Federal judge: Border Patrol raids violate court order

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A federal judge ruled that Border Patrol agents continued to make illegal detentions and arrests after she ordered them to cease operations.

In a laconic solution posted Thursday morning the judge wrote that the agents “re-detained people without reasonable suspicion” based on general assumptions about the workers rather than specific evidence of immigration violations.

Judge Jennifer Thurston of the Eastern District of California granted the injunction filed by the United Farm Workers union to enforce the preliminary injunction the judge issued last year. This order prohibits Border Patrol agents from detaining people in California’s Central Valley without documenting the specific facts and reasons for the apprehensions. According to one legal expert, the ruling gives the Trump administration a chance to implement the order before the consequences get worse.

Thurston did so at a hearing last year, telling the federal government, “You can’t just walk up to brown people and say, ‘Give me your papers.’

Thurston’s original order also prohibits officers from making warrantless arrests without first assessing whether there is a risk of flight.

Home Depot attack in Sacramento

The case revolves around an operation conducted in July in Sacramento, where agents They broke into the Home Depot parking lot and they arrested a group of day laborers. According to court records, 11 foreigners and one U.S. citizen were arrested.

After the Sacramento crackdown, Gregory Bovino, then-Chief of the Border Patrol, stood outside the state Capitol in Sacramento and told Fox News that “Sacramento is not a sanctuary city. The state of California is not a sanctuary state. There are no sanctuaries anywhere.”

Thurston, who lives in Fresno, said the Sacramento attack violated his warrant from last year, which stemmed from similar attacks in Kern County.

“Agents detained these people, demanded to see their ‘documents,’ and questioned them about their immigration status, all without any legal basis for doing so,” Thurston wrote.

The Border Patrol did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A surveillance-based raid?

Attorneys for the federal government have argued in court documents that the Home Depot parking lot raid was based on surveillance, intelligence and what agents described as “common knowledge” that workers congregate in Home Depot parking lots. The government claims federal agents used surveillance video covering Home Depot and the area around it, suggesting the use of a drone.

Thursday’s ruling raises questions about how the Border Patrol documents its operations. Agents filed nearly identical reports on multiple arrests while their names were redacted from government records. Some of their records contained inaccuracies or could not be linked to specific people. In some cases, it was not clear who wrote the reports.

In one case, a police officer wrote that he arrested someone after a “short chase.”

The judge determined that the walking distance from Home Depot to the location of the arrest was twelve minutes and that the arrest documentation was “inaccurate and incomplete.”

Thurston also found that Border Patrol records did not meet the requirements of his previous court order, which required documentation of the specific facts and reasons behind each stop and arrest.

Cavanaugh Owns Controversy

The types of arrests not based on reasonable suspicion, known as “Cavanaugh arrests” after an opinion by Supreme Court Justice Brett Cavanaugh last year, faced a separate legal challenge in another case that reached the nation’s highest court. The Supreme Court ruled in September that it could stay a temporary restraining order issued by a lower court in Los Angeles against such arrests without cause. U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, however, wrote that the Supreme Court’s decision did not support such arrests, adding: “The Supreme Court has not issued any decision showing that what the government did in Los Angeles — and appears to be continuing to do — was legal.”

Judge Thurston, appointed by Biden in late 2021, denied the UFW’s request to require Border Patrol agents to undergo additional training to comply with the preliminary injunction, although she said she expected agents on the ground to immediately comply with the court’s order.

The resolution was kept secret for 14 days so that “personal information” and “confidential law enforcement information” as well as the names of Border Patrol agents could be redacted.

“The decision reaffirms what we’ve said all along: You can’t just stop people because they’re brown and working class,” said Elizabeth Strather, vice president of the United Farm Workers.

“Foreclosure”

Kevin Johnson, a UC Davis School of Law professor whose work focuses on immigration and civil rights, said the judge was exercising judicial restraint by giving the Trump administration a chance to follow through on its previous order. However, the consequences can be worse.

“This is part of a process, and penalties may increase later,” Johnson said. “Now he’s just saying the order is being followed, but he may impose fines and penalties later.”

Johnson said the penalties could even escalate to criminal contempt if the Border Patrol and the federal government continue to ignore Thurston’s order. He cited a 2017 case in which former Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt for continuing to violate a 2011 federal court order barring him from detaining Hispanics solely because of their presumed immigration status.

Trump later pardoned him.