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Los Angeles school year begins amid fears over immigration enforcement
Legal Watch |
2025/08/14 14:16
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Los Angeles students and teachers return to class for the new academic year Thursday under a cloud of apprehension after a summer filled with immigration raids and amid worries that schools could become a target in the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown.
Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has urged immigration authorities not to conduct enforcement activity within a two-block radius around schools starting an hour before the school day begins and until one hour after it classes let out.
“Hungry children, children in fear, cannot learn well,” Carvalho said in a news conference.
He also announced a number of measures intended to protect students and families, including adding or altering bus routes to accommodate more students. The district is to distribute a family preparedness packet that includes know-your-rights information, emergency contact updates and tips on designating a backup caregiver in case a parent is detained.
The sprawling district, which covers more than two dozen cities, is the nation’s second largest with more than 500,000 students. According to the teachers’ union, 30,000 students are immigrants, and an estimated quarter of them are without legal status.
Federal immigration enforcement near schools causes concern
While immigration agents have not detained anyone inside a school, a 15-year-old boy was pulled from a car and handcuffed outside Arleta High School in northern Los Angeles on Monday, Carvalho said.
He had significant disabilities and was released after a bystander intervened in the case of “mistaken identity,” the superintendent said.
“This is the exact type of incident that traumatizes our communities; it cannot repeat itself,” he added.
Administrators at two elementary schools previously denied entry to officials from the Department of Homeland Security in April, and immigration agents have been seen in vehicles outside schools.
DHS did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Carvalho said that while staffers and district police officers cannot interfere with immigration enforcement and do not have jurisdiction beyond school property, they have had conversations with federal agents parked in front of schools that resulted in them leaving.
The district is partnering with local law enforcement in some cities and forming a “rapid response” network to disseminate information about the presence of federal agents, he said.
Educators worry about attendance
Teachers say they are concerned some students might not show up the first day.
Lupe Carrasco Cardona, a high school social studies and English teacher at the Roybal Learning Center, said attendance saw a small dip in January when President Donald Trump took office.
The raids ramped up in June right before graduations, putting a damper on ceremonies. One raid at a Home Depot near MacArthur Park, an area with many immigrant families from Central America, took place the same morning as an 8th grade graduation at a nearby middle school.
“People were crying, for the actual graduation ceremony there were hardly any parents there,” Cardona said.
The next week, at her high school graduation, the school rented two buses to transport parents to the ceremony downtown. Ultimately many of the seats were empty, unlike other graduations.
One 11th grader, who spoke on the condition that her last name not be published because she is in the country without legal permission and fears being targeted, said she is afraid to return to school.
“Instead of feeling excited, really what I’m feeling is concern,” said Madelyn, a 17-year-old from Central America. “I am very, very scared, and there is a lot of pressure.”
She added that she takes public transportation to school but fears being targeted on the bus by immigration agents because of her skin color.
“We are simply young people with dreams who want to study, move forward and contribute to this country as well,” she said.
Madelyn joined a club that provides support and community for immigrant students and said she intends to persevere in that work.
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Judge orders temporary halt to construction at Florida’s detention center
Legal Watch |
2025/08/04 20:22
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A federal judge on Thursday ordered a temporary halt to construction at an immigration detention center — built in the middle of the Florida Everglades and dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” — as attorneys argue whether it violates environmental laws.
The facility can continue to operate and hold detainees for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but workers will be barred from adding any new filling, paving or infrastructure for the next 14 days. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued the ruling during a hearing and said she will issue a written order later Thursday.
Environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe have asked Williams to issue a preliminary injunction to halt operations and further construction. The suit claims the project threatens environmentally sensitive wetlands that are home to protected plants and animals and would reverse billions of dollars’ worth of environmental restoration.
Plaintiffs presented witnesses Wednesday and Thursday in support of the injunction, while attorneys for the state and federal government were scheduled to present next week.
Following Thursday’s testimony, Paul Schwiep, an attorney for the environmental groups, asked Williams to issue a temporary restraining order that would at least prevent any new construction at the site while the preliminary injunction was argued.
Williams asked Florida attorney Jesse Panuccio if the state would agree to halt construction so that she wouldn’t need to issue the restraining order. She pointed out that anything built at the site would likely remain there permanently, regardless of how the case was ultimately decided.
Panuccio said he couldn’t guarantee that the state would stop all work.
This sparked an hour-long hearing about the temporary restraining order, which will be in place for the next two weeks while the still ongoing preliminary injunction hearing continues.
The crux of the plaintiffs’ argument is that the detention facility violates the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of major construction projects.
Panuccio said during the hearing that although the detention center would be holding federal detainees, the construction and operation of the facility is entirely under the state of Florida, meaning the NEPA review wouldn’t apply.
Schwiep said the purpose of the facility is for immigration enforcement, which is exclusively a federal function. He said the facility wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the federal government’s desire for a facility to hold detainees.
Williams said Thursday that the detention facility was at a minimum a joint partnership between the state and federal government.
The lawsuit in Miami against federal and state authorities is one of two legal challenges to the South Florida detention center which was built more than a month ago by the state of Florida on an isolated airstrip owned by Miami-Dade County.
A second lawsuit brought by civil rights groups says detainees’ constitutional rights are being violated since they are barred from meeting lawyers, are being held without any charges, and a federal immigration court has canceled bond hearings. A hearing in that case is scheduled for Aug. 18.
Under the 55-year-old federal environmental law, federal agencies should have examined how the detention center’s construction would impact the environment, identified ways to minimize the impact and followed other procedural rules such as allowing public comment, according to the environmental groups and the tribe.
It makes no difference that the detention center holding hundreds of detainees was built by the state of Florida since federal agencies have authority over immigration, the suit said.
Attorneys for federal and state agencies last week asked Williams to dismiss or transfer the injunction request, saying the lawsuit was filed in the wrong jurisdiction. Even though the property is owned by Miami-Dade County, Florida’s southern district is the wrong venue for the lawsuit since the detention center is located in neighboring Collier County, which is in the state’s middle district, they said.
Williams had yet to rule on that argument.
The lawsuits were being heard as Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis ′ administration apparently was preparing to build a second immigration detention center at a Florida National Guard training center in north Florida. At least one contract has been awarded for what’s labeled in state records as the “North Detention Facility.” |
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Victims feeling exhausted and anxious about wrangling over Epstein files
Legal Watch |
2025/08/01 20:24
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Women who say they were abused by Jeffrey Epstein are feeling skeptical and anxious about the Justice Department’s handling of records related to the convicted sex offender, with some backing more public disclosures as an overdue measure of transparency, and others expressing concerns about their privacy and the Trump administration’s motivations.
In letters addressed to federal judges in New York this week, several victims or their attorneys said they would support the public release of grand jury testimony that led to criminal indictments against Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell — if the government agreed to allow them to review the material and redact sensitive information.
The Justice Department has asked the court to take the rare step of unsealing transcripts of that secret testimony, in part to placate people who believe that the government has hidden some things it knows about Epstein’s wrongdoing.
Other victims, meanwhile, accused President Donald Trump of sidelining victims as he seeks to shift the focus from Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges that he habitually sexually abused underage girls. Some expressed concern that the administration — in its eagerness to make the scandal go away — might give Maxwell clemency, immunity from future prosecution or better living conditions in prison as part of a deal to get her to testify before Congress.
“I am not some pawn in your political warfare,” one alleged victim wrote in a letter submitted to the court by her lawyer this week. “What you have done and continue to do is eating at me day after day as you help to perpetuate this story indefinitely.”
Added another victim, in a letter submitted anonymously on Wednesday: “This is all very exhausting.”
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. A top Justice Department official, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, interviewed Maxwell for nine hours late last month, saying he wanted to hear anything she had to say about misdeeds committed by Epstein or others. After that interview, Maxwell was moved from a federal prison in Florida to a low-security prison camp in Texas.
Alicia Arden, who said Epstein sexually assaulted her in the late 1990s, held a news conference on Wednesday in Los Angeles. She said she would support the release of additional material related to the case, including a transcript of Maxwell’s interview with Blanche.
But she also expressed outrage at the possibility that Maxwell could receive clemency or other special treatment through the process, adding that the Justice Department’s approach had been “very upsetting” so far.
The Trump administration has faced weeks of furor from some segments of the president’s political base, which have demanded public disclosure of files related to Epstein. Epstein has long been the subject of conspiracy theories because of his friendships with the rich and powerful, including Trump himself, Britain’s Prince Andrew and former President Bill Clinton.
Last month, the Justice Department announced it would not release additional files related to the Epstein sex trafficking investigation.
Prosecutors later asked to unseal the grand jury transcripts, though they’ve told the court they contain little information that hasn’t already been made public. Two judges who will decide whether to release the transcripts then asked victims to share their views on the matter.
In a letter submitted to the court Tuesday, attorneys Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell, who represent numerous Epstein victims, wrote: “For survivors who bravely testified, the perception that Ms. Maxwell is being legitimized in public discourse has already resulted in re-traumatization.”
An attorney for Maxwell, David Oscar Markus, said this week that she opposed the release of the grand jury transcripts.
“Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Ghislaine Maxwell is not,” he wrote. “Whatever interest the public may have in Epstein, that interest cannot justify a broad intrusion into grand jury secrecy in a case where the defendant is alive, her legal options are viable, and her due process rights remain.”
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on the victims’ statements.
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Judge blocks Trump’s birthright citizenship restrictions in third ruling
Legal Watch |
2025/07/23 04:50
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A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from ending birthright citizenship for the children of parents who are in the U.S. illegally, issuing the third court ruling blocking the birthright order nationwide since a key Supreme Court decision in June.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin, joining another district court as well as an appellate panel of judges, found that a nationwide injunction granted to more than a dozen states remains in force under an exception to the Supreme Court ruling. That decision restricted the power of lower-court judges to issue nationwide injunctions.
The states have argued Trump’s birthright citizenship order is blatantly unconstitutional and threatens millions of dollars for health insurance services that are contingent on citizenship status. The issue is expected to move quickly back to the nation’s highest court.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement the administration looked forward to “being vindicated on appeal.”
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, who helped lead the lawsuit before Sorokin, said in a statement he was “thrilled the district court again barred President Trump’s flagrantly unconstitutional birthright citizenship order from taking effect anywhere.”
“American-born babies are American, just as they have been at every other time in our Nation’s history,” he added. “The President cannot change that legal rule with the stroke of a pen.”
Lawyers for the government had argued Sorokin should narrow the reach of his earlier ruling granting a preliminary injunction, saying it should be “tailored to the States’ purported financial injuries.”
Sorokin said a patchwork approach to the birthright order would not protect the states in part because a substantial number of people move between states. He also blasted the Trump administration, saying it had failed to explain how a narrower injunction would work.
“That is, they have never addressed what renders a proposal feasible or workable, how the defendant agencies might implement it without imposing material administrative or financial burdens on the plaintiffs, or how it squares with other relevant federal statutes,” the judge wrote. “In fact, they have characterized such questions as irrelevant to the task the Court is now undertaking. The defendants’ position in this regard defies both law and logic.”
Sorokin acknowledged his order would not be the last word on birthright citizenship. Trump and his administration “are entitled to pursue their interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, and no doubt the Supreme Court will ultimately settle the question,” Sorokin wrote. “But in the meantime, for purposes of this lawsuit at this juncture, the Executive Order is unconstitutional.”
The administration has not yet appealed any of the recent court rulings. Trump’s efforts to deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily will remain blocked unless and until the Supreme Court says otherwise.
A federal judge in New Hampshire issued a ruling earlier this month prohibiting Trump’s executive order from taking effect nationwide in a new class-action lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Joseph LaPlante in New Hampshire had paused his own decision to allow for the Trump administration to appeal, but with no appeal filed, his order went into effect.
On Wednesday, a San Francisco-based appeals court found the president’s executive order unconstitutional and affirmed a lower court’s nationwide block.
A Maryland-based judge said last week that she would do the same if an appeals court signed off.
The justices ruled last month that lower courts generally can’t issue nationwide injunctions, but it didn’t rule out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class-action lawsuits and those brought by states. The Supreme Court did not decide whether the underlying citizenship order is constitutional.
Plaintiffs in the Boston case earlier argued that the principle of birthright citizenship is “enshrined in the Constitution,” and that Trump does not have the authority to issue the order, which they called a “flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands of American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage.”
They also argue that Trump’s order halting automatic citizenship for babies born to people in the U.S. illegally or temporarily would cost states funding they rely on to “provide essential services” — from foster care to health care for low-income children, to “early interventions for infants, toddlers, and students with disabilities.”
At the heart of the lawsuits is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1868 after the Civil War and the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision. That decision found that Scott, an enslaved man, wasn’t a citizen despite having lived in a state where slavery was outlawed.
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Arizona prosecutors ordered to send fake elector case back to grand jury
Legal Watch |
2025/05/19 02:33
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Arizona prosecutors pressing the case against Republicans who are accused of trying to overturn the 2020 election results in President Donald Trump’s favor were dealt a setback when a judge ordered the case be sent back to a grand jury.
Arizona’s fake elector case remains alive after Friday’s ruling by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Myers, but it’s being sent back to the grand jurors to determine whether there’s probable cause that the defendants committed the crimes.
The decision, first reported by the Washington Post, centered on the Electoral Count Act, a law that governs the certification of a presidential contest and was part of the defendants’ claims they were acting lawfully.
While the law was discussed when the case was presented to the grand jury and the panel asked a witness about the law’s requirements, prosecutors didn’t show the statute’s language to the grand jury, Myers wrote. The judge said a prosecutor has a duty to tell grand jurors all the applicable law and concluded the defendants were denied “a substantial procedural right as guaranteed by Arizona law.”
Richie Taylor, a spokesperson for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat whose office is pressing the case in court, said in a statement that prosecutors will appeal the decision. “We vehemently disagree with the court,” Taylor said.
Mel McDonald, a former county judge in metro Phoenix and former U.S. Attorney for Arizona, said courts send cases back to grand juries when prosecutors present misleading or incomplete evidence or didn’t properly instruct panel members on the law.
“They get granted at times. It’s not often,” said McDonald, who isn’t involved in the case.
In all, 18 Republicans were charged with forgery, fraud and conspiracy. The defendants consist of 11 Republicans who submitted a document falsely claiming Trump won Arizona, two former Trump aides and five lawyers connected to the former president, including Rudy Giuliani.
Two defendants have already resolved their cases, while the others have pleaded not guilty to the charges. Trump wasn’t charged in Arizona, but the indictment refers to him as an unindicted coconspirator.
Most of the defendants in the case also are trying to get a court to dismiss their charges under an Arizona law that bars using baseless legal actions in a bid to silence critics.
They argued Mayes tried to use the charges to silence them for their constitutionally protected speech about the 2020 election and actions taken in response to the race’s outcome. Prosecutors said the defendants didn’t have evidence to back up their retaliation claim and that they crossed the line from protected speech to fraud.
Eleven people who had been nominated to be Arizona’s Republican electors met in Phoenix on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and claimed Trump had carried the state in the 2020 election.
President Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes. A one-minute video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican Party at the time. The document later was sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored.
Prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin have also filed criminal charges related to the fake electors scheme. |
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Judge blocks parts of Trump’s overhaul of US elections
Legal Watch |
2025/04/25 14:50
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A judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from immediately enacting certain changes to how federal elections are run, including adding a proof-of-citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form.
The decision is a setback for President Donald Trump, who has argued the requirement is needed to restore public confidence in elections. But the judge allowed other parts of Trump’s sweeping executive order on U.S. elections to go forward for now, including a directive to tighten mail ballot deadlines around the country.
Trump’s March executive order overhauling how U.S. elections are run prompted swift lawsuits from the League of United Latin American Citizens, the League of Women Voters Education Fund, the Democratic National Committee and others, who called it unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington sided with voting rights groups and Democrats, saying that the Constitution gives the power to regulate federal elections to states and Congress — not the president. She noted federal lawmakers are currently working on their own legislation to require proof of citizenship to vote.
In a 120-page decision on Thursday, she said the plaintiffs had proven that the proof-of-citizenship requirement would cause their clients irreparable harm and go against the public interest, while the government had offered “almost no defense of the President’s order on the merits.”
Accordingly, she granted a preliminary injunction to stop the citizenship requirement from moving forward while the lawsuit plays out.
The judge also blocked part of the Republican president’s order requiring public assistance enrollees to have their citizenship assessed before getting access to the federal voter registration form.
But she denied other requests from a group of Democratic plaintiffs, including refusing to block Trump’s order to require all mailed ballots to be received by Election Day nationwide. She also did not touch Trump’s order to open certain databases to billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to allow it to review state voter lists to search for noncitizens. The judge said those arguments brought by Democrats were either premature or should be brought by states instead.
The plaintiffs had argued Trump’s proof-of-citizenship requirement violated the Constitution’s so-called Elections Clause, which gives states and Congress the authority to determine how elections are run.
They also argued that Trump’s order asserts power that he does not have over an independent agency. That agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, sets voluntary voting system guidelines and maintains the federal voter registration form. |
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Judge bars Trump from denying federal funds to ‘sanctuary’ cities
Legal Watch |
2025/04/21 21:50
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A federal judge in California on Thursday barred the Trump administration from denying or conditioning the use of federal funds to “sanctuary” jurisdictions, saying that portions of President Donald Trump’s executive orders were unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick issued the injunction sought by San Francisco and more than a dozen other municipalities that limit cooperation with federal immigration efforts.
Orrick wrote that defendants are prohibited “from directly or indirectly taking any action to withhold, freeze, or condition federal funds” and the administration must provide written notice of his order to all federal departments and agencies by Monday.
One executive order issued by Trump directs Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to withhold federal money to sanctuary jurisdictions. The second order directs every federal agency to ensure that payments to state and local governments do not “abet so-called ‘sanctuary’ policies that seek to shield illegal aliens from deportation.”
At a hearing Wednesday, Justice Department lawyers argued that it was much too early for the judge to grant an injunction when the government had not taken any action to withhold specific amounts or to lay out conditions on specific grants.
But Orrick, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, said this was essentially what government lawyers argued during Trump’s first term when the Republican issued a similar order.
“Their well-founded fear of enforcement is even stronger than it was in 2017,” Orrick wrote, citing the executive orders as well as directives from Bondi, other federal agencies and Justice Department lawsuits filed against Chicago and New York.
San Francisco successfully challenged the 2017 Trump order and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court that the president exceeded his authority when he signed an executive order threatening to cut funding for “sanctuary cities.”
There is no strict definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities, but the terms generally describe limited cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE enforces immigration laws nationwide but seeks state and local help in alerting federal authorities of immigrants wanted for deportation and holding that person until federal officers take custody.
Leaders of sanctuary jurisdictions say their communities are safer because immigrants feel they can communicate with local police without fear of deportation. It is also a way for municipalities to focus their dollars on crime locally, they say.
Besides San Francisco and Santa Clara County, which includes a third plaintiff, the city of San José, there are 13 other plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which include Seattle and King County, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota; New Haven, Connecticut; and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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