A proposed class action lawsuit filed on Tuesday in federal court states that a U.S. citizen has been illegally detained twice during sweeps targeting Latino construction workers in Alabama — and that federal agents refused to accept his documentation.
The suit names several Trump administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Tom Homan, the scandal-plagued former Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief currently serving as President Donald Trump's "border czar."
According to Bloomberg News, the litigation "was brought on behalf of Leonardo Garcia Venegas, an American-born construction worker who claimed he’s been detained twice this year during workplace raids. During one incident, Garcia Venegas alleged that officers initially dismissed his identification document as 'fake' and kept him in handcuffs for more than an hour" — even though the document in question was a "STAR ID" state driver's license, which cannot be obtained by non-citizens.
"The unlawful raids and detentions that Leo experienced were no accident," stated the suit. "The officers were enforcing three policies adopted by the Department of Homeland Security that grant federal immigration officers sweeping search and seizure powers that violate the Fourth Amendment and exceed officers’ statutory and regulatory powers. The policies authorize immigration officers to (1) raid the non-public areas of private construction sites without consent or a warrant, (2) preemptively detain workers on those sites without reasonable suspicion that they are undocumented, and (3) continue detaining those workers even after they have produced evidence of their citizenship or lawful presence."
Furthermore, stated the suit, "The officers rarely (if ever) have reasonable suspicion to suspect that the people working on or managing a particular construction site are violating immigration laws. Instead, DHS authorizes these armed raids based on the general assumption that certain groups of people in the industry, including Latinos, are likely illegal immigrants."
This comes after the Supreme Court summarily ruled through an emergency "shadow docket" decision last month that federal agents in California can engage in overt racial profiling, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh explicitly stating as justification that any U.S. citizens caught up in such profiling could simply sue the arresting officers if they're unlawfully assaulted.
