Three U.S. citizens arrested and detained by immigration agents are the first Californians to sue federal officers under the No Kings Act, hours after it was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday.
All three had filed earlier lawsuits against the federal government, but amended their complaints to reflect new claims under the law.
- Related: It just got easier to sue an ICE officer under raft of immigration bills signed by Newsom
- More reading: ICE published — then removed — internal reports detailing medical failures in detainee deaths across U.S.
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Newsom signed Sen. Scott Wiener’s Senate Bill 747 into law early Tuesday as part of a slate of bills designed to combat the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Hours later, Cary Lopez’s attorney updated the lawsuit she filed against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles federal court to make use of the new legislation and demand monetary damages. Lopez was nine months pregnant when ICE agents pinned her belly against a truck in Los Angeles County on June 8, 2025. “You wanna get killed?” an agent said to her during the arrest, according to the lawsuit.
Video of the incident provided to the Chronicle by Lopez’s attorney shows onlookers pleading with agents wearing face coverings to let Lopez go. She was detained and held in chains for about eight hours. The emotional distress sent her into premature labor, the lawsuit says.
“The Constitution follows federal officers onto every street and into every business and neighborhood in California,” Lopez’s attorney, Maria F. Garcia Baldizzone, said in a statement. “A badge does not give anyone permission to violate the rights of the people they encounter. But those rights mean little if the people harmed have no meaningful way to enforce them. The No Kings Act gives our clients another path to demand accountability.”
Lopez’s lawsuit argues her constitutional rights were violated when she was detained in Hawthorne (Los Angeles County) without probable cause. The other two amended complaints filed by Garcia Baldizzone and attorneys with Carrillo Law Firm on Tuesday make similar legal arguments under Wiener’s new law, which allows Californians to file civil lawsuits against any federal agent for violations of their constitutional rights.
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