DHS defied a federal court order to image 800 immigration agents' cellphones sought as evidence in LA racial-profiling suit

On August 4, 2026, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California held the Department of Homeland Security in contempt of court and ordered escalating fines of $500 per day until DHS complies with an order she issued in January 2026 requiring the agency to create digital images of the personal and government cellphones of more than 800 immigration agents involved in "Operation At Large," the Trump administration's 2025 Los Angeles immigration crackdown. Frimpong also ordered DHS to reimburse plaintiffs' attorneys for the cost of pursuing the records. In her written order, Frimpong found DHS "acted intentionally and not in good faith" and that "the fact that phone imaging would take substantial effort does not relieve Defendants from a court order."

DHS attorneys admitted in June 2026 court proceedings that the agency had not turned over the records and was processing government-issued devices at a rate of three phones every two weeks -- a pace plaintiffs noted would take nearly four years to finish; as of late June 2026, no personal phones had been forensically imaged at all. ACLU attorneys wrote in May 2026 that DHS had "simply proceeded to thwart" Frimpong's order "by dragging their feet on imaging government-issued cell phones and by openly defying the order as to personal phones." DHS's defenses shifted over the course of the discovery dispute, first arguing agents don't use texting professionally, then that personal phones fell outside the government's custody or control -- arguments the court rejected.

The phone records are sought as part of Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, in which plaintiffs represented by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California argue the devices may contain evidence of a pattern of racial profiling by federal agents during the Los Angeles sweeps. Court filings in the same case have already surfaced text messages and bodycam footage showing agents using slurs including "wet" and "tonks" to identify Latino people for stops, evidence this archive separately recorded on July 27, 2026. "Not only are federal agents violating the Constitution on the streets, the government is violating court orders by intentionally withholding critical evidence about its immigration enforcement operations," said Mayra Joachin of the ACLU of Southern California. DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the contempt finding; it later issued a written statement identical to one it had released the prior week, saying its "agents are focused on protecting the American people -- not entertaining performative outrage."