California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed his 100th lawsuit against the Trump administration on Thursday, 21 months after President Donald Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, 2025.
The new case, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, targets Immigration and Customs Enforcement's civil immigration arrests in and around state courthouses. The state says the arrests intimidate witnesses and victims, disrupt prosecutions and violate California's authority to run its own courts.
California says courthouse arrests rose more than 550% a month on average after a May 2025 ICE directive. A federal judge in New York threw out that directive, but the state says ICE kept up the arrests under a nearly identical policy. In one October incident, four federal agents tackled a man to the ground at a Fresno courthouse and handcuffed him.
The state is asking the court to strike down the current policy and bar civil immigration arrests at California courthouses.
"For the 100th time since President Trump returned to office, we're going to court. This is a sobering milestone," Bonta said. "This isn't a fight we chose. But when the President breaks the law and goes after our state, we'll meet him in court, each and every time."
Bonta's office says California has led or co-led 67 of the 100 suits and filed more than 130 amicus briefs. It has won 57 orders granting early relief and 26 final orders, and in nine other cases the administration backed down before a ruling on the merits.
Consider the arithmetic of Bonta's war room: 100 lawsuits in 21 months means a new filing roughly every six days since Trump took the oath. California has led or co-led 67 of them and filed more than 130 amicus briefs besides. This is less a legal strategy than a standing army.
And the win column is not empty: 57 orders granting early relief, 26 final orders, and nine cases where the administration backed down before a ruling on the merits. Bonta's office will tell you that is the point — the suits are not theater, they are a scoreboard.
One hundred lawsuits in 21 months is not normal — by either side's telling. Bonta calls it a duty forced on him; the administration calls it resistance to laws the voters asked to be enforced. What it really is, is American federalism under stress: a president determined to enforce immigration law, and a state determined to make him do it everywhere except its own courthouses. The courts, one hundred times and counting, get to sort it out.
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