Did Border Patrol commit an ‘egregious violation’ in Sacramento immigration arrests?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Border Patrol agents arrested 12 people in Sacramento despite court restrictions.
- Legal experts cite possible violation of 2025 injunction requiring warrants.
- Federal agency denies wrongdoing, citing surveillance and database checks.
Immigration agents potentially violated a federal court order Thursday morning by arresting people in a south Sacramento Home Depot parking lot.
The arrests came months after a federal judge ruled that the U.S. Border Patrol could not conduct warrantless immigration stops in Central California. The ruling came from U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer L. Thurston in response to allegations of racial profiling.
Since then, Border Patrol agents have largely avoided large-scale enforcement in the Central Valley and focused their efforts on Southern California. Last week, another federal judge issued a similar ruling restricting immigration enforcement in the Los Angeles area.
On Thursday, in a public display, agents from Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector converged on a Home Depot in the heart of Sacramento’s immigrant community. They arrested 12 people — including one U.S. citizen — while armed with guns.
Day laborers described immediately running in several directions when the agents arrived in their vehicles. Several workers said the officers, who were wearing masks, did not identify themselves.
The operation appears to directly violate a court injunction issued in April to require warrants by Border Patrol, according to two law professors.
“I would argue that it’s an egregious violation because they violated a court order and they were racial profiling,” said Bill Hing, a professor of immigration law at the University of San Francisco.
Another professor, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, said it is too soon to make a determination but noted the Border Patrol had a history of making claims that it does not substantiate.
“Over the last six months, we’ve seen Border Patrol, along with ICE, take a different approach, one in which they’re masked and unidentified and they refuse to explain what the legal basis for their authority is,” said Hernández, who is a professor at law at Ohio State University.
The federal agency maintains it did not violate any court order, saying officers spent time on surveillance, checking license plates two days before and looking up people’s immigration history on federal databases.
“100%, we wouldn’t have done the operation if we felt what we were doing was violating any standing orders,” David Kim, assistant chief patrol agent of the U.S. Border Patrol El Centro Sector, told The Sacramento Bee on Friday.
Hing said that the agency’s basis does not suffice for several reasons. Among those are the “implication” of Thurston’s ruling was for Border Patrol agents to obtain a warrant.
He also said license plate information alone does not give agents enough probable cause that specific people were at the Home Depot parking lot.
“The best way of knowing that is to go to the place where the car is registered, not to a Home Depot parking lot,” Hing said.
Beyond that, names “are a flimsy factor.” Many people can have similar names, meaning that is not often not a probable cause to go after someone, Hing said.
“It had to be good facts beyond race, that indicates that the person’s deportable,” Hing said.
United Farm Workers, the labor union who brought the April case against Border Patrol, would not yet say if the enforcement was a violation of the injunction.
“We do need a minute to look at the whole facts around the encounter that you’re seeing in the Home Depot,” said Elizabeth Strater, national vice president and director of strategic litigation for the UFW, on Thursday.
Strater added it is “broadly accepted” that officers cannot arrest people “who look to be brown” or “look to be working class.”
Irma Munoz, courtroom deputy for Thurston, said the court is not “able to comment on pending litigation” in an email statement on Friday.
If UFW decides to pursue legal recourse, UC Davis Law Professor Kevin Johnson said the question then becomes how to enforce the violation. Johnson, who agreed with Hing, said usually the court will try to get people to comply with the order before issuing fines.
But, in some situations, not even the court can stop rogue actors.
Johnson referenced a former Arizona sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt after violating numerous court orders about unlawful immigration enforcement. In August 2017, President Donald Trump pardoned the sheriff.
“An order was entered, an attempt was made to enforce it, but it wasn’t effectively enforced,” Johnson said.
This story was originally published July 19, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Did Border Patrol commit an ‘egregious violation’ in Sacramento immigration arrests?."
