FRESNO, Calif. — If U.S. Border Patrol plans to carry out any more operations in Central California like the Kern County raid in January, it will be barred from making any arrests unless they have a warrant or suspect a person might flee before they obtain one, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

It’s a preliminary victory for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern and Southern California and the United Farm Workers, who sued the federal government in February alleging a high-profile immigration enforcement operation in Kern County violated federal law and Fourth Amendment constitutional rights of five Kern County residents.

“You can’t just walk up to people with brown skin and say ‘give me your papers,’” Hon. Jennifer L. Thurston said during Monday’s federal hearing.

The ruling, applicable in the Eastern District of California, is part of a federal lawsuit filed against U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Border Patrol.

“This order is a powerful affirmation that the Constitution applies to Border Patrol no matter where they are,” said Bree Bernwanger, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Northern California. “It protects the people of the Central Valley and the entire Eastern District of California from the types of roundups that we saw in January, where Border Patrol was stopping people, pulling their cars over, grabbing them off the street just because of the color of their skin. That is not legal, and this order seeks to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Both sides presented their preliminary oral arguments in a hearing Monday in the Robert E. Coyle federal courthouse in downtown Fresno in front of a packed courtroom with UFW members, lawyers, immigrant rights advocates and members of the press.

At the heart of the lawsuit is a January immigration operation that took place in predominantly Latino areas of Kern County. About 60 agents from the El Centro Sector traveled hundreds of miles from the U.S.-Mexico border to Kern County to carry out the three-day operation, dubbed “Return to Sender.”

At least 78 people were arrested in the operation, according to Border Patrol, though the UFW Foundation and other immigration advocates estimate close to 200 individuals were detained in the sweep.

According to the lawsuit, at least 40 people were deported to Mexico and Border Patrol detained at least one U.S. citizen in the operation.

Several eyewitness accounts, Kern County immigration advocates and media reports during the January immigration crackdown said farmworkers and day laborers around Bakersfield were detained and arrested on their way to work near public areas like grocery stores, a Home Depot, a Chevron gas station, and along Highway 99.

The lawsuit described the Border Patrol’s conduct during the operation as “racial profiling.”

“They stopped us because we look Latino or like farm workers, because of the color of our skin. It was unfair,” said plaintiff Maria Guadalupe Hernandez Espinoza.

A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that “Border Patrol conducts targeted enforcement arrests of individuals involved in smuggling throughout our areas of operation as part of our efforts to dismantle transnational criminal organizations.”

But an April investigation by nonprofit news outlet CalMatters found that, contrary to the public narrative, the Border Patrol had no prior knowledge of immigration or criminal history of 77 of the 78 arrestees.

The ruling is important for the region because Gregory Bovino, Chief Agent of the Border Patrol El Centro Sector, made several comments on social media that his team had plans to carry out future operations in the Central Valley, including in Fresno and Sacramento. The Kern County operation and Bovino’s comments stirred fear and widespread panic in the region in the week’s following the operation.

According to the order, any operations in the district must comply with several requirements during the course of the lawsuit. This includes:

— Complying with Fourth Amendment constitution protections against unreasonable searches and seizures;

— Complying with federal requirements for that prohibit warrant-less arrests unless there is probable cause that the noncitizen being arrested is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained;

— Strict reporting requirements to the plaintiff’s counsel on all Border Patrol immigration enforcement activities in the district within 60 days and every 60 days;

— Retraining for all 900 agents of the El Centro Sector, the Border Patrol team that carried out January’s Kern County operation.

The Eastern District of California is one of the largest districts in the country, extending 87,000 square miles from the Oregon border in the north to Bakersfield in the south. The district includes nearly eight million residents and six large urban areas: Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton, Vallejo and Fairfield, according to the Department of Justice.

“A court order ensures compliance,” said Franco Muzzio, a lawyer for the plaintiffs from the firm Keker Van Nest & Peters, during Monday’s hearing.

It remains to be seen whether or not the Trump administration will comply with the order. The administration has defied several orders, including a Supreme Court order, to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was erroneously deported to El Salvador, according to the New York Times.

Due to the pending litigation status of this case, Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector did not have a comment said, David Kim, assistant chief patrol agent. He referred questions to CBP Office of Public Affairs.

The Bee reached out to DHS and CBP for comment on Tuesday’s ruling.

What happened in court?

Lawyers representing the U.S. government argued that a preliminary injunction was burdensome and that the Border Patrol was already retraining agents from the El Centro Sector on lawful arrest practices.

In a filing objecting to the preliminary injunction, the government’s lawyers said on April 4 Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector issued policy and guidance (termed a “Muster”) and committed to providing training thereon.

U.S. Department of Justice Senior Litigation Counsel Tim Ramnitz told the court that 207 El Centro Sector agents had already been trained last week.

“We just wanted to provide that remedy,” Ramnitz said about the proactive retraining of its agents.

But Thurston was focused on future conduct and wasn’t convinced more training would prevent violation of constitutional and federal rights in future Border Patrol operations.

“Help me understand how this additional training is going to remedy this situation,” Thurston said during Monday’s hearing.

“They had training before and it happened,” Thurston said. “Something went wrong.”

Lawyers for the government said there can be, on occasion, individualized cases of improper procedure by officers, but that it doesn’t mean it’s an established policy or practice.

“Two-day disparate actions does not a practice make,” said Olga Kuchins, trial attorney for the federal agencies.

Thurston, a Biden appointee, also granted a motion Tuesday for a provisional class certification for two groups impacted by the operation:

— Suspicionless Stop Class: All persons since January 6, 2025, who have been or will be subjected to a detentive stop by Border Patrol in this district without a pre-stop, individualized assessment of reasonable suspicion whether the person (1) is engaged in an offense against the United States or (2) is a noncitizen unlawfully in the United States.

— Warrantless Arrest Class: All persons since January 6, 2025, who have been arrested or will be arrested in this district by Border Patrol without a warrant and without a pre-arrest, individualized assessment of probable cause that the person poses a flight risk

“The class action is really powerful because it extends a court’s order and the effect of a court’s relief more broadly than just the individual people who filed the case,” Bernwanger of the ACLU said. “So the class certification in this case means that every person in the Eastern District of California, regardless of their immigration status, who is subjected to Border Patrol enforcement is covered by this order.“

Within the next 60 days, Border Patrol is required to provide the plaintiff’s counsel with records of the stops and arrests that they’ve made in the Eastern District during that time.

A scheduling conference is set for June 4.

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