US Immigration A federal judge ruled Wednesday that agents in Oregon must stop arresting people without warrants unless they have a chance to escape.
US District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai issued a preliminary injunction in a proposed class-action lawsuit targeting the Department of Homeland Security’s practice of arresting immigrants they encountered while conducting ramped-up enforcement operations — which critics described as “arrest first, defend later.”
DHS, which is named as a defendant in the suit, did not immediately comment in response to a request from The Associated Press.
Similar actions, such as immigration agents entering private property without a court-issued warrant, have raised concerns from civil rights groups across the country. of Donald Trump Attempts at mass deportation.
Courts in Colorado and Washington, DC, issued rulings like Kasubhai’s, and the government appealed them.
In a memo last week, Todd Lyons, acting head US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), emphasized that agents may not make an arrest without an administrative arrest warrant issued by a supervisor unless they develop probable cause to believe that the person is in the US illegally and is likely to flee the scene prior to obtaining a warrant.
But the judge heard evidence that agents got in Oregon People have been arrested or escaped in immigration sweeps without such warrants.
The daylight hearing included testimony from one plaintiff, Victor Cruz Gamez, a 56-year-old grandfather who has been in the US since 1999. He told the court he was arrested and held in an immigration detention facility for three weeks despite having a valid work permit and a pending visa application.
Cruz Gamez testified that he was driving home from work in October when he was pulled over by immigration agents. Despite showing his driver’s license and work permit, he was detained and taken to the ICE building in Portland before being sent to an immigration detention center in Tacoma, Washington. After three weeks there, he was deported until a lawyer secured his release, he said.
He broke down in tears as he explained how the arrest had affected his family, especially his wife. Once he got home, they didn’t open the door for three weeks out of fear, and one of his grandchildren didn’t want to go to school, he said through a Spanish interpreter.
Afterward, federal attorney Cruz told Gamez that he was sorry for what he had been through and the effect it had on them.
Kasubhai said he was concerned that agents’ actions in Oregon — including drawing guns on people while detaining them for civil immigration violations — were “violent and brutal” and denied due process to those swept up in immigration raids.
“Due process calls for great restraint by those with great power,” he said. “That’s the foundation of a democratic republic founded on this great constitution. I think we’re losing that.”
The lawsuit was brought by the nonprofit law firm Innovation Law Lab, whose executive director Stephen Manning said he believes the case will be a “catalyst for change here in Oregon.”
“That’s basically what this case is about: asking the government to follow the law,” he said during the hearing.
A preliminary injunction remains in effect while the suit is pending.
