A U.S. federal court has held the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in contempt in a case related to immigration raids, imposing a fine. This was reported by infohub.kz.
The court found DHS guilty of deliberately delaying compliance with an order to create digital copies of information from personal cell phones of more than 800 agents involved in controversial immigration raids in Los Angeles in 2025. U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of the Central District of California had ordered the federal government in January to expedite the imaging of agents' personal phones. The court imposed a fine of $500 per day on the federal government for non-compliance, and also required reimbursement of legal costs incurred in obtaining the records.
DHS attorneys admitted in court in June that the agency had not provided the records. They told the judge they were processing government devices at a rate of three phones every two weeks. Plaintiffs calculated that at this pace, it would take nearly four years to review all phones.
Attorneys for immigrants detained during Operation At Large, the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in Los Angeles, believe the phones may contain evidence of racial profiling by federal agents. Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote in May that DHS had evaded compliance with Frimpong's order and openly defied it regarding personal phones.
Last month, ACLU attorneys asked Frimpong to issue another order prohibiting agents from detaining people based on race. They presented text messages and body camera footage showing agents using racial slurs such as "wet" and "tonks" to target working-class Latinos, according to court records.
"Not only are federal agents violating the Constitution on the streets, the government is violating court orders by intentionally withholding critical evidence about its immigration enforcement operations," said Mayra Joachin with the ACLU of Southern California.
DHS did not respond to questions about whether agents' use of the word "tonks" violated its policy. However, after Frimpong's contempt order, the agency repeated a statement it had previously issued regarding other developments in the case. "Our 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?" the statement read.