A federal judge in California found on Wednesday that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials had violated a previous order regarding warrantless arrests, and ordered agents operating in her judicial district to fully document their reasons for making any future stops.
The judge, Jennifer L. Thurston of the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of California, had previously found that immigration operations in Kern County, Calif., appeared to have been based on racial profiling, with agents making arrests when people they stopped could not produce proof of citizenship on the spot. Last year, she restricted the agency from continuing to carry out random immigration sweeps in the region, citing a “pattern and practice of agents performing detentive stops without reasonable suspicion.”
On Wednesday, Judge Thurston found that border agents appeared to have violated that order when they carried out an immigration sweep last year in a Home Depot parking lot in Sacramento.
Immigration enforcement agencies have justified the stops and arrests under a legal theory that the Trump administration has recently formalized: that federal law allows warrantless arrests if an undocumented migrant might escape before an arrest warrant could be obtained.
On Wednesday, Judge Thurston, an appointee of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., ruled that the Border Patrol had never made any attempt to establish that the individuals they rounded up posed a risk of escaping before agents could have a judge sign a warrant.
“Congress requires agents to consider whether, when making warrantless arrests, the noncitizen poses a flight risk or a danger to community if released,” she wrote. “Rather than abide by Congress’s mandate, agents arrested everyone who could not establish citizenship.”
She granted a request by the labor union for farmworkers that brought the lawsuit that she take steps to enforce the order.
To do so, Judge Thurston ordered border agents working throughout her federal judicial district to take meticulous notes about every stop, adding that they be documented “in narrative form.” In particular, she demanded that the notes demonstrate why an agent had reasonable suspicion, before each stop, that someone being detained was not a U.S. citizen.
The order applied to agents working throughout the Eastern District of California, which spans 34 counties and major urban areas, including Sacramento, Fresno and Bakersfield. Around eight million people live in the district, according to its U.S. attorney’s office.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.
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