WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump’s top immigration officials on Sunday defended the use of aggressive snatch and detain tactics by masked and armed federal agents, days after a federal judge ruled that arrests were being made “based upon race alone.”

Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made the administration’s case on the Sunday talk shows, just a day after a farm worker being chased by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents fell from the roof of a greenhouse, and died in California.

District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong earlier ordered a halt to “roving patrols” targeting suspected undocumented migrants in Los Angeles, saying a person’s race, language or workplace was not sufficient justification.

“Physical description cannot be the sole reason to detain and question somebody,” Homan said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding: “It’s a myriad of factors.” But he acknowledged that appearance was one of those factors, and said there were sometimes “collateral arrests” of innocent people in targeted raids.

He said the administration would comply with the judge’s decision but fight it on appeal.

Noem called the judge’s ruling “ridiculous” and slammed what she called the “political” nature of the decision.

“We always built our operations, our investigations on case work, on knowing individuals that we needed to target because they were criminals,” Noem said on Fox News Sunday.

Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants, has taken a number of actions aimed at speeding up deportations and reducing border crossings.

As a so-called “sanctuary city” with hundreds of thousands of undocumented people, Los Angeles has been in the crosshairs of the Trump administration since the Republican returned to power in January.

After raids by ICE officials spurred unrest and protests last month, Trump dispatched the National Guard and US Marines to quell the disruption.

About 200 migrants were detained and clashes erupted with protesters on Thursday when ICE agents raided a farm in Ventura County outside LA.

One worker being chased by ICE agents fell from the roof of a greenhouse, and died on Saturday. Homan called the death “sad” but insisted that the man was not in ICE custody at the time of his death.

Published in Dawn, July 14th, 2025