Border officials violated warrantless arrests order: Judge [View all]

Source: The Hill

04/02/26 4:06 PM ET


A federal judge in California ruled Wednesday that federal agents violated a previous court order restricting them from making immigration arrests without a warrant during an enforcement operation in Sacramento last summer. Judge Jennifer Thurston found last April that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents had engaged in a “pattern and practice of warrantless arrests” and barred them from conducting stops without reasonable suspicion that the person was in the country illegally or without probable cause of flight risk.

In a 63-page order released Wednesday, Thurston claimed her order was violated when Border Patrol agents performed immigration enforcement in the parking lot of a Home Depot in July 2025. Thurston, a former President Biden appointee, said agents used “eleven, virtually identical” forms issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to support the detention and arrests of people in that operation.

“Having carefully examined the entire record, including the recorded footage of the Sacramento action, the Court finds that Defendants have again detained people without reasonable suspicion for doing so,” she wrote, adding that that agents relied on “unsupported assumptions, hunches and generalizations about the relationship between a person’s apparent status as a day laborer and their immigration status” rather than individualized assessments.

Thurston ordered Border Patrol agents throughout the Eastern District of California to document their reasoning and circumstances surrounding future immigration stops.

Read more: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5813754-federal-judge-rules-against-cbp/