ACLU lawyers representing the agricultural workers of United and five residents of Kern County have sued the head of the Department of National Security and officials of the United States border patrol, claiming that the three -day raid of the border patrol in the Valley of the South of San Joaquín in early January amounted to a “fishing expedition” that was indiscriminately addressed to people be growers or day workers.
The complaint, presented on Wednesday in a federal court in the Eastern District of California, alleges that the agents of the center of the center of the border patrol violated the protections granted by the Federal Law and the Constitution of the United States when dozens of workers in the country were met and deported without legal authorization. It seeks a class action relief for all subject to tactics, which demand describes as “sweeps without law, indiscriminate arrests and coercive expulsions.”
“It is clear that this was a coordinated operation aimed at sweeping as many people as possible, not based on any individualized reason, but on its apparent race, ethnicity or occupation; Arrest them and expel so many from them as possible, regardless of whether they knew their rights or consequences, “said Bree Bernwanger, a lawyer from the Northern A ACLU, one of the three affiliates of the ACLU who represents the plaintiffs in the case.
When asked to comment on the accusations, a spokesman for the National Security Department said that the border patrol application actions are “very attacked.” Any alleged or potential misconduct on the part of the agents would be sent for the investigation, said the agency.
A spokesman for the sector The Center for El Center for Border Patrol said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.
The El Centro sector, based in more than 300 miles of the extensive fields and orchards of the Kern County farm, directed the unusual winterization of January at the end of the Biden administration. Chief agent Gregory Bovino, a veteran of more than 25 years who directs the Unit of the County of Imperial, headed the operation without the participation of the application of immigration and customs of the United States. He is appointed in the lawsuit.
Three former Biden administration officials, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to share operational details, they told The Times that Bovino “got rogue” with the January raid. No high knew about the operation before seeing it Untpool in real time, two of the former officials said.
In official statements, Bovino justified the raid by pointing out that the sector's responsibility area extends from the border to the Oregon line, “as the mission and threat dictate.” The border patrol officials said that the raid, called Operation Return to the sender, resulted in the arrests of 78 immigrants in the country illegally, including a child rapist. The agency has not specified how many of the immigrants arrested had a criminal record.
Meanwhile, the defenders of the scene said that the operation of indiscriminately directed Latin agricultural workers who travel from the fields along the workers of Route 99 and of the day in California request work in the parking lots of large boxes of boxes. They estimate that about 200 people were arrested.
The threat of mass immigration raids of the Trump administration has sent shock waves through the Central Valley, where a work force largely immigrant helps harvest a quarter of food grown in the United States.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
According to the legal complaint, the agents swarmed businesses where agricultural workers and day workers gather, and stopped vehicles in predominantly Latin neighborhoods, attacked people of color and questioning them about their immigration state. The complaint accuses the border patrol agents of using multiple illegal practices. Among them: detain people without reasonable suspicions that they were in the country illegally, in violation of the prohibitions of the fourth amendment on unfortunate search and seizure.
If people refused to answer questions about their immigration status, according to the complaint, the agents made searches without orders or consent. In some cases, the complaint alleges, when the people who had been arrested in their cars refused to answer questions, the agents responded “breaking the windows of the car, cutting the car's tires, and/or ordering or physically taking out the people of the vehicles and sponging them.”
At the time of the raid, the US border patrol. Uu. He said that the operation returns to the sender “focused on interconnecting those who have violated the Federal Law of the United States, traffic of hazardous substances, non -citizen criminals and interrupting the transport routes used by transnational criminal organizations.”
On the other hand, according to the complaint, the operation swept people with pending immigration applications, without criminal records and homes established in the community. Many of the deportees left the spouses and children born in the United States, defenders said to the Times.
According to the Federal Law, an immigration application officer can, without a court order, interrogate people about their right to be in the country, as long as people are not involuntarily arrested to interrogate. The most intrusive meetings require reasonable suspicions that a crime is underway, according to the Congress investigation service.
The demand offers multiple examples of people they hold were illegally treated during the January raid.
Wilder Munguia Esquivel, a 38 -year -old Bakersfield resident who works as a worker and maintenance of one day, was standing out of Home Depot on January 7 when agents arrived in unmarked cars, demanding to see the immigration documents of the people, according to the complaint.
When Munguia Equivel went back, the complaint says she was handcuffed and the agents crossed her wallet.
“At no time, the Border Patrol agent identified himself, explained Mr. Munguia Esquivel why he had stopped him, explained why he had arrested or produced a court order,” says the complaint. “At no time asked Mr. Munguia Esquivel about his family, employment or community ties, or undertook any evaluation of whether he represented a risk of escape.”
Mungia Equivel, a demand plaintiff, was transported to El Centro and finally released, according to the complaint.
But dozens of other workers arrested in the raid were transported to the station El Centro for processing, then pressed to sign voluntary deportation agreements, according to the complaint.
The agents forced people to sign the agreements, says the demand, stopping them in detention cells without access to bedrooms, showers, hygiene products or enough food and deny them communication with lawyers or relatives. He says that the agents ordered the people to sign their names on an electronic screen without informing them about their fifth amendment to an immigration audience. They received a copy of the form they had signed only after being expelled to Mexico, he says.
At least 40 of the arrested people were expelled across the border after accepting the voluntary departure, says the complaint.
President Trump ran for a position that promised the greatest deportation effort in the history of the United States, initially focusing his rhetoric on tracking undocumented immigrants who have been accused of violent crimes. His administration now says that all immigrants in the United States without legal authorization are criminals, because they have violated immigration laws.
The complaint asks the Court to force the border patrol and its matrices agencies, the Department of National Security and Customs and Border Protection of the United States, to carry out operations in accordance with the Constitution and the Federal Statutes.
“Without judicial intervention, we have all the reasons to wait for the operation to return to the sender was only the first example of what we will continue to see from the border patrol,” said Bernwanger.
This article is part of the times' Variable income report initiative, financed by him James Irvine Foundationexploring the challenges faced by low -income workers and the efforts that are being made to address The Economic Division of California.
