Judge Holds Homeland Security in Contempt and Fines It $500 a Day Over Withheld Records From the L.A. Immigration Sweeps

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong held the Department of Homeland Security in civil contempt on Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026, in the litigation over the 2025 Los Angeles immigration sweeps known as Operation At Large. The order, issued under seal last week and unsealed Tuesday, imposed a $500-per-day fine — $3,500 by the time the government paid — plus the plaintiffs' legal costs for the time spent forcing compliance. In January the judge had ordered expedited imaging of the personal cellphones of more than 800 agents involved in the raids; DHS attorneys acknowledged in June that they were processing three phones every two weeks, a pace plaintiffs calculated would take nearly four years.

Discovery sanctions against a federal agency are uncommon, and the finding goes to whether the executive branch will produce the records a court has ordered it to produce. The withheld material — agents' own messages about how enforcement targets were selected — is the evidence on which the underlying claims about the sweeps turn.

The contempt finding stands and the fine has been paid. The underlying case, brought by the ACLU of Southern California and others, remains pending.