By The Washington Times (Politics) | Created at 2026-08-05 16:26:01 | Updated at 2026-08-05 22:19:22
7 hours ago
The Justice Department vowed Wednesday to “prevail” in a battle with a federal judge who has held the Trump administration in contempt of court after the Department of Homeland Security refused to produce the personal phones of dozens of agents involved in last year’s immigration enforcement surge in Los Angeles.
Until then, however, the government is paying a fine of $500 a day.
Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, a Biden appointee, issued the contempt ruling in secret last week. She unsealed the ruling on Tuesday.
The cellphone data is being sought as part of a long-running case over how DHS agents and officers decided whom to target for arrest during the Los Angeles operation. After the court learned that some agents were using their personal phones to communicate about the operation, it ordered DHS to try to get hold of those records.
Judge Frimpong said they “did not properly search for this material.”
She added, “Congress has given this court the power to impose a fine on any party who does not comply with a clear order of this court. This court uses that power now and finds the government in contempt.”
She set the $500-per-day fine to last until the government complies. Until then, she ordered weekly payments.
The Justice Department said the first $3,500 payment was made Tuesday.
In a statement, the department said it will battle the judge’s ruling.
“We are aggressively defending the president’s immigration priorities and expect to prevail in this case, as we already did once at the Supreme Court,” the DOJ said. “The district court is defying that decision by pressing forward despite the Supreme Court’s clear ruling that it likely lacks jurisdiction.”
Homeland Security, meanwhile, saw the ruling as a distraction.
“Our agents are focused on protecting the American people — not entertaining performative outrage,” the department said in a statement. “Where is the media’s outrage for Angel families who lost a loved one to illegal alien crime?”
The underlying case challenged the enforcement surge in Los Angeles, arguing that DHS personnel were violating residents’ constitutional rights by stopping and questioning people because they were hanging around car washes or Home Depot stores.
Judge Frimpong sided with the challengers.
But when the case reached the Supreme Court, the justices put her ruling on hold. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, in a concurring opinion, said immigration enforcement requires officers to make decisions about targets, and factors such as apparent race or ethnicity, language and location are all factors that can be used.
With the case now back before Judge Frimpong, the challengers, using legal discovery, tried to drill down on how stop-and-arrest decisions were made.
The government first told the court last December that no U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection officers used personal phones to text about their operations.
But during depositions, some officers and agents said that wasn’t true.
In May, CBP said it checked with nearly 1,500 agents who were part of the Los Angeles surge, and 885 said they used personal phones for work. Of those, 88 consented to forensic imaging of their phones.
As of late June, none had been imaged, the judge said.
Government lawyers told the court that the process was time-consuming.
Judge Frimpong said that doesn’t explain why the effort hadn’t even started, nor why the government can’t estimate how long it will take to complete all the imaging.
She said the noncompliance “is intentional and not in good faith.”
She also said the administration will have to pay the lawyers’ fees for plaintiffs to reimburse for the time they spent working on compliance with the discovery order.
