{"id":28553,"date":"2026-08-05T12:48:44","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T07:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=28553"},"modified":"2026-08-05T12:48:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T07:48:44","slug":"federal-judge-holds-government-in-civil-contempt-for-not-imaging-immigration-agents-personal-phones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=28553","title":{"rendered":"Federal judge holds government in civil contempt for not imaging immigration agents&#8217; personal phones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/925c7cf\/2147483647\/strip\/false\/crop\/7046x4601+0+0\/resize\/1500x979!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fed%2Fa7%2Febf966644ca4a96c4bcc8b95f9b4%2F1538912-me-0121-fed-shooting-compton-gem-027.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<div data-element=\"story-body\" data-subscriber-content=\"\">\n<p>A California federal judge held the Trump administration in civil contempt for violating a court order requiring them to forensically image personal phones used by agents present at 15 identified immigration operations.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ordered the government to pay $500 per day until it fully complies with a Jan. 16 order from a magistrate judge regarding the imaging of the phones.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUpon review of the parties\u2019 submissions and counsel\u2019s representations at the hearing, it does not appear that Defendants\u2019 noncompliance is due to an inability to comply,\u201d Frimpong said in her order. \u201cInstead, the clear and convincing evidence shows that Defendants have acted intentionally and not in good faith.<\/p>\n<p>The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said \u201cagents are focused on protecting the American people \u2014 not entertaining performative outrage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Frimpong ordered the government file a notice of payment every seven days. A Justice Department lawyer filed its first notice Tuesday indicating the government had submitted a $3,500 payment.<\/p>\n<p>Frimpong\u2019s July 28 order, which was unsealed Tuesday, stems from a lawsuit <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2025-07-11\/federal-judge-temporarily-halts-alleged-indiscriminate-immigration-stops\">filed last year<\/a> by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Public Counsel, other groups and private attorneys calling to end unlawful stops and arrests and for the protection of due process and access to counsel rights for people in immigration detention.<\/p>\n<p>The plaintiffs asked the government to turn over communications agents had regarding the operations in order to show they did not have reasonable suspicion for all the stops.<\/p>\n<p>As part of the lawsuit, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym ordered the government in January to forensically image any cell phones used by agents during specific operations. In May, the plaintiffs in the case asked the court to order the government to prove why it should not be held in contempt over the failure to image a single personal phone since Pym\u2019s order.<\/p>\n<p>Frimpong, an appointee of President Biden, ordered the government to reimburse the plaintiffs and organizations that brought the lawsuit for the time and costs spent \u201cin getting the Government to comply with the Magistrate Judge\u2019s Order.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot 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. The court has found the government in contempt and rightfully issued sanctions,\u201d said Mayra Joach\u00edn, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. \u201cWe cannot allow the government\u2019s disturbing pattern of unlawful conduct and misleading public statements about its immigration operations to continue.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The plaintiffs also noted in the May filing that the government had informed them that <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/world-nation\/story\/2026-01-28\/bovino-was-face-of-trumps-immigration-raids-now-his-future-is-in-question\">Gregory Bovino<\/a>, the former commander at large for Border Patrol, had lost his previously issued work phone in January 2026 and was issued a new phone. <\/p>\n<p>At a June 25 contempt hearing, Jonathan Robbins, a Justice Department lawyer, said they objected to the order regarding personal phones, stating that those \u201care not in our custody and control.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Robbins told the judge that U.S. Customs and Border Protection had sent questionnaires to agents associated with Operation at Large Los Angeles, with more than 1,400 returned. Of those, 885 officers indicated they use their personal phones for work, according to Robbins. <\/p>\n<p>Although 88 agents consented to the forensic imaging of their personal phones, Robbins said none of those had been imaged at the time of the hearing. <\/p>\n<p>Robbins said government phones were still being imaged at that point, with a capacity for only three phones every two weeks. He told the judge it was \u201ca very, very slow process.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a completely overly intrusive way to collect discovery,\u201d Robbins told Frimpong, noting that agents who had been deployed to L.A. were now scattered across the country. \u201cWe\u2019re not trying to flout the orders of the court.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re over four months later and all I\u2019m hearing is that an email and a questionnaire went out,\u201d Frimpong said during the hearing. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to wait forever.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>During the hearing, David Fry of Munger Tolles &amp; Olson, which is representing the plaintiffs, told Frimpong that the imaging of the phones was a meaningful measure to address concerns that some agents may not be following the rules. Fry noted that racially insensitive comments had been found in some materials.<\/p>\n<p>The Times <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2026-07-27\/immigration-agents-racial-profiling-aclu\">reported last week<\/a> that immigration agents were captured on body camera footage and text messages using slurs to refer to Latinos. <\/p>\n<p>Frimpong dismissed the government\u2019s argument that phone imaging would take substantial effort, noting that \u201cthe time-consuming nature of the imaging process makes Defendants\u2019 delay less excusable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThough they have explained that the process is time-consuming, they do not appear to have started it, or provided any adequate explanation as to why,\u201d Frimpong wrote. \u201cMoreover, Defendants appear unable to give this Court\u2014or Plaintiffs\u2014a realistic estimate of how long they can expect to continue waiting for the outstanding personal phones to be imaged.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Frimpong said that since the June hearing, the government has not supplied information suggesting that personal phones are now beginning to be imaged. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A California federal judge held the Trump administration in civil contempt for violating a court order requiring them to forensically image personal phones used by agents present at 15 identified immigration operations. U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ordered the government to pay $500 per day until it fully complies with a Jan. 16 order&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/d987ef8\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/7046x3699+0+451\/resize\/1200x630!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fed%2Fa7%2Febf966644ca4a96c4bcc8b95f9b4%2F1538912-me-0121-fed-shooting-compton-gem-027.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-hub"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}