This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
Federal immigration agents used racial slurs, including “wet” and “tonks,” to identify people to target while sweeping through Los Angeles last year, according to text messages cited in a new court filing asking a federal judge there to bar agents from racial profiling.
Plaintiffs in the Vasquez Perdomo vs. Noem case filed a motion for a preliminary injunction on Monday, arguing that agents had conducted an “ongoing campaign of suspicionless and discriminatory detentive stops” across the Central District of California even after the high-profile street raids of summer 2025 had ceased. As one ICE agent admitted in a deposition, “We’re [still] doing the same thing [as “Operation at Large”] just with a different name.”
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 after the U.S. Supreme Court stayed an earlier temporary restraining order in the case last September.
Attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union, a coalition of advocacy organizations and private attorneys argue in the court filing that the new evidence undercuts the government’s argument to the Supreme Court that agents were relying on specific intelligence about individuals instead of race when deciding who to stop.
In bodycam footage, according to court documents, a Border Patrol agent at the Hollywood Home Depot says, “There was a guy, I’m pretty sure he’s wet he was just sitting in that minivan.”
In one text message cited in the filing, an agent says, “Yeah, just plug us in wherever you see some tonks and we’ll jump out.” In another message, an agent describes seeing “tonks everywhere selling food.”
“Tonks” is a derogatory term Border Patrol agents have used, reportedly derived from the sound a heavy item like a flashlight makes on a migrant’s skull. In 2019, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency for Border Patrol, issued guidance explicitly stating “the term ‘tonk’ is not appropriate” due to its derogatory connotation, according to emails and text messages disclosed to HuffPost under the Freedom of Information Act.
In one deposition an immigration agent bluntly says that the suspicious appearance they look for is “Older Hispanic male.” In their filing, plaintiffs’ attorneys argue that immigration agents engaged in unlawful practices by not developing “pre-stop individualized, particularized assessment of reasonable suspicion” of targets, but 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 search and seizures.
The court filing made public Monday reveals a May 2025 directive from Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters telling field officers to “turn the creativity knob up to 11” and arrest more “collaterals.” That’s the agency’s term for people who aren’t the original target of an operation but who are encountered in the process.
ACLU attorneys said the agents’ practices, including racially profiling Latinos, were condoned and directed from the top.
“This was not a rogue method of operationalizing agency orders; it was precisely what agency leadership desired,” the filing states.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said ICE doubled the ranks of its field teams, “thanks in part to recruitment ads employing white nationalist messaging.” The filing says some plaintiffs and organizational members, including those who are U.S. citizens, have already been stopped more than once.
While the filing relies on communications from agents’ cell phones, most agents involved in the LA raids have yet to turn over their devices.
Last month, during a contentious hearing, Frimpong weighed whether to hold the federal government in contempt for failing to comply with a court order to turn over agents’ cell phones.
The government said in court that of 1,400 Border Patrol agents involved in Los Angeles operations last year, more than half reported using their personal cell phones.
The federal government said that it asked agents to upload any data from their personal phone to a government repository, a compromise created with its union designed to limit any workplace grievances. But only 88 agents volunteered to turn their phones in for forensic imaging, and none of them have been imaged yet.
Plaintiffs argued that the government deserved sanctions by “straight-up saying they will not comply with an order because their employees might complain if they do.”
Progress on the government phones hasn’t gone much faster. In court, lawyers for the federal government revealed they have only been imaging 3 government phones every 2 weeks, without knowing the exact number of government phones but estimating around “200-300 still to go.” That’s a rate that would take the government close to four years to comply with the court’s order.
“There’s enough to suggest that this is a system-wide practice of identifying people through racial slurs,” said Mayra Joachín, an attorney with the ACLU.
CalMatters has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.