“These guys are popping up, rampant all over the city, just taking people randomly, and we want that particular practice to end,” one attorney in the case said of Department of Homeland Security agents.

Immigrant rights defenders in California on Wednesday sued the US Department of Homeland Security, accusing the Trump administration of “abducting and disappearing community members using unlawful stop and arrest practices and confining individuals at a federal building in illegal conditions while denying them access to attorneys” as part of its mass deportation effort.

The  lawsuit was brought by five individual workers, three advocacy groups, and a legal services provider: The Los Angeles Worker Centre Network, United Farm Workers, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and Immigrant Defenders Law Centre. Their complaint accuses DHS of unconstitutionally arresting and detaining people, according to the ACLU, which is assisting with the legal challenge, “in order to meet arbitrary arrest quotas set by the Trump administration”.

According to the complaint:

The raids in this district follow a common, systematic pattern. Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from. If they hesitate, attempt to leave, or do not answer the questions to the satisfaction of the agents, they are detained, sometimes tackled, handcuffed, and/or taken into custody. In these interactions, agents typically have no prior information about the individual and no warrant of any kind. If agents make an arrest, contrary to federal law, they do not make any determination of whether a person poses........

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