizens, one of whom was held despite showing agents his identification.
Along with access issues, plaintiffs also argued in their complaint that immigration agents cornered brown-skinned people in Home Depot parking lots, at carwashes and at bus stops across Southern California in a show of force without establishing reasonable suspicion that they had violated immigration laws. They allege agents didn’t identify themselves, as required under federal law, and made unlawful warrantless arrests.
Frimpong previously issued a ruling in the same case temporarily blocking federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests. The Supreme Court last month granted an emergency appeal and lifted that order.
The hearing Thursday was the first major proceeding in the case since that ruling. Earlier this week, Frimpong approved expedited discovery on the claim that the aggressive raids violate a person’s Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. The government will have to produce documents and witnesses for deposition relating to around 15 raids, in addition to general operational information.
“Even though we received a setback from the United States Supreme Court, what we’re doing in response is continuing to build the record, continuing to tell the stories of all of the individuals traumatized by the dangerous, immoral and unconstitutional actions of the federal government in the streets of the Southland,” said Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney with the ACLU of Southern California.
