The U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are under scrutiny following allegations of racial profiling during immigration raids in the Los Angeles area. A recent court filing has brought to light disturbing evidence, including the use of racial slurs and discriminatory practices by federal agents.

On June 20, 2026, tensions flared in Bell, California, as residents clashed with U.S. Border Patrol agents following a traffic collision involving one of the agency’s vehicles. This incident was part of a broader series of immigration raids across the Los Angeles area, which have now come under intense scrutiny.

Evidence of Racial Profiling

The allegations stem from a lawsuit, Vasquez Perdomo vs. Noem which accuses federal agents of using racial profiling to target Latinos. The court filing includes text messages and body camera footage that reveal agents using derogatory terms such as “wet” and “tonks” to identify and target individuals.

In one text message cited in the filing, an agent instructs colleagues to “plug us in wherever you see some tonks and we’ll jump out.” Another message describes seeing “tonks everywhere selling food.” The term “tonks” is reportedly derived from the sound a heavy item makes when striking a migrant’s skull, and its use has been explicitly condemned by U.S. Customs and Border Protection since 2019.

Body camera footage from a Hollywood Home Depot shows a Border Patrol agent stating, “There was a guy, I’m pretty sure he’s wet, he was just sitting in that minivan.” These revelations have raised serious concerns about the practices of federal immigration agents.

Systemic Issues and Legal Battles

The court filing argues that immigration agents engaged in “suspicionless and discriminatory detentive stops” across the Central District of California. Despite the high-profile street raids of summer 2026 having ceased, the practices allegedly continued under different names. One ICE agent admitted in a deposition, “We’re [still] doing the same thing [as ‘Operation at Large’] just with a different name.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), along with a coalition of advocacy organizations and private attorneys, argues that the new evidence undermines the government’s claim that agents were relying on specific intelligence about individuals rather than race. The filing includes evidence from months of discovery, including body camera footage and depositions of agents, ordered by U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong.

In a deposition, an immigration agent described the suspicious appearance they look for as “Older Hispanic male.” The plaintiffs’ attorneys argue that immigration agents failed to develop “pre-stop individualized, particularized assessment of reasonable suspicion” and instead used racial profiling to detain anyone they believed to be low-income and Latino. Such actions swept up U.S. citizens and violated the Constitution’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.

Government Response and Compliance Issues

The court filing made public last month reveals a directive from ICE headquarters telling field officers to “turn the creativity knob up to 11” and arrest more “collaterals”—people who aren’t the original target of an operation but are encountered in the process. The ACLU attorneys argue that these practices were condoned and directed from the top.

The government has faced criticism for its slow compliance with court orders to turn over agents’ cell phones. Of the 1,400 Border Patrol agents involved in Los Angeles operations last year, more than half reported using their personal cell phones. However, only 88 agents volunteered to turn their phones in for forensic imaging, and none have been imaged yet.

Progress on government phones has been equally slow, with lawyers for the federal government revealing they have only been imaging 3 government phones every 2 weeks. With an estimated 200-300 phones still to go, the government’s rate of compliance would take close to four years to fulfill the court’s order.

Mayra Joachín, an attorney with the ACLU, stated, “There’s enough to suggest that this is a system-wide practice of identifying people through racial slurs.” The Department of Homeland Security has been reached out to for comment.