The legal move came the day after federal agents and National Guard troops converged on a Los Angeles park in an extraordinary show of force.
City and county officials in Los Angeles sought to join a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration on Tuesday to stop widespread immigration raids that have prompted demonstrations and caused panic in Latino communities across Southern California.
The lawsuit, filed last week by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and other groups, accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies of using racial profiling tactics, conducting warrantless arrests, denying people access to lawyers and holding those arrested in poor conditions.
The City and County of Los Angeles were among nine municipalities that filed a motion to intervene in the case on Tuesday. The others, all in Los Angeles County, were Culver City, Montebello, Monterey Park, Pasadena, Pico Rivera, Santa Monica and West Hollywood.
“These unconstitutional roundups and raids cannot be allowed to continue,” Hydee Feldstein Soto, the Los Angeles city attorney, said at a news conference. “They cannot become the new normal.”
For weeks, local officials have called for an end to the raids, but asking to join the litigation was the first formal step they have taken to try to halt a federal operation. The request came the day after heavily armed federal agents and National Guard troops marched through MacArthur Park near downtown Los Angeles in an extraordinary show of force that drew a sharp rebuke from Mayor Karen Bass.
The city did not need federal agents “coming through, lined up in military fashion and doing absolutely nothing,” said the mayor, who joined the news conference on Tuesday.
