Judge restricts Border Patrol in California | “You just can’t walk up to people with brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers,'” a federal judge told Border Patrol attorneys

# Background

In February, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a [lawsuit](https://www.aclusocal.org/sites/default/files/001_complaint.pdf) against the United States Border Patrol (USBP) over alleged violations of defendants’ Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights during its January raids on Latinos in Kern County, CA:

> This lawsuit seeks to end Border Patrol’s unlawful reliance on racial profiling, indiscriminate arrests without a warrant, and using coercion and deception to deny people their rights.

# Summary

On April 28, U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer Thurston of the Eastern District of California admonished USBP attorneys for the agency’s conduct during the immigrant raids (“You just can’t walk up to people with brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers’”) and issued a preliminary injuction in her district barring the agency from:

* stopping people unless they have a reasonable suspicion that the person is in violation of U.S. immigration law

* carrying out warrantless arrests unless they have probable cause that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained

> According to sworn declarations filed in court by those detained, Border Patrol agents slashed tires, yanked people out of trucks, threw people to the ground, and called farmworkers “Mexican bitches.”

# Other reporting on this

> Border Patrol agents fanned out across highways, roads near farms, and businesses, indiscriminately stopping and arresting people who were not white. When the people they stopped tried to exercise their rights or, in fact, had lawful immigration status—Border Patrol agents retaliated, in many cases arresting them anyway. ([ACLU](https://www.aclusocal.org/en/press-releases/united-farm-workers-and-bakersfield-residents-sue-border-patrol-unlawful-practices))

> Border Patrol said it targeted known criminals in Kern County. But it had no record on 77 of 78 arrestees. ([CalMatters, Evident, and Bellingcat](https://calmatters.org/economy/2025/04/border-patrol-records-kern-county/))

# My opinion

It looks to me like the Trump Administration is using its targeting of a politically unpopular group to attack constitutional rights. This puts Democrats in a difficult position because if they fight back, conservatives can criticize them for defending “unsympathetic figures,” but if they don’t then the Trump Administration has successfully degraded legal protections for *everyone* in the US including citizens. Hard not to think of Niemoller’s [“First they came.”](https://hmd.org.uk/resource/first-they-came-by-pastor-martin-niemoller/)

Big picture, I think it’s clear that immigration enforcement is the vehicle for the Trump Administration to push through their autocratic reforms and centralize power in the executive. They know it’s their most popular issue so they’re using it to justify rolling back constitutional rights, undermining the courts, undermining state governments, coopting local law enforcement (287(g) agreements), taking power from the legislature (impoundment), centralizing data collection, storage, and analysis in the Department of Homeland Security, and reducing accountability for federal law enforcement. Immigration is their “theory of victory” and I don’t mean electoral victory.

!ping IMMIGRATION&LAW&USA-CA