Latino New Yorkers file sweeping class action against Trump over 'race-based' ICE arrests [View all]

Source: Courthouse News Service

April 9, 2026


BROOKLYN (CN) — A batch of Latino New Yorkers has filed a class action against the Trump administration amid its ongoing and heightened deportation campaign with hopes of stopping “race-based” and “warrantless” arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In a 96-page complaint, filed Wednesday in the Eastern District of New York, the plaintiffs claim the government’s recent boundary-pushing immigration enforcement “is terrorizing New York communities and tearing families apart.”

“Across the state, roving bands of masked and heavily armed federal agents, both on foot and in unmarked cars, are indiscriminately stopping and arresting thousands of Black and Brown people, the vast majority of whom are Latino, based solely on their perceived race and ethnicity,” they argue.

The eight plaintiffs are each Latino New Yorkers who claim they were unlawfully stopped, arrested and subsequently released by federal immigration agents in the state. They range from 19 to 63 years old, with some spending as little as a day to as much as two months in ICE custody before getting released. All of them claim that, because of their ethnicity, they fear being rearrested by immigration officers.

“Targeted communities are living under a state of siege,” the plaintiffs argue. “Throughout New York state, from Buffalo to New York City and Long Island, federal agents are seizing people outside their homes, on their way to work, while driving their children to school and in the parking lots of stores. The widespread targeting of people going about their daily lives has led many to limit their activities out of fear that they will be next.”

Read more: https://courthousenews.com/latino-new-yorkers-file-sweeping-class-action-against-trump-over-race-based-ice-arrests/

---

Link to SUIT (PDF) - https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/class-action-new-york-ice-warrantless-arrests.pdf

(as a side note - when black people were accosted daily with "Stop and Frisk", notably in NYC, it got a yawn, but now other groups are experiencing what it's like to be racially profiled, tracked and hunted, and often arrested on bogus charges or executed on the spot based on lies like "he was reaching into his waistband" or "he wasn't 'complying'", while face down on the ground handcuffed, with 3 cops kneeling on him)