A federal judge ruled this week that Border Patrol agents in California’s Central Valley violated her court order by continuing to detain people without legal justification, even after she had explicitly told them to stop.
Judge Jennifer Thurston of the Eastern District of California granted a motion filed by the United Farm Workers union to enforce a preliminary injunction she issued last year. That injunction required Border Patrol agents to document specific facts and reasons before detaining anyone in the Central Valley. Thurston wrote in her decision, made public Thursday morning, that agents had “again detained individuals without reasonable suspicion,” relying on broad assumptions about workers rather than concrete evidence of immigration law violations.
The ruling gives the Trump administration an opportunity to come into compliance before consequences escalate, according to a legal expert familiar with the case.
The Home Depot Raid
The enforcement action centers on a July 2025 operation in Sacramento where Border Patrol agents moved through the parking lot of a Home Depot and stopped a group of day laborers. Court records show agents arrested 11 foreign nationals and one U.S. citizen during the operation.
After the Sacramento raid, then-sector chief Gregory Bovino stood in front of the state Capitol and told Fox News that “Sacramento is not a sanctuary city. The state of California is not a sanctuary state. There are no sanctuaries anywhere.”
Thurston, who is based in Fresno, found that the Sacramento parking lot operation violated her earlier order, which itself grew out of similar raids in Kern County. “Agents detained these individuals, demanded to see their ‘papers,’ and questioned them about their immigration status, all without any legal basis for doing so,” she wrote.
Federal government attorneys argued in court filings that the Home Depot operation was based on surveillance, intelligence, and what agents described as “general knowledge” that workers congregate in Home Depot parking lots. But Thurston rejected that framing. Parking lots where people look for day work do not, on their own, constitute reasonable suspicion that any specific individual has violated immigration law.
What the Original Order Said
Thurston’s original injunction set a clear standard. Border Patrol agents operating in the Central Valley could not stop or detain people without documenting the specific, articulable facts that justified the stop. They also could not make warrantless arrests without first assessing whether a flight risk existed.
The standard was not new law. It reflected existing Fourth Amendment requirements that courts have applied to law enforcement for decades. Thurston made the reasoning plain during a hearing last year, telling federal government representatives directly: “You cannot simply walk up to brown-skinned people and say, ‘Give me your papers.’”
The UFW brought the original case after its members reported a pattern of stops in agricultural areas of the Central Valley, a region where the farm labor workforce is predominantly Latino and immigrant. The union argued that agents were using appearance and location as proxies for immigration status, a practice courts have repeatedly found unconstitutional.
What Comes Next
Thurston’s ruling this week does not yet impose sanctions or penalties on the agency. Legal experts say it functions as a formal finding of contempt, one that puts the government on notice before the court moves to enforcement measures.
This story was first reported by CalMatters.
Border Patrol did not respond to requests for comment on the ruling.
The case lands in a broader context. The Trump administration has significantly expanded interior enforcement operations since taking office in January 2025, deploying Border Patrol agents to cities and agricultural regions well beyond the traditional 100-mile border zone. California, which has pushed back on federal immigration enforcement through state law and litigation, has become a primary site of that tension.
The Central Valley sits at the center of it. The region produces roughly a third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts, almost entirely through labor that is heavily immigrant. Kern, Tulare, Fresno, and the surrounding counties are not border communities in any geographic sense, but they have seen some of the most intensive enforcement activity since the current administration took office.
A Pattern in Kern County
The UFW’s original case drew on incidents in Kern County, where agents stopped and questioned farmworkers in fields and near labor camps. Witnesses described agents arriving without warrants and demanding documents from workers who were simply present in areas where agricultural labor happens.
That pattern, the court found, did not meet the constitutional bar. The presence of workers in farm country is not evidence of a crime.
Thurston’s latest ruling extends that logic to Sacramento and makes clear the injunction was not a suggestion. Border Patrol operates within the same constitutional framework as every other law enforcement agency in the country. The judge has now said twice that the agency has not acted accordingly.
Whether the agency changes its practices in response, or whether Thurston moves toward stronger enforcement of the order, will shape how the case proceeds through the spring. Oral arguments in related proceedings are expected in coming weeks.