3 California Residents Sue ICE Officers Under New ‘No Kings’ Law
Three citizens have sued federal immigration agents for violating their constitutional rights through wrongful arrests and detentions, in the first tests of California’s new No Kings Act.
The law — which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Tuesday as part of a package of bills meant to push back on the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement — aims to create a pathway for residents to seek accountability from the officers carrying out that agenda. Legal experts warn, however, that the law and the lawsuits relying on it face unlikely odds in federal court.
All three plaintiffs had preexisting lawsuits against the government and amended those complaints this week after the law’s signing.
That includes Javier Ramirez, who was arrested on June 12, 2025 amid roving immigration raids in the Los Angeles area and less than a week after President Donald Trump sent more than 2,000 National Guardsmen and U.S. Marines into the region.
Ramirez, who exports cars to Mexico and splits his time between Los Angeles and Tijuana, was at his family’s car lot in Montebello when agents drove up and walked in through a gate, left slightly open, according to security footage of the incident.
Ramirez told KQED the agents ignored posted signs saying “No Trespassing” and “Private Property.”
“One of them points me out and yells, ‘Hey just get him, he’s Mexican,’” Ramirez said, recounting the arrest. “That’s when they threw me down to the ground. I yelled at them, I’m telling them, ‘You know what, I have my passport. I was born here.’ They didn’t care. They didn’t care. They didn’t even check out my wallet or anything like that.”
In the video, shared by his lawyer, agents can be seen wrestling Ramirez to the ground and kneeling on his back while an agent stands with another detained man nearby. Ramirez can be heard in the recordings telling agents he’s a citizen. His brother offered to give the officers Ramirez’ diabetes medication, according to his lawsuit, but they declined to take it.
He spent four days in a federal detention facility. There, he fainted due to lack of medical care before he was released, he said. The case against him was later dropped.
He’s now suing the U.S. and 20 agents who were involved in his arrest and detention for various rights violations including unlawful detention, denial of due process and excessive use of force.
“I want justice,” Ramirez said. “I have kids as well, and as a proud Latino I also teach my kids to speak Spanish and I don’t want them to, in the near future, just by looking Hispanic or them talking Spanish, have this happen to them.”
Maria Garcia Baldizzone, an attorney representing Ramirez and the two other cases amended after the No Kings Act was signed, said all three cases involve U.S. citizens being wrongfully and violently detained, seemingly just for “looking Latino.”
“Our clients have been beaten by ICE agents or Border Patrol agents, they’ve been thrown to the ground,” Garcia Baldizzone said. “One of the other ones we filed [Tuesday] was Cary Lopez. She was nine months pregnant and they had twisted her arm and pressed her body and her pregnant belly against their cars.”
The third case involved a man named Angel Piña who said he was with his wife when he witnessed federal agents harassing three minors. Piña’s wife called 911 and soon after, an agent tackled him to the ground and two others piled on top. He was arrested and taken by ambulance to the hospital after suffering injuries to his head, ankle and shoulder.
Garcia Baldizzone said all three cases are seeking compensatory damages for the suffering that the plaintiffs endured and punitive damages from the individual agents for these violations of rights.
“I’m hoping to hold these agents accountable for what they’ve done to our clients, what they have done to other people and to show them that it’s not right, that what they’re doing is not right,” she said.
Whether the cases will succeed, however, remains to be seen.
Although Congress has passed laws establishing a right to sue local and state officials for violating constitutional rights, the Legislature has never done the same for federal officials, said Kevin Johnson, a distinguished professor of law emeritus at the UC Davis School of Law.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a man named Webster Bivens in 1971 who sued six agents for violating his constitutional rights. Cases in later years seeking accountability from federal officials cited the Bivens ruling, but Johnson said two rulings in the past decade have significantly limited the ability to bring such suits, called Bivens actions.
The No Kings Act, introduced by San Francisco state Senator Scott Wiener, aims to establish that right in state law, where none exists in federal legislation.
“ICE and Border Patrol have escaped that accountability for far too long due to a loophole in the law,” Wiener said in a statement following Newsom’s signing. “The No Kings Act provides long overdue accountability to end the impunity powering ICE and Border Patrol’s terror campaign, and put Cary, Javier, Angel, and thousands of others on the pathway to justice.”
Regulating the federal government with state law, however, is not that simple, Johnson said.
“Here you have a complicated situation where you have the state passing a law that seeks to restrict or at least provide the possibility of an action against a federal officer conducting a federal business,” Johnson said. “And so the question will be, can a state regulate a federal law enforcement officer?”
Johnson answered his own question in no uncertain terms.
“I think the suits will probably be dismissed for conflicting with federal law … so I don’t see these actions going anywhere. They could end up on appeal, perhaps,” Johnson said. “I’m sympathetic with the concept of providing a right to relief, but I don’t see how the state government can regulate the federal law enforcement functions.”
California follows New York, Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts, which passed similar laws earlier this year meant to create a cause of action in their respective states for suing federal officials, according to Protecting Democracy , a co-sponsor of the No Kings Act.
Time will tell whether the ensuing lawsuits are able to withstand legal scrutiny and secure the compensation plaintiffs are seeking. But Johnson said that regardless of their ultimate success, the No Kings Act and other recently signed laws send a message.
“All these laws — there’s 21 signed in one day by the governor — they’re sending a strong message to the federal government that California is not just going to roll over and play dead when it comes to the immigration enforcement operations,” Johnson said.