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What Court Order? Federal Agents Keep Raiding LA Workplaces Despite Ban

2 34
07.08.2025

As day laborers and street vendors selling breakfast lined the parking lot of the MacArthur Park Home Depot in Los Angeles early Wednesday morning, a yellow Penske moving truck pulled into the lot. Its driver claimed he was looking for movers, according to organizers, security guards, and a day laborer who witnessed the event and spoke to The Intercept.

That’s when a group of at least seven Border Patrol agents dressed in tactical gear stormed out of the back of the truck and rushed toward the day laborers and street vendors gathered outside.

Chief Border Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino dubbed the raid “Operation Trojan Horse,” sharing video on social media from a Fox News reporter who was embedded with agents inside the moving truck.

Agents detained at least 16 people during the raid, which appears to be in direct defiance of a temporary restraining order a federal judge put in place in early July after immigrants rights groups sued the government. After a month of militarized raids and racial profiling throughout Southern California, Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of California’s Central District, in response to a class-action lawsuit filed by community organizations and detained workers, delivered the Trump administration a major blow. She issued an order that prohibits federal agents from targeting individuals based on their race and ethnicity; whether they speak Spanish or English with an accent; their location such as a car wash, department store parking lot, or other worksite; or their occupation, such as landscapers or street vendors.

The Trump administration appealed, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday upheld the temporary restraining order. The order had brought relative calm to the region in recent weeks, slowing what had been near-daily operations to occasional isolated incidents. But the Trump administration’s Southern California campaign was not over.

Since Friday’s decision to uphold the........

© The Intercept