Federal judge: Continued Border Patrol sweeps in California violated court order

A federal judge ruled that Border Patrol agents continued making illegal stops and arrests after she ordered them to quit.

In a tersely worded decision unsealed Thursday morning, the judge wrote that agents had “again detained people without reasonable suspicion,” relying on broad assumptions about day laborers instead of specific evidence of immigration violations.

The ruling by Judge Jennifer Thurston of the Eastern District of California grants a United Farm Workers motion to enforce a preliminary injunction the judge issued last year. That motion barred Border Patrol agents from detaining people in California’s Central Valley without documenting the specific facts and reasoning for the stops. According to one legal expert, the ruling gives the Trump administration an opportunity to comply before consequences could escalate.

Thurston highlighted that point during a hearing last year, telling the federal government: “You just can’t walk up to people with Brown skin and say, ’Give me your papers.”

Thurston’s original order also prohibited agents from carrying out warrantless arrests without first assessing whether a person is a flight risk.

A raid on a Home Depot in Sacramento

At the center of the case is a July operation in Sacramento where agents swarmed the parking lot of a Home Depot, detaining a group of day laborers. They arrested 11 noncitizens and one U.S. citizen, according to court records.

After the Sacramento raid, Gregory Bovino, then a Border Patrol sector chief, stood in front of the state Capitol building in Sacramento and told Fox News that “Sacramento is not a sanctuary city. The state of California is not a sanctuary state. There is no sanctuary anywhere.”

Thurston, who is based in Fresno, said the Sacramento sweep violated her order from last year, which stemmed from similar raids in Kern County.

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

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

A sweep based on surveillance?

Attorneys for the federal government argued in court documents that the Home Depot parking lot sweep was based on surveillance, intelligence and what agents described as “common knowledge” that workers congregate in Home Depot parking lots. The government argued that federal agents used surveillance video overlooking Home Depot and the surrounding areas, suggesting the use of a drone.

Thursday’s decision raises questions about how Border Patrol is documenting its operations. Agents submitted nearly identical reports for multiple arrests, while their own names were redacted from the government paperwork. Some of their records had inaccuracies or could not be matched to specific individuals. In some cases, it was unclear who authored their reports.

In one case, an agent wrote he arrested someone after “a short foot pursuit.”

The judge found the walking distance from the Home Depot to the location of the arrest was a twelve-minute walk and that the documentation of the arrest was “inaccurate and underinclusive.”

Thurston also found that Border Patrol’s records failed to meet requirements in her prior injunction to document specific facts and reasoning for each stop and arrest.

Dispute over ‘Kavanaugh stops’

The types of stops that do not rely on reasonable suspicion, which became known as “Kavanaugh stops” last year after an opinion by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, faced a separate legal challenge in another case that reached the nation’s highest court. The Supreme Court ruled in September that it could pause a temporary restraining order issued by a lower court in L.A. against similar detentive stops without cause. But U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong wrote that the Supreme Court decision did not bless those kinds of stops, writing, “The Supreme Court has not issued any decisions saying that what the Government did in Los Angeles—and appears to continue doing—was lawful.”

Judge Thurston, appointed by Biden in late 2021, did not grant UFW’s request to compel Border Patrol agents to receive additional training to comply with the preliminary injunction, though she said she expected agents in the field to immediately comply with the court’s order.

The ruling was sealed for 14 days so “personally identifiable information” and “sensitive law enforcement” information, such as Border Patrol agents’ names, could be redacted.

“The ruling upholds what we’ve been saying all along: you can’t just stop people for being brown and working class.” said Elizabeth Strater, vice president of the United Farm Workers.

‘Judicial constraint’

Kevin Johnson, a UC Davis School of Law professor whose work focuses on immigration and civil rights, said the judge is exercising judicial constraint by giving the Trump administration an opportunity to comply with her prior order. The consequences could escalate, though.

“It’s part of a process, and the punishments could increase later on,” said Johnson. “Now, she’s just saying comply with the order, but later she could impose fines and penalties.”

Johnson said the penalties could even increase up to criminal contempt if Border Patrol and the federal government continue to ignore Thurston’s order. He mentioned a 2017 case in which former Maricopa County (Arizona) sheriff Joe Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt for continuing to violate a 2011 federal court order that prohibited him from detaining Latinos solely because of their suspected immigration status.

Trump later pardoned him.

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This story was originally published by CalMatters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.