ACLU lawyers who represent the United Farm Workers and five residents of Kern County have sued the head of the Department of Homeland Security and the US border guards because they had the three-day raid on the border patrol in southern San Joaquin Valley at the beginning of January, which started the color, the coloring people or have to do a day to store.
In the complaint submitted on Wednesday before a federal court in the eastern district of California, it is claimed that agents of the El Centro sector of the border patrol would have disregarded the federal law and the US constitution when they were rounded off and deported without legal approval. It is looking for the class relief for everyone who is exposed to tactics that the lawsuit describes as “lawless sweeps, indiscriminately arrests and forced powder”.
“It is clear that this was a coordinated operation that should grab as many people as possible, and not for individual reasons, but on their apparent breed, its ethnicity or occupation. Clean them and drive as many of them from the country as possible, regardless of whether they knew their rights or the consequences, ”said Bree Bernwanger, a lawyer of the ACLU of North California, one of three ACLU -connected companies that the plaintiffs represented in the case.
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, which to comment on the enforcement measures of the border patrol to the allegations, are “highly attacked”. All alleged or potential misconduct by agents would be referred to the investigation, said the agency.
A spokesman for the El Centro sector of the Border Patrol said that the agency did not comment on pending legal disputes.
The El Centro sector -its headquarters of more than 300 miles from the extensive fields and orchards from Kern County -carried out the unusual January raid at the end of the bidges. The chief agent Gregory Bovino, a 25-year-old veteran who heads the Imperial County Unit, led the operation without the participation of the US immigration and customs authority. He is mentioned as a defendant in the lawsuit.
Three former officials from the bidges of administration, who applied for anonymity because they were not entitled to share operational details, said the Times that Bovino was “Rogue” with the raid in January. Two of the former officials said no higher tasks about the operation before they in real time.
In official statements, Bovino justified the robbery by determining that the area of responsibility of the sector extends from the border to the Oregon line “, such as the mission and threat”. Officials from the border patrol said that the RAID, which was referred to as the return of the operation, had illegally arrested 78 immigrants in the country, including a rape. The agency did not state how many of the immigrants were imprisoned.
Local lawyers said the operation aimed at Latino land workers who commuted from the fields along the California Route 99 and Day Workers, addressing the work in Big Box Stores' parking spaces. They estimate that almost 200 people were detained.
The threat of the Trump management by mass immigration attacks has sent shock waves in the Central -Valley, where a largely immigrant employee helps with the harvest of a quarter of the food grown in the USA with the harvest of food
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
According to the legal complaint, agents have flooded companies in which agricultural workers and day workers gather and covered vehicles in mostly Latino quarters to judge people with color and to ask them about their immigration status. The complaint accuses border guards to use several illegal practices. Among them: People without a reasonable suspicion that they were illegal in the country, under violation of the bans of the 4th amendment to inappropriate searches and seizures.
If people refused to answer questions about their immigration status, the agents carried out after the complaint without option certificates or the approval. In some cases, the complaint, as people who had been encouraged in their cars, claimed the answer to questions, answered the agents by “smashing the windows of the car, smashing the tires of the car and/or ordered or physically pulling out of vehicles and captivating them with handcuffs.”
At the time of the raid, the American border police said that the operation returned to the sender, “concentrated on the reinforcement of those who interrupt the US Federal Act, the trade in dangerous substances, non-state civil criminals and the transport routes used by transnational criminal organizations.”
Instead, after the complaint, the operation has set up people with pending immigration applications, no criminal history and established houses in the community. Many of these deported spouses and children born in the United States said the Times' lawyers.
According to the Federal Law, an immigration officer can ask people about his right to be in the country without arrest warrant, as long as people are not involuntarily arrested for the survey. More intrusive encounters require reasonable suspicion that a crime is underway, according to the congress research service.
The lawsuit contains several examples of people from whom they claim that they were treated illegally during the attack in January.
Wilder Munguia Esquivel, a 38-year-old resident of Bakersfield, who works as a day worker and craftsman, stood outside the home depot on January 7, as agents arrived in non-marked cars and, according to the complaint, wanted to see the immigration papers of the people.
When Munguia Esquivel withdrew, the complaint said that he was tied up with handcuffs and agents that were turned through his wallet.
“At no point in the border patrol agent, Mr. Munguia Esquivel explained why he had stopped him, why he had arrested it or had submitted an arrest warrant,” the complaint said. “At no time, he asked Mr. Munguia Esquivel about his family, his employment or ties in the community or evaluated whether he is a fluid risk.”
Munguia Esquivel, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, was brought to El Centro after the complaint and finally released.
However, numerous other workers recorded in the raid were brought to the El Centro station for processing and then put under pressure to sign voluntary deportation agreements according to the complaint.
The agents forced people to sign the agreements, according to the lawsuit by capturing them in the keeping of cells without access to sleep quarters, showers, hygiene products or sufficient foods and the refusal of communication with lawyers or family members. It is said that the agents have instructed people to sign their names on an electronic screen without informing them about their 5th amendment to an immigration hearing. They received a copy of the form that they had only signed after they were excluded to Mexico.
At least 40 of the people arrested were excluded after the acceptance of voluntary departure across the border, the complaint said.
President Trump ran for an office and promised the greatest deportation efforts in the history of US history and initially concentrated on his rhetoric on the tracking of immigrants without papers who were accused of violent crimes. His administration now says that they consider all immigrants in the USA without legal approval as criminals because they have violated immigration laws.
The court calls on the court to force border patrol and its parenting agencies, the Ministry of Homeland Security and the customs and border protection of the US state to carry out operations in accordance with the constitution and federal laws.
“Without judicial intervention, we have all the reason to expect that returning to the sender was only the first example of what we will continue to see from Border Patrol,” said Bernwanger.
This article is part of the time. Stock reporting initiativePresent Financed by the James Irvine FoundationExplanation of the challenges for employees with low income and the efforts to cope with California economic gap.