The judge orders the border patrol to stop seamless breaks in California

From Sergio Olmos and Wendy FryCalmness

This story was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.

A federal court on Tuesday issued a preliminary order prohibiting the border patrol from conducting without consonant immigration stops through a wide range of California.

The decision came in response to an American civil liberties case brought after El Centro Border Patrol travels to Kern County To conduct a three -day inspection in January, detention of workers, farmers and others in Home Depot parking, outside a convenience store and on the highway between orchards.

The decision prohibits border patrol agents from taking such actions, limiting them to stop people unless they have a reasonable suspicion that man is in violation of us immigration lawS It also prevents agents from arriving without ghosts, unless there is a probable reason that the person is likely to escape before an order can be obtained.

“You just can’t go to brown skin people and say,” Give me your documents, “US District Court Judge Jennifer L. Ruston said during a Monday hearing, which included moments of heated exchange between government lawyers and the judge.

Aklu filed a claim On behalf of the workers in the United Farms, the stops are breaking the fourth amendment. The judge did not decide on the aggregate of the case, but on Tuesday he provided ACLu’s proposal to stop the border patrol from conducting such operations while the case moved through the courts.

“I think it is quite clear that half of a century of a really established law is maintained. It is a pity that it is a reason for celebration. It is not legal to grab people from the street to look like workers in agriculture or workers on the day,” says Elizabeth Sttter, vice president of the United Farmers.

California General Prosecutor Rob Bonta has agreed. “This is an existing law and the judge’s order reflects the existing law.”

“You can’t just indiscriminately stop people and search them without a properly reasonable suspicion or probable reason,” said the Bont of San Diego’s press conference on Monday about the conditions of Ice detention. “So it sounds that the judge saw enough and wanted to issue an order.”

The order is in force on the jurisdiction of the Eastern region of California, which covers the central valley from Redding to Bakersfield.

After January, the man who guides him, the chief patrol agent Gregory Bovino said his agents were focused on people with a criminal and immigration history. However, Investigation of CalMatters He revealed that the border patrol has no criminal or immigration history of 77 of the 78 people he arrested.

The court also ordered the border patrol to document each stop and provide reports within 60 days. During the oral arguments on Monday, a government lawyer said this would be burdensome for border patrol agents. Judge Sturston rebuked the government, saying, “They have to report any arrest, they are not sure what the weight is.”

According to Sworn declarations Filed in court by the detainees, the border patrol agents cut tires, pulled people out of trucks, threw people to the ground and called farmers “Mexican bitches”.

Border patrol attorneys characterized these examples as actions of individual agents, not reflecting a policy by the agency.

Formon disagreed. “The evidence is that this is a wide scale” and is not limited to individual agents, she said.

Border patrol agents receive new training

The border patrol attorneys did not propose their evidence to dispute the evidence presented by ACLU, including the suspension of people based on their race and arrests without an order. They tried to convince of the rod that the order would not be necessary, as the agency is already taking steps to retralicate its employees. In Prior litigationGovernment attorneys said the border patrol has issued guidance on the retraining of 900 agents to the EL sector of the fourth amendment to prevent arrests without guarantee.

At Monday’s hearing, Ruston asked why the guidelines would even be needed as agents are trained in the fourth amendment at the Academy.

Government attorneys announced that the judge 270 agents had received the training. Ruston asked for details of how the training was conducted. “Change by shift?” she said. But government lawyers said they didn’t know.

The packed courtroom was controversial at times. The US lawyer of the Ministry of Justice Olga J. Kuchins claims that the rest of the border patrol in Kern County, known as a “return surgery to the sender,” is not a standard policy. “This two -day operation doesn’t make policy,” she said.

Sturston asked how many days it took to undertake surgery as a policy and what the government hits to establish this operation cannot be interpreted as part of the border patrol policy.

“Do you know about this authority?” Said Formon.

“I don’t know about this authority,” Kuchins said.

The order also forces the El Centro sector to provide evidence within 90 days and every 30 days afterwards the agents participating in these operations are trained under these rules.

“This decision is a powerful recognition that what happened in Kern and the surrounding area in January is illegal,” says Bree Bernwanger, a senior ACLU lawyer.

She called it “a powerful reminder that the law enforcement agencies – including immigration – cannot stop you, to keep you because of the color of your skin.”

Another immigration

Even after government attorneys promised to retrain the constitution agents, the El Centro sector traveled more than 200 miles to the north to Pomona last week and rounded workers during the day outside a home depot, an action reminiscent of the Kern County attack.

Witnesses say the federal agents arrived in unmarked vehicles around 8:30 on Tuesday and quickly surrounded the Home Depot parking lot on South Town Avenue.

“When they saw that a critical mass had been collected, they fulfilled the attack,” says Alexis Theodoro, director of the rights of workers at the Pomona Economic Possibility Center.

According to US customs and border defense, agents arrested 10 and put them in a removal production. No other agencies have been involved, said Michael Scopechio, a spokesman for US customs and border defense. Defenders are adamant that initially more than 20 people were removed, based on the collection of the accounts of various witnesses about the incident.

Federal officials defended their actions, saying that agents were initially directed to a person with an active arrest warrant. During the operation, nine people were also removed. Some of the detainees have had previous accusations, including children violence, an attack with deadly weapons, immigration violations and DUI, said Hilton Beckham, Assistant Commissioner of the CBP public affairs office.

Jesus Domingo Ross, 38, stood in a street corner near the Pomon’s home depot last week, when he said, the agents appeared on all sides, caught him and threw him to the ground.

“I panicked,” he said, describing the moment when he realized he was in custody of US immigration authorities. “Only with everything you see in the news right now, I really panicked because we didn’t know what would happen.”

He spoke with Calmatters on Saturday night during a visit to the Imperial Regional Detention in Kalexiko, where he is now being held.

“I try to keep my confidence in God to translate me through it,” he said quietly.

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.