Dear IMLA Immigration Working Group: I have a couple of updates for you. 1. On Friday, HUD published its proposed "mixed status family" rule seeking to revise HUD's Section 214 regulations to require the verification of US citizenship or the eligible immigration status of all applicants and recipients of assistance under a covered program, regardless of age. The proposed rule also would make prorated assistance a temporary condition in order to verify eligibility status, as opposed to the current regulations which allow for prorated assistance indefinitely (this is known as the mixed status family rule). According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the proposed rule would cause nearly 80,000 families to lose their housing assistance, including 37,000 children. Here is the proposed rule, which was published on 2/20 and has a 60 day comment period: https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-03405.pdf 1. The Ninth Circuit granted the federal government's emergency motion for an administrative injunction pending appeal in the United States v. California case. This has the effect of enjoining the state from enforcing Section 10 of the No Vigilantes Act against federal agencies & officers. The panel will hear oral argument on this emergency motion on 3/3/26. 1. I also wanted to forward an update on Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem. The case was brought by individuals and organizations seeking to stop the ICE roving patrols and to ensure that everyone detained by ICE can access counsel. A number of cities/counties in the central district of California intervened in the case. Last year, the court issued two TROs, one as to the Fourth Amendment claims and one as to the Fifth Amendment access to counsel claims. As you will recall, the Fourth Amendment claims had originally gone up to the Supreme Court when the federal government sought a stay of that injunction that prohibited the federal agents from detaining individuals based on 4 factors: 1) apparent race/ethnicity; 2) speaking Spanish; 3) the type of work the person does; 4) presence at a particular location like a bus stop or car wash. The Supreme Court issued a stay of the injunction but said nothing on the merits of the case and provided no rational for the stay (Justice Kavanaugh, writing for himself only wrote separately to explain his rationale in granting the stay). The case has proceeded in district court since the Supreme Court's ruling and the court on 2/18 issued its order denying the federal government's motion to dismiss the intervenor's complaint as well as the court's denial of the motion to dismiss the complaint. Denial of motion to dismiss the complaint The court rejected the federal government's argument that the Supreme Court had already "decided that everything they did was lawful." On this point, the district court emphasized "The Supreme Court has not issued any decisions saying that what the Government did in Los Angeles-and appears to continue doing-was lawful. The Supreme Court has actually said nothing about what the Government did in Los Angeles. What the Government is saying about the Supreme Court decision is false. It is therefore the job of this Court to decide whether the people and organizations can continue their lawsuit. This Court decides they can." The court first rejected the federal government's contentions that the plaintiffs lack Article III standing to pursue injunctive relief. As to the individual plaintiffs, the court found their "risk of harm is sufficiently imminent and substantial." The court noted that the plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged that they were previously detained and that the defendants are targeting the same locations and stopping people without reasonable suspicion. The government argued the plaintiffs have only pointed to "isolated incidents" of people being detained or not being able to speak to a lawyer, which the court indicates is not true. Highlighting that it must accept the factual allegations as true at this motion to dismiss stage of the lawsuit, the court notes that the complaint points to frequent and common incidents of people being stopped by the roving patrols and not having access to lawyers. The court found the organizational plaintiffs had also demonstrated associational standing. In rejecting the federal government's argument that City of Los Angeles v. Lyons controls the outcome of the case as underscored by Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence in this case on the stay, the district court emphasized that it could not "fairly attribute the concurrence's opinion - which was signed by one Justice - to the Supreme Court at large." And the court explained, it could not speculate as to the reasoning of the Supreme Court in granting the stay and whether it was on standing, the merits, or the scope of the relief. The court found this case distinguishable from Lyons for three reasons. First, the court explained, it had already made an "explicit finding of likelihood of recurrence" when it ruled on the TRO and it reiterated that finding in this motion. Second, the court credited that there was evidence in this case, unlike Lyons, of a "pattern or practice" by the Defendants. And third, unlike Lyons, "there is no specific predicate action required by Plaintiffs to trigger Defendants' challenged practice" such as the plaintiffs in Lyons avoiding unlawful activity. As far as the Fifth Amendment claims, the court also found the plaintiffs had standing and rejected the argument that Lyons' requirement of a real and immediate threat of future injury precludes standing. The court found that there were continuing and ongoing access restrictions and that the plaintiffs had therefore shown their harm was ongoing. The court then turned to the government's additional arguments: that the access to counsel claims were moot and that 8 USC s. 1252, a provision of the INA, prevents the court from exercising jurisdiction over those claims. As with the standing argument, the court found the claims were not moot because the plaintiffs had plausibly alleged the defendants were continuing to interfere with their ability to retain and communicate with counsel. The defendants claim the policies that prevented access due to riots at the facility in June are no longer in place, however, the court found they had not mustered enough evidence to carry their heavy burden of establishing mootness. The court likewise found that Section 1252 did not bar its considerations of the Fifth Amendment claims Denial of motion to dismiss the intervenor's complaint The intervenors' complaint was brought by several cities and counties in the central district of California. The local governments claim that the ICE roving patrols are harming them by causing increased 911 calls, impairing their maintenance of law & order, and causing a drain on their tax revenue. The federal government sought to dismiss the complaint, arguing the local governments lack standing; have not stated a Fourth Amendment claim; that their APA claims must fail because there is no discrete action subject to judicial review; and because preemption forecloses their Tenth Amendment claims. The court first found that the intervenors did not need to independently demonstrate standing as to the claims that sought no relief beyond that sought by the original plaintiffs. And the court found they had established standing as to their four separate causes of action. First, the court found they had sufficiently demonstrated an injury in fact based on the tangible harm they suffered in connection with the defendants' actions. This includes an estimated $27 million in additional costs incurred by the City of Los Angeles for LAPD labor as well as the frustration of their ability to respond to high priority crimes and emergencies. The federal government argued these expenditures should not qualify for standing because they were "voluntary expenditure[s] of municipal funds in furtherance of their sanctuary city policies." Calling this argument a "red herring," the court found this argument failed to account for the lost tax revenue or threats to the localities' core police powers. Moreover, the court concluded that "a municipality's undertaking of costs stemming from executive action are not self-inflicted injuries." The court also found the intervenors had established causation between the defendants' actions and alleged harm. The court explained that although the harm stemmed from actions taken against third parties, the intervenors need only show that it "appears likely, and not overly attenuated, that the sought relief would redress Intervenors' harms," and here, the court found the connection was apparent. The defendants pointed out other possible causes of the decreased revenue, including declining tourism, increased natural disasters, and inflation. The court explained that none of those theories "negate the fact that Intervenors' 1AC- taking all relevant allegations as true - sufficiently states and explains a causal link between Defendants' actions and Intervenors' harm." The defendants' actions need not be the only causal link at the motion to dismiss stage in other words. As to the third standing factor, the court concluded the intervenors established redressability for similar reasons as the causation analysis. On the Fourth Amendment claim, the court found that the intervenors were seeking to redress their own injuries and not merely bringing a parens patriae suit and therefore denied the motion to dismiss that claim. Turning to the APA claims, the intervenors complaint centered on the defendants' courthouse arrest policy, which the defendants claimed was nonreviewable. The intervenors alleged, and per the court, the defendants did not appear to dispute, that this courthouse arrest policy violated state and federal law. The court found that "[t]o find in Defendants' favor at this time would be tantamount to saying that Congress, without explicitly saying so, sanctioned unlawful conduct from the relevant agencies." Finally, turning to the Tenth Amendment claims, the court found that the defendants' arguments that these claims were preempted by the federal power over immigration law fails because broad power over immigration enforcement does not establish preemption. The court also found the defendants' arguments fell short of obstacle preemption because they failed to cite "a federal law that they claim would negate Intervenors' Tenth Amendment claim under obstacle preemption." [logo]<https://imla.org/> [facebook icon]<https://www.facebook.com/InternationalMunicipalLawyersAssociation/>[twitter icon]<https://twitter.com/imlalegal>[linkedin icon]<https://www.linkedin.com/company/international-municipal-lawyers-association-inc./> Amanda Karras (she/her) Executive Director / General Counsel International Municipal Lawyers Association P: (202) 466-5424 x7116 D: (202) 742-1018 51 Monroe St. Suite 404 Rockville, MD, 20850 Plan Ahead! 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