ACLU lawyers representing United Farm workers and five Kern County residents have sued the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Border Patrol personnel, which is the equivalent of a “fishing expedition” in early January targeting people of color that appear to be farmers or day-long workers, claiming a three-day attack on the southern border police force’s San Joaquin Valley.
The complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in the Eastern District of California alleges that Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector agents violated the protections given by federal law and the U.S. Constitution when they rounded up the scores of domestic workers and deported them without legal approval. It seeks class action relief from anyone exposed to the tactics the lawsuit describes as “lawless sweep, indiscriminate arrests and forced expulsion.”
“It is clear that this was a coordinated operation aimed at sweeping as many people as possible based on their apparent race, ethnicity, or occupation, rather than on individualized reasons. “They are aligned,” said Bree Bernwanger, ACLU attorney in Northern California, one of the three ACLU affiliates representing the plaintiffs in the case.
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, who was asked to comment on the allegations, said the Border Patrol enforcement action was “highly targeted.” Any allegations or potential misconduct by the agent will be referred for investigation, the agency said.
A spokesman for the Border Patrol El Centro Sector said the agency had not commented on the pending lawsuit.
El Centro Sector, headquartered more than 300 miles from the vast farms and orchards in Kern County, led the Biden administration’s extraordinary January attack on the tail end. Chief agent Gregory Bovino, a veteran of more than 25 years leading the Imperial County Forces, led the operation without involvement of US immigration and customs enforcement. He has been appointed defendant in the suit.
Three former Biden administration officials who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to share operational details told The Times that Bovino was “victimized” in the January attack. Two of the former officials didn’t know much about the surgery before seeing the unspool in real time, as two former officials said.
In an official statement, Bovino justified the attack by noting that the sector’s responsibility area extends from the border to the Oregon Line. Border Patrol officials said the attack, known as a return to sender, led to the arrests of 78 immigrants across the country, including child rapists. The agency does not specify how many of the migrants detained have a criminal history.
Meanwhile, supporters on the ground said the operation indiscriminately targeted Latin farm workers commuting from the fields along California Route 99 and Day workers. They estimate that nearly 200 people have been detained.
The threat of a mass immigration attack by the Trump administration sent shockwaves throughout the central valley. There, it helps the largely migrant workforce harvest a quarter grown in the United States.
(Brian van der Bragg/Los Angeles Times)
According to legal complaints, agents flocked to businesses where farm workers and daytime workers gather, pulling vehicles in predominantly Latino neighborhoods, targeting people of color, and questioning about the state of immigration. The complaint accuses Border Patrol agents of adopting multiple illegal practices. Among them detaining people who have no reasonable doubt that they were illegally in the country in violation of the 4th Amendment prohibitions on irrational searches and seizures.
According to the complaint, if people refused to answer questions about the immigration situation, agents conducted the search without warrant or consent. In some cases, the complaint alleges that when a person pulled by a car refused to answer the question, he “responded by destroying the car window, slashing the car’s tires,/or ordering or physically pulling people out of the vehicle, pulling out their bodies and physically pulling them.”
At the time of the attack, the U.S. Border Patrol said that once operations returned to sender, it “focused on breaking US federal laws and disrupting transport routes used by dangerous substance trafficking, non-citizen criminals and cross-border criminal organizations.”
Instead, the operation swept over people who have no immigration applications, no criminal history, and no homes established in their communities, according to the complaint. Many of those who were expelled left their spouses and children born in the US, supporters told the Times.
Under federal law, immigration enforcement officers can question people about their right to be in the country, unless they have a warrant, unless they are detained negatively for questioning. According to Congress’s research services, a more intrusive encounter requires reasonable doubt that the crime is ongoing.
The lawsuit provides multiple examples of people who were treated illegally during the January raid.
Wilder Mungia Esquibel, a 38-year-old Bakersfield resident who didn’t work on January 7th, was standing outside Home Depot on January 7th, according to the lawsuit.
When Munguia Esquivel retreated, he was handcuffed and complained that his agent had passed through his wallet and had lived.
“The Border Patrol agents have identified themselves and explained to Mungia Esquivel why they stopped him, and never explained why they arrested him or made a warrant,” the complaint says. “He neither asked Mungia Esquibel about his family, employment or community ties, nor undertakes an assessment of whether it posed a flight risk.”
The plaintiff in the suit, Munguia Esquivel, was taken to El Centro and eventually released, according to the complaint.
However, many other workers detained in the attack were taken to El Centro station for processing, and were subsequently pressured to sign a voluntary deportation agreement, according to the lawsuit.
The agent was detained by keeping the cell without access to sleep quarters, showers, hygiene products or adequate food, and forced him to sign the contract without refusing to communicate with lawyers or family members, the lawsuit says. The agent says he instructed people to sign their names on the electronic screen without notifying them of the fifth amendment rights to the immigration hearing. They only received copies of the form they signed after being exiled to Mexico, it says.
At least 40 people arrested were expelled across the border after accepting a voluntary departure, the complaint states.
President Trump took office with the promise of the biggest deportation effort in US history, focusing his rhetoric on tracking undocumented immigrants who were initially accused of violent crimes. His administration says it considers all immigrants in the United States without criminalizing legal permits because it violates immigration law.
The complaint calls on the court to enforce the Border Patrol and its parent agencies, the Department of Homeland Security and the US Customs and Border Patrol, and operates in accordance with constitutional and federal law.
“Without the court’s intervention, there are all reasons to hope that a return to sender will be just the first example of what we will continue to see from the border patrol,” Bernwanger said.
This article is part of the Times Equity Report initiative funded by the James Irvine Foundation, which examines the challenges faced by low-income workers and efforts to address economic disparities in California.
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