The ACLU and United Farm Workers have filed a motion alleging that the Border Patrol violated a court order intended to curb racial profiling and unlawful, warrantless arrests in the Central Valley.
They want the judge to require new training and forbid agents involved in a July raid in Sacramento from participating in other operations until they are retrained.
In April, a federal district court judge ruled that the Border Patrol likely violated the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure during a January operation in Kern County called “Operation Return to Sender,” in which agents swarmed a Home Depot and Latino market, among other areas frequented by laborers. The judge ordered the Border Patrol, led by El Centro Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, to stop the raids in California’s Eastern District, which covers much of the state’s Central Valley, including Sacramento.
The Home Depot on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles was the scene of an immigration raid in June.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Bovino in June took his agents to Los Angeles, where they spent weeks aggressively pursuing Latino-looking workers outside of Home Depots, car washes, bus stops and other areas. The agents often wore masks and used unmarked vehicles.
After a federal district court judge temporarily barred agents from conducting raids in the Los Angeles area, Bovino briefly moved north to Sacramento in July, detaining Latino day laborers in a Home Depot parking lot.
In an interview near the parking lot with Fox News, Bovino indicated at the time that his operations were ramping up, not slowing down. “There is no sanctuary anywhere,” Bovino said.
“We’re here to stay. We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to affect this mission and secure the homeland.”
Bovino told Fox the raids were targeted and based on intel.
“Everything we do is targeted,” he said. “We did have prior intelligence that there were targets that we…