How to Get Border Patrol to Stop Making Warrantless Arrests
Labor groups now see the legal strategy they put to work in California’s Kern County as one to replicate nationwide.
When the American Civil Liberties Union mounted a lawsuit in February on behalf of a farmworkers’ labor group, accusing federal agents of arresting workers in California’s Kern County based on little more than appearance, it looked like a standard procedural move in a quickly overheating legal climate. A federal judge in April imposed a temporary restraining order on racial and other forms of profiling for the state’s rural Eastern District, which stretches from Kern’s county seat, Bakersfield, all the way to the Oregon border—but no one knew whether it would make much difference.
To even the plaintiffs’ surprise, it did. A three-month review shows that in the aftermath of the ruling, warrantless detentions in the district have screeched to a halt.