The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), an organization that monitors human rights in the United States, has presented evidence before a federal court in Los Angeles that would demonstrate that immigration agents had searched on Google for nearby businesses to carry out their operations.
The organization took as an example a raid carried out in June of last year at a car wash in Los Angeles, as part of the Donald Trump Government’s efforts to promote its immigration policy.
According to evidence presented by the ACLU, agents would have used racial profiling through “mobile patrols,” which chose people at random.
“In these operations, the defendants (immigration authorities) do not allege that the agents have a specific ‘objective’ of police action… Rather, the agents scour the communities in search of ‘possible’ suspects,” the ACLU motion states.
The evidence also includes, according to information from Los Angeles Timesthe testimony of an immigration agent who detailed how agents Googled a car wash in Whittier, a city in Los Angeles County, to carry out a raid on June 18, 2025.
The agent explained that a Google search was done for nearby car washes and that they chose the one in Whittier because “it appeared on the list as the business with the closest location.”
From the laundry room, the agents took one of the detainees leading the lawsuit, a US citizen of Latino origin, whom they held while they verified his legal status.
The new evidence includes body camera recordings in which officers are heard using racial slurs to refer to low-income or working-class people of Latino appearance that, according to the plaintiffs, reveal that operations ordered by President Donald Trump’s administration have served as a pretext for making arrests based on race.
The new evidence is part of a request to issue a precautionary measure against the operations that have multiplied in recent weeks in Latino neighborhoods of Los Angeles.
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