A federal court in California has ordered U.S Border Patrol to refrain from interrogating passersby about their immigration status without first having a good reason to do so.
According to The New York Times, U.S. District Juge Jennifer L. Thurston’s Tuesday ruling found that the Border Patrol’s “stop-and-arrest” tactics violate the Fourth Amendment. Thurston also granted a preliminary injunction against the Border Patrol, preventing them from continuing to ask members of the public about their immigration status without establishing probable cause for a stop.
The preliminary injunction will remain in effect until the case is resolved.
Bree Bernwanger, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California, said that the lawsuit could have far-reaching repercussions.
“The class action is really powerful because it extends a court’s order and the effect of a court’s relief more broadly than just the individual people who filed the case,” she said. “So the class certification in this case means every person in the Eastern District of California, regardless of the immigration status, who is subjected to Border Patrol enforcement is covered by this order.”
Earlier this week, Thursday criticized the federal government for seemingly targeting people for interrogation based solely off physical characteristics.
“You can’t just walk up to people with brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers,’” Thurston said in a Monday hearing.
One of the plaintiffs named in the lawsuit, Maria Guadalupe Hernandez Espinoza, suggested that the Border Patrol’s tactics are a form of racial profiling.
“They stopped us because we look Latino or like farm workers, because of the color of our skin,” she said. “It was unfair.”
The Fresno Bee notes that the ruling, in its current form, is applicable to the Eastern District of California. It is part of a broader lawsuit filed against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Border Patrol.
“This order is a powerful affirmation that the Constitution applies to Border Patrol no matter where they are,” Bernwanger said. “It protects the people of the Central Valley and the entire Eastern District of California from the types of roundups we saw in January, where Border Patrol was stopping people, pulling their cars over, grabbing them off the street, just because of the color of their skin.”
“That is not legal,” she said, “and this order seeks to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Elizabeth Strator, the national vice president of the United Farm Workers labor union, told the New York Times that Thurston’s ruling “upholds the basic standards of law in the country.”
The Trump administration, in contrast, insists that it is only trying to restore the “rule of law.”
“The Trump Administration is committed to restoring the rule of law to our immigration system,” a Department of Homeland Security official said in a statement. “No lawsuit, not this one or any other, is going to stop us from doing that.”
Sources
Border Patrol can’t arrest people without a warrant in Central Valley, judge says
Judge Temporarily Blocks Border Patrol’s Stop-and-Arrest Tactics in California
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