CA9: Stay against race-based ICE stops denied

Plaintiffs and class members were Latino U.S. citizens stopped and arrested and searched by ICE based merely on race, ethnicity, and location. Based on the government’s own admissions of what it was doing, the risk of recurrence was significant enough to justify denying a stay pending appeal. Perdomo v. Noem, 25-4312 (9th Cir. Aug. 1, 2025):

2.Sufficient Likelihood of Injury to Warrant Equitable Relief
Defendants argue that, even if Plaintiffs have shown injury sufficient for Article III standing, “they cannot come close to showing the threat of immediate and irreparable harm that is necessary for an injunction.” For this argument, Defendants principally rely on Hodgers-Durgin v. de la Vina, 199 F.3d 1037 (9th Cir. 1999). In Hodgers-Durgin, this court assumed that even if plaintiffs had established a sufficient threat of future injury to confer Article III standing to seek prospective relief, the asserted injury was not sufficiently immediate to warrant an injunction as a matter of the law of equitable remedies. Id. at 1042. In that case, the plaintiffs had sought an injunction against Border Patrol practices. But the two named plaintiffs had each been stopped “only once in 10 years.” Id. at 1044. Based on this record, this court concluded that the plaintiffs had not established that it was sufficiently likely they would be stopped again. Id.

This case is decisively different. It is undisputed that Defendants have been conducting a massive and ongoing immigration enforcement operation in the Los Angeles region since early June. The record shows Defendants’ agents have conducted many stops in the Los Angeles area within a matter of weeks, not years, some repeatedly in the same location. For the association plaintiffs, the likelihood of harm corresponds with the likelihood that one or more of their members will be
stopped by one of Defendants’ agents—which, for the reasons discussed above, is considerable.

Based on this record, the district court did not clearly err in “affirmatively find[ing] that there is a real and immediate threat that the conduct complained of will continue.” (Emphasis added). And “[i]t is well established that the deprivation of constitutional rights ‘unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.’” Melendres v. Arpaio, 695 F.3d at 1002 (quoting Elrod v. Burns, 427 U.S. 347, 373 (1976)).