Court Filing Shows Immigration Agents Used Slurs 'Tonk' and 'Wet' During 2025 LA Raids

A motion filed Monday in federal court in Los Angeles includes body camera footage and text messages showing immigration agents using slurs when talking about Latino immigrants during raids across the city last summer.

The filing is part of Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, a case brought by the ACLU of Southern California, Public Counsel and other groups and private attorneys. It asks U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong for a preliminary injunction barring federal agents from making stops based on someone's race, ethnicity, language, location or apparent job.

According to the Los Angeles Times, body camera footage from a June 2025 raid at a Hollywood Home Depot captured an agent saying, "There was a guy, I'm pretty sure he's wet. He was just sitting in that minivan." A text chain quoted in the filing shows an agent referencing "tonks everywhere selling food."

In another clip cited by both the LA Times and NOTUS, an agent says, "Yeah, just plug us in wherever you see some tonks and we'll jump out." NOTUS also cites footage from Aug. 6, 2025, in which Border Patrol agents in a cargo van point to a backpack and ask, "Who's backpack is that? Tonk's backpack?" A separate clip from June 12, 2025, shows an agent saying, "One tonk fucking got away, dude," then asking how to turn off his body camera.

CalMatters reports the word "tonk" is derogatory slang reportedly derived from the sound a flashlight makes when it strikes a migrant's head. The outlet notes that Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol's parent agency, issued internal guidance in 2019 explicitly stating the term "is not appropriate" because of its derogatory meaning, according to records CBP disclosed to HuffPost under a Freedom of Information Act request.

CalMatters reports the filing also includes a deposition in which an immigration agent, asked what makes someone look suspicious, answered bluntly: "Older Hispanic male." Plaintiffs' attorneys argue that response, combined with the recorded language, shows agents were not developing individualized, fact-based suspicion before stopping people, as federal law requires. Instead, they argue, agents relied on assumptions about who looks low-income and Latino.

Mayra Joachín, an attorney at the ACLU of Southern California identified in the LA Times as deputy director of immigrants' rights, said the language shows "what's driving the way that immigration operations are being conducted now is a racist sentiment." She also told the LA Times the footage and texts represent only "a fragment" of what may exist, saying not all government phone records have been turned over.

The evidence emerged from months of court-ordered discovery after the U.S. Supreme Court stayed Judge Frimpong's earlier order barring race-based stops. In that September ruling, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that federal law allows immigration officers to "briefly detain" someone for questioning if they have "reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts" that the person is in the country illegally, and that such stops are legal based on the "totality of the circumstances." The plaintiffs did not have this body camera and text evidence when the Supreme Court made that decision.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, quoted by both the LA Times and NOTUS, said agents "are focused on protecting the American people, not entertaining performative outrage," and asked, "Where is the media's outrage for Angel families who lost a loved one to illegal alien crime?" The statement does not address or deny the specific slurs documented in the footage and texts.

The existence of the recordings and text messages themselves is not in dispute. They were turned over by the government during discovery ordered by a federal judge, and the language quoted appears consistent across the LA Times, NOTUS and CalMatters accounts.

What remains contested is the legal significance. The government's position, reflected in the Supreme Court's September stay, is that agents can lawfully stop people based on specific, articulable facts, not race alone. Plaintiffs argue the newly disclosed depositions and recordings show agents were, in practice, using race and apparent economic status as their actual basis for stops, which would violate the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches. Whether a judge agrees that this evidence proves systemic racial profiling, rather than isolated instances of offensive language, is now a live question in the case.

CalMatters notes the filing also cites an ICE agent's deposition stating that the agency was "doing the same thing" under a new name after its high-profile summer 2025 operation, called "Operation at Large," formally ended. That claim is an allegation from a deposition, not an independent finding by the court.

Judge Frimpong has not yet ruled on the preliminary injunction motion. No agents have been named or disciplined in connection with the recorded remarks, and DHS has not announced any internal review of the specific language documented in the filing.