Judge refuses to pause order barring feds from using force on journalists during protests

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A federal judge rejected the Homeland Security Department’s request for a stay pending appeal of a preliminary injunction he issued last month that prohibits U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal officers from using indiscriminate force against journalists and other observers at anti-immigration enforcement protests.

U.S. District Judge Hernán Vera disagreed with the government’s argument that the journalists weren’t at risk of imminent harm and, as such, lacked standing to pursue an injunction and weren’t likely to prevail before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The judge, a Joe Biden appointee, said journalists may be reluctant to cover protests from up close as a result of the excessive force used by federal officers and that this “chilling” of their exercise of First Amendment rights is in itself a constitutionally sufficient injury for the purpose of legal standing.

Moreover, he said in the ruling issued Tuesday, since the journalists who brought the lawsuit intend to continue attending and covering the very protests where federal officers have targeted or fired indiscriminately upon peaceful protesters, legal observers and reporters, they would be at risk absent an injunction against such use of indiscriminate force.

“And plaintiffs cannot simply, as defendants suggest, attend protests and observe from a distance where they are out of range of crowd control devices, because defendants have fired on plaintiffs even when they were far from the center of protest activity,” Vera wrote.

Representatives of the U.S. Justice Department, which defends Homeland Security in the litigation, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Los Angeles Press Club, the NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America and individual journalists, legal observers and protesters filed a trio of lawsuits against Homeland Security, the LA Police Department and the LA County Sheriff’s Department over the purported violence law enforcement directed against them during the protests over the ICE raids in Southern California in June.

Vera issued a preliminary injunction last month that, among other things, prohibits Homeland Security officers, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents, from dispersing, threatening, or assaulting any person whom they know or reasonably should know is a journalist or legal observer unless they have probable cause to believe that the individual has committed a crime unrelated to failing to obey a dispersal order.

Federal agents are allowed to ask press or legal observers to change location to avoid disrupting law enforcement, as long as they were left with sufficient opportunity to report and observe.

The Justice Department is appealing the preliminary injunction and asked the judge stay his order until the appeal has been resolved.

Protest erupted across LA County after ICE initiated unprecedented immigration enforcement raids across the region in June, rounding up Latino-looking workers at bus stops, Home Depot parking lots, carwashes, and towing yards to detain people who are in the county without proper legal authorization.

The protests prompted President Donald Trump to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles, purportedly to protect federal buildings.

“With tensions escalating, officers from the Federal Protective Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection unleashed crowd control weapons indiscriminately and with surprising savagery,” Vera wrote in his decision to issue a preliminary injunction.

In downtown LA, the judge noted, journalists were repeatedly hit with pepper balls — plastic projectiles filled with a chemical irritant — while taking cover behind media trucks.

In Maywood, federal agents teargassed a small group of protesters, including teens, seniors and local officials, he added, while in Paramount, two reporters were shot in the head with rubber bullets. In Camarillo and Carpinteria, federal agents deployed countless volleys of tear gas, rubber bullets and smoke bombs on family members of detained farm workers, concerned public officials, journalists and protesters.

The lawsuits by the news organization also include the widely reported attack on Australian reporter Lauren Tomasi, who was shot in the back with a rubber bullet. Video footage shows an LAPD officer in riot gear turning and aiming a large gun at Tomasi, making the incident appear deliberate. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called it “horrific.”

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