Federal Appeals Court to Test Trump’s Immigration Arrest Tactics

A federal appeals court will weigh whether Border Patrol agents stopped Latino farmworkers without a clear reason and made arrests without warrants during a California raid as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

The case, set for argument Wednesday at the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, focuses on whether those practices are likely to happen again, a key question in determining whether an injunction blocking the stops and arrests should remain in place.

The case stems from a three-day Border Patrol operation in Kern County, a major agricultural region in California’s Central Valley where agents allegedly stopped farmworkers commuting to fields and day laborers gathered in parking lots. The challengers said the operation amounted to indiscriminate sweeps targeting Latino workers without regard to their immigration status.

A federal judge provisionally certified the challenge as a class action encompassing anyone in the district arrested without reasonable suspicion or a warrant since January 2025 and issued a series of court orders curbing the administration’s tactics and questioning their constitutionality.

“It’s significant because it’s putting the Trump administration’s chosen method of enforcing immigration law squarely before” the court, said Ohio State University law professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández.

The argument also arrives at a time when immigration enforcement tactics have become a flash point in Washington, with lawmakers debating for months on oversight measures alongside efforts to increase funding for border and interior enforcement operations.

The Trump administration is asking the Ninth Circuit to dismiss the case, arguing the challengers lack standing to seek forward-looking relief. Government lawyers said the challengers can’t show a “real and immediate” risk of being subjected to the same stops again, making any future harm too speculative to justify an injunction. Past encounters with Border Patrol agents, the Justice Department said in court filings, aren’t enough to justify forward-looking relief.

“We don’t have to speculate, we’ve already seen it. When those guardrails are removed, communities are terrorized,” said Elizabeth Strater, director of strategic campaigns and a national vice president at the United Farm Workers, which is leading the challenge to the Trump administration’s tactics.

The appeal follows a series of rulings from US District Judge Jennifer L. Thurston of the Eastern District of California, a Joe Biden appointee, who in April 2025 barred agents from stopping individuals without reasonable suspicion they are in the US unlawfully and from making warrantless arrests without considering whether a person is likely to flee before a warrant can be obtained.

The latest was a court order earlier this month in which Thurston found that agents failed to comply with her injunction during a July 2025 operation at a Home Depot in Sacramento, only two months after the initial injunction.

She wrote that descriptions of arrests “rest on unsupported assumptions, hunches and generalizations” about day laborers’ immigration status.

The challengers, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of California and Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP, said the government is likely to conduct similar tactics again.

They have pointed to public statements cited in their brief from Border Patrol officials following the January 2025 raids, titled “Operation Return to Sender,” describing the operations as a success and signaling plans to expand them. Those include posts indicating agents would continue operating in Kern County and potentially expand to other cities, including Fresno and Sacramento, as well as responses to calls for more raids such as, “We plan on coming back!!” and “You bet!”

“Unconstitutional immigration enforcement creates fear and uncertainty, making it harder for workers to organize and assert their rights,” said Leticia Saucedo, a law professor at the University of California, Davis.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that pushes for lower levels of immigration, argued that the lower court’s injunction would “inevitably chill lawful immigration enforcement efforts.”

ACLU of Northern California lawyer Bree Bernwanger, who represents the challengers, countered that “the only thing standing between the community and a repeat of those violations is the injunction.”

The case unfolds as the labor union United Farm Workers grapples with allegations of past sexual misconduct by its cofounder, civil rights icon César Chávez. The union remains a prominent voice in legal challenges tied to farmworker protections and immigration enforcement.

This case is United Farm Workers of America v. Noem, 9th Cir., No. 25-4047.