Arrests Tripled. Warrants Didn't. Now DHS Is Being Sued.

Eight Latino New Yorkers and a Syracuse workers' center say DHS agents are stopping and arresting people without warrants or probable cause — targeting brown skin, not criminal conduct.

They were pumping gas. Walking to the train. Driving a daughter to school. Crossing a parking lot on the way to work.

That was enough.

Federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection have been stopping and arresting Latino New Yorkers in encounters that four civil rights organizations now say are flatly illegal — suspicionless, warrantless, and driven not by evidence of wrongdoing, but by race.

On Thursday, The Legal Aid Society, the New York Civil Liberties Union, Make the Road New York, and Covington & Burling LLP filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, charging DHS with running a systematic racial profiling operation across New York City and the surrounding region that has put immigrant communities — and the Constitution — under siege.

“ICE is profiling and arresting Black and Brown New Yorkers based solely on their appearance,” said Meghna Philip, Director of the Special Litigation Unit at The Legal Aid Society. “This lawlessness must come to an end, and the federal government must be held accountable for its abuse of authority.”

The complaint names eight Latino plaintiffs from Long Island, Brooklyn, and Buffalo — men and women ranging in age from 19 to 63 — alongside the Workers’ Center of Central New York, a Syracuse-based labor organizing group whose membership has been directly terrorized by the enforcement surge.

The numbers tell the story.