Judge fines federal government for refusing to image immigration agents' personal phones

In a Los Angeles-focused case, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong declared the federal government in civil contempt for ignoring a prior order to forensically image any cell phone used by immigration agents during fifteen specific raids. She set a daily sanction of $500 until the imaging is completed, a penalty unsealed on July 28. The contempt ruling follows a class-action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Public Counsel and private attorneys seeking to curb alleged illegal stops, arrests and racial profiling.

Earlier, Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym had mandated the imaging in January, and plaintiffs later asked the court to enforce it after the government failed to image even a single personal phone. Justice Department attorney Jonathan Robbins contended that personal devices lie outside government custody and that the imaging capacity is limited to three phones every two weeks, describing the order as overly intrusive. Nonetheless, questionnaires showed 885 agents used personal phones during the operations, with only 88 agreeing to imaging, none of which had been completed at the time of the hearing. Plaintiffs' counsel David Fry emphasized that the imaging is crucial to verify compliance, noting prior discovery of racially insensitive language in agents' communications.