Advocates say the Trump administration's ambitious daily arrest quotas are leading immigration agents to lean on the thinnest of justifications and on false assumptions about people they encounter to justify arrests.
"If you're asking these law enforcement agencies to arrest 3,000 people a day, they cannot form reasonable suspicion for each specific person," Bitran said. "So they have to be cutting corners."
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"There's a lot of Hispanic brothers right here," but everyone working in the yard that day was a U.S. citizen, he said. "Racial profiling is the way I look at it. Because they just walked in and said 'hey, you and you.' "
According to court filings, Ramirez was taken to the federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles. Agents confirmed his U.S. citizenship, but charged him with assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer.
"He's traumatized," Dominguez said. "That sucks, to be a U.S. citizen and not be able to walk in the country of freedom. It sucks that we're antagonized for being Hispanic."