A federal judge ruled Thursday that Border Patrol agents in California’s Central Valley continued detaining people without legal justification, violating a court order she issued last year that required agents to document specific facts before making stops or arrests.
Judge Jennifer Thurston of the Eastern District of California granted a United Farm Workers motion to enforce a preliminary injunction that barred agents from detaining people without first recording the specific reasoning behind each stop. Thurston found that agents had “again detained people without reasonable suspicion,” relying on broad assumptions about day laborers rather than individualized evidence of immigration violations.
The ruling gives the Trump administration a window to come into compliance before consequences escalate, according to one legal expert familiar with the case.
The Home Depot Raid
The ruling centers on a July operation in Sacramento where Border Patrol agents swept through a Home Depot parking lot and detained a group of day laborers. Agents arrested 11 noncitizens and one U.S. citizen, according to court records.
“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.
After the Sacramento operation, Gregory Bovino, then a Border Patrol sector chief, stood in front of the state Capitol 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’s original injunction grew out of similar raids in Kern County. That order also prohibited agents from carrying out warrantless arrests without first assessing whether a person poses a flight risk.
Surveillance Claims Fall Short
Federal government attorneys argued in court filings that the Home Depot sweep drew on surveillance footage, intelligence gathering, and what agents called “common knowledge” that day laborers congregate in Home Depot parking lots. The government suggested agents also used drone footage covering the store and surrounding area.
Thurston was not persuaded. The judge had told federal attorneys during a hearing last year: “You just can’t walk up to people with Brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers.’”
Thursday’s ruling also raises questions about how Border Patrol agents are documenting their operations at all. Agents submitted nearly identical reports for multiple detainees, a pattern that suggests the individualized documentation Thurston’s original order required was not happening.
What the Order Actually Requires
The preliminary injunction Thurston issued last year set a specific standard. Before detaining someone, agents must write down the particular facts that led them to suspect an immigration violation. General observations about where people are standing or what kind of work they appear to be seeking do not meet that bar.
The requirement matters because it forces agents to articulate a legal basis for stops rather than acting on demographic assumptions. Courts have long held that race or apparent ethnicity alone cannot constitute reasonable suspicion under the Fourth Amendment.
United Farm Workers brought the original lawsuit after agents conducted sweeps in agricultural areas of the Central Valley, where the union represents workers across hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland stretching from Kern County north through the San Joaquin Valley.
Pressure on the Administration
The ruling stops short of finding Border Patrol in contempt, but it puts the Trump administration on notice that Thurston is watching. Legal observers note that a judge who finds a federal agency in contempt can impose fines or other sanctions, and that threshold gets easier to reach each time a court documents continued noncompliance.
This article draws on reporting from CalMatters.
Border Patrol did not respond to a request for comment before the ruling became public Thursday morning.
California has been a consistent flashpoint in the administration’s immigration enforcement push. State officials have passed laws limiting local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration agents, and federal officials have repeatedly targeted California in public statements and enforcement actions.
The Central Valley, where agriculture employs hundreds of thousands of workers and where day labor markets outside hardware stores are a familiar fixture in dozens of cities, has seen concentrated enforcement activity. Workers in those markets are often among the most economically exposed and least legally protected people in the state.
What Comes Next
Thurston’s order granting the enforcement motion requires federal agents operating in the Eastern District to come into compliance with the original injunction. The ruling does not set a specific deadline, but legal experts say the administration’s response in the coming weeks will determine whether the case moves toward contempt proceedings.
The United Farm Workers has the right to return to court if agents continue conducting stops without the required documentation. Given that Thursday’s ruling is the second time a judge has found the same pattern of violations, a third instance would put the government in a significantly more difficult legal position.
For the day laborers who gather outside Home Depot lots in Sacramento and across the Central Valley each morning looking for work, the legal stakes play out in concrete terms. A stop without legal basis can still lead to detention, even if a court later finds it unconstitutional. Thurston’s ruling is a reminder that the gap between what courts require and what agents do in the field can be wide, and that closing it requires more than one order.