Sacramento immigration raid violated court order, UFW and ACLU say in filing
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- Union lawsuit claims July raid at Sacramento Home Depot violated court injunction
- Motion alleges Border Patrol targeted based on race, job type, not legal status
- Plaintiffs urge judge to enforce training, documentation and restrict warrantless arrests
A dramatic immigration raid at a south Sacramento Home Depot store in July was illegal — violating the terms of a court order that banned the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency from targeting people based on their physical characteristics, choice of work environment or other factors — a labor union contends in a motion filed in federal court.
The motion was filed last week in federal court in Fresno as part of an ongoing lawsuit by the United Farm Workers union and four individuals who were detained in a raid in Kern County earlier this year.
It alleges that immigration sweeps conducted by the agency violate a preliminary injunction issued in April by a federal judge in that case, which barred the agency from targeting people for immigration enforcement without specific information indicating that they were in the country illegally or posed a flight risk.
“Border Patrol’s practice is to stop people based on categorical race and occupation-based assumptions rather than individualized reasonable suspicion,” the union, which is represented in court by the American Civil Liberties Union, said in its motion. “For stops on foot, Border Patrol consistently targeted people of color in Latino neighborhoods and at businesses where farmworkers and day laborers shop and eat, including multiple people in Home Depot parking lots.”
In their motion, the union and the individual plaintiffs ask U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston to enforce her injunction by barring Border Patrol agents from stopping and detaining people throughout the Central Valley — included in the court’s jurisdiction —without specific, individualized reasons to believe that the person should be arrested.
It asks the court to order the agency to conduct training for its agents that makes it clear how they are to follow the court’s order in the April injunction, including documenting “the facts and circumstances” of any arrests that are made without a warrant.
The south Sacramento raid, conducted at the Home Depot on Florin Road, violated the order, the motion said.
A dozen people were taken into custody in the July 17 raid, including a U.S. citizen, the motion said. But lawyers involved in the case could only find two of the 11 immigrant detainees in the weeks after they were arrested, indicating that most had been swiftly deported, the motion said.
The Sacramento raid was conducted within days of an order by a federal judge in Southern California ordering the agency to stop similar activity in that region, the motion said.
“As in prior operations, Border Patrol agents targeted individuals based on their apparent ethnicity, apparent occupation, and presence at or near a Home Depot with no reason to believe the specific individuals they stopped were in the country unlawfully, and arrested them without assessing flight risk,” the motion said.
In both Sacramento and Kern County raids, it said, agents swarmed an area far from the U.S. border, using criteria for arrests that do not apply in the interior of the country. In documenting their arrests, the motion said, agents used boilerplate language that did not accurately depict the people arrested or the circumstances under which they were detained.
For example, an 18-year old high school student who was on his way to purchase a shirt for a family event was stopped and arrested, and the paperwork filed about him incorrectly said he was a day laborer looking for work at the Home Depot, the motion said.
In other cases, the materials referred to arrestees as “X” and the locations where they were picked up as “X,” the motion said. The materials also at times listed the reason that the person was arrested without a warrant to be that California was a “sanctuary state,” the motion said.
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who is named in the lawsuit along with officials at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, has not yet responded to the motion. Arguments for and against it will be heard Oct. 7. in Fresno federal court.
This story was originally published September 5, 2025 at 8:01 AM.
