A federal judge issued an order Monday blocking ICE from raiding private construction sites without a warrant and from indiscriminately detaining people, saying both of those practices are likely unlawful.
Judge Jeffrey Beaverstock, a Trump appointee to the court in Alabama, also said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement needs to be more careful about how long it detains people while it claims to be verifying whether they have legal status.
He said a U.S. citizen who showed his driver’s license, which had the star showing it was compliant with the Real ID Act proving his legal status, should have been good enough for ICE officers. Instead, they suggested the ID could have been faked and held the man anyway.
“A policy that permits such action is likely to run afoul of the Fourth Amendment,” Judge Beaverstock wrote.
He ordered a hold on three ICE policies: warrantless entry into private construction sites, preemptive detention of employees without a particular reason to believe they are illegal immigrants, and being able to detain them even after they’ve shown proof of citizenship.
Judge Beaverstock’s order doesn’t delineate the scope of his ruling, so it’s unclear whether it stays the policies only in his judicial district in southern Alabama, or more broadly.
The Washington Times has sought comment from Homeland Security on the decision.
The case involved Leonardo Garcia Venegas, an American citizen by birth of Mexican heritage, who worked in construction.
In May last year, he was working on a construction site in Foley, Alabama, laying foundations for homes.
According to the judge, ICE officers hurdled a fence — with a No Trespassing sign affixed — and began rounding up construction workers, ignoring non-Latino ones and going straight for the all-Latino crew Mr. Venegas was part of.
Officers tackled Mr. Venegas’ brother, who is in the country illegally, and when Mr. Venegas began to record the encounter, officers accosted him, eventually tackling him to the ground even as he told them he was a U.S. citizen.
An officer then reached into his wallet, saw his ID with the star, but told him it was fake. They held him for more than an hour before admitting he was a citizen and releasing him, the judge said.
Several weeks later, at another site, an officer walked into the house under construction and ordered Mr. Venegas outside, brushing off his claims of citizenship. When he showed his ID with the star, officers again said it could be fake. It took up to half an hour before they acknowledged he was a citizen, the judge said.
Two other workers with lawful status were also released.
Judge Beaverstock said the case arose as part of White House officials’ claims of “unlimited power to enforce immigration laws.”
The government argued that construction sites are largely public and so no warrant is required to enter them for immigration arrests.
Judge Beaverstock said it’s a tricky question but, at least in the cases involving Mr. Venegas, the construction sites were clearly under private control.
“Here, the nature of the worksite does not open the floodgates to warrantless government intrusion and there exists no justification to enter a construction site that is not open to the public to conduct warrantless seizure,” he wrote.
The government also argued that it was okay to detain Mr. Venegas in the first incident because officers feared for their safety, and in both cases because they thought he “may be an alien.”
Judge Beaverstock said there was no evidence to support either claim.
Mr. Venegas had sued White House border czar Tom Homan, the Justice and Homeland Security departments and some of their component agencies.
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