Federal judge slams Border Patrol: 'You can't just walk up to people with brown skin'

A federal judge in California issued an injunction on Tuesday preventing the U.S. Border Patrol in that district from making most warrantless arrests.

According to Cal Matters, "The ruling came in response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit filed after the El Centro Border Patrol traveled to Kern County to conduct a three-day sweep in January, detaining day laborers, farm workers and others in a Home Depot parking lot, outside a convenience store and along a highway between orchards."

U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer Thurston scorched the Border Patrol's policies, saying, "You just can’t walk up to people with brown skin and say give me your papers."

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As part of the order, Thurston held that "Border Patrol is enjoined from conducting detentive stops in this District unless, pre-stop, the detaining agent has reasonable suspicion that the person to be stopped is a noncitizen who is present within the United States in violation of U.S. immigration law, as required by the Fourth Amendment," and that "Border patrol is enjoined from effecting warrantless arrests in this District unless, pre-arrest, the arresting agent has probable cause to believe that the noncitizen being arrested is likely to escape before a warrant is obtained."

The upshot, noted American Immigration Council attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, is a "significant injunction in the Eastern District of California, barring the Border Patrol from stopping people without reasonable suspicion that they're in the country illegally and barring warrantless arrests without probable cause of escape without a warrant (as required by law)."

This comes as the Trump administration seeks to ramp up not just border patrols but also mass deportations of people already within the country, sometimes in violation of protective orders. Attorneys for families ripped apart by these deportations are alleging in a lawsuit that the administration not only deported citizen children, including one with advanced cancer, but also proceeded to lie about the reason for it.