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On a hot day in Los Angeles in August 2025, a worker stood in the sun with a rag and a squeeze bottle in front of a Mazda SUV when he turned to see a Border Patrol agent running toward him.

Seconds later, the agent grabbed him by his shoulder, gripping him by his Handy J Car Wash collared shirt like he was a recalcitrant child.

“Hey sir, let’s go,” the agent said in Spanish. The man, seemingly confused, replied, “Go where?” He had papers, he said, pleading with the agent. Within 10 seconds, the man – known only by his initials A.T. in court documents – was in handcuffs.

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He was whisked away in the backseat of an unmarked Dodge Charger to an ICE facility for processing, the rag and squeeze bottle left behind on top of the Mazda. Later that day he was fingerprinted and released, once ICE realized he was a lawful permanent resident.

In a ruling unsealed Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that immigration agents likely violated federal statutes by arresting people such as A.T. without a warrant before assessing whether they were flight risks.

Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong finalized a tentative ruling issued last month that immigration agents can’t just arrest someone, even if they’re in the country unlawfully, without determining if they’re likely to flee before a warrant can be obtained.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents walk a detainee out of the Ventura County Government Center in Ventura, California, on July 27, 2026. (Blake Fagan/AFP via Getty Images)

“This Court finds ample evidence that Defendants have an ongoing policy and practice of conducting warrantless arrests in violation of the requirement to conduct a likelihood-of-escape analysis,” the judge wrote.

Under federal law, immigration officers can arrest someone without a warrant only when they have probable cause both that the person is in the country unlawfully and that they are likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.

“This ruling is one of the most important decisions to date in the community’s effort to end the federal government’s cruel and illegal practice of abducting people and separating them from their families,” said Mayra Joachin, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said: “ICE has authority for lawful arrests where authorized under 8 USC 1357. Law enforcement officers use ‘reasonable suspicion’ to investigate immigration status and probable cause to make arrests consistent with the statute and the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court has already vindicated us on these practices.”[aside postID=news_12099590 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/260914-GilroyICEFolo-13-BL.jpg']The preliminary injunction stems from a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union and a coalition of advocacy groups filed last year against the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of the aggressive raids across Los Angeles led by former Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino.

DHS attorneys have argued that those operations ceased in February.

But while the high-profile immigration raids have gotten quieter after the killing of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis in January, President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign has only intensified. Arrests reached their highest level in the second Trump administration in July, with nearly 50,000 arrests nationwide, according to data by the Deportation Data project.

In California, agents arrested more than 15 percent more people than they did during the same time last year, when Bovino’s masked agents conducted aggressive street raids across Los Angeles.

Advocacy groups obtained body cam footage, depositions and text messages from agents in discovery. Using that evidence, they successfully argued that federal immigration agents’ actions likely violated protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.

In the case of A.T., the Border Patrol agent’s arrest report reveals that he skipped steps that would have prevented a lawful permanent resident from being handcuffed and sent to processing.

In the report, the arresting agent says he identified himself as a Border Patrol agent and that A.T. made a “couple of sudden moves” as if about to run. The body cam footage does not appear to show that.

The agent wrote that when he asked about citizenship, A.T. replied “U.S.” However, the agent says A.T. appeared “confused and unsure of his answer, similar to individuals who I have arrested before.” The agent reported he arrested him to verify his citizenship. At no point prior to the arrest does the agent try to check A.T. ‘s identification or ask questions about his background, the body cam footage shows. That’s the kind of flight risk assessment required before a warrantless arrest.

When body cam footage contradicts agents’ narratives

At that same Handy J Car Wash, a different Border Patrol agent detained another worker that day.

In his arrest narrative, he wrote that the man followed his commands.

But later in the report, the agent justified his decision to arrest the worker without a warrant because of “the fact that he ignored agent command.”

The report highlights a key argument that advocates made in their court filings. In arrest reports, agents are supposed to explain why they determined someone was a flight risk and therefore couldn’t wait to get a warrant.

Sheriff’s deputies keep an eye on protesters blocking the entrance to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Jan. 30, 2026. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)

Attorneys argued that, in 80 percent of all the arrest reports they reviewed, agents either did not make any assessment of flight risk or simply used boilerplate language.

They argued the agent’s narrative used boilerplate language that contradicted other parts of his report.

In her ruling, Frimpong cited this instance, noting the discrepancy between the official government narrative and the body cam footage.

“In one arrest, the Government’s escape narrative claims that an individual – E.G.G. – was likely to escape before a warrant could be obtained based, in part, on ‘his flight from law enforcement,” Frimpong wrote. “… But a video of this arrest shows E.G.G. remained working and standing in the same place from the time that the agent entered the car wash to the time that the agent called him over….contrary to the Government’s written escape risk analysis, (he) did not flee.”

In the same body cam footage a supervisory agent tells the worker, “We’re going to give you a ride, and check if everything is OK. If everything is OK, we’ll let you go.” The agents’ own words reveal how the sweeps operated: arrest first and verify later.

In agents’ own words

In some cases, the agents arrested people without a warrant even though a court had already determined they weren’t a flight risk, according to advocates’ attorneys.

In body cam footage from September, one Border Patrol agent asks another if they are still arresting people who have a notice to appear before an immigration judge. Such a notice signals someone is currently going through the immigration system, and likely has been deemed not a flight risk. They usually have been released awaiting a court date to determine whether they can stay in the country.

Another agent says, “I don’t care if you have a court date coming up, you’re a (expletive) custody redetermination.” The agent is saying that even if an immigration judge already determined a person isn’t a flight risk, agents are reversing that decision.

U.S. Border Patrol produced a show of force outside the Japanese American National Museum where Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a redistricting press conference on Aug. 14, 2025, in Los Angeles, California. (Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

“Even those already in removal proceedings, who are ordered released on bond presumably due to lack of flight risk and are complying with court dates, are not immune from Defendants’ policy,” wrote attorneys for the detained, arguing that the immigration agents aren’t just neglecting to do a flight risk assessment themselves, but willfully ignoring the determination of an actual immigration judge.

Border Patrol policy calls for agents to ask about flight-risk factors like identification or a home address before an arrest. But attorneys who brought the lawsuit say body camera footage shows agents often did not.

In one video from August 2025, Border Patrol agents jumped out of a Penske truck and grabbed people in the Home Depot parking lot in Los Angeles.

At around 6:50 a.m. a Border Patrol agent arrested a man identified as Tijerino-Garmendia in court documents. The agent’s arrest narrative says Tijerino-Garmendia “stated he had no identification stating his identity or home address.” Body cam footage shows the agent “showing no questioning on this topic,” attorneys for the detained said in court records.

Agents arrested community members “with no inquiry into community ties or escape risk,” the lawsuit claims.

Judges in Oregon, Colorado and Washington D.C. have also ordered federal agents to stop making warrantless arrests. Courts in two of those cases later found agents kept on doing it anyway.

Federal immigration agents arrest a man in Bell as residents clash with U.S. Border Patrol agents after a traffic collision involving one of the agency’s vehicles during immigration raids across the Los Angeles area on June 20, 2025. (Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

In the Los Angeles case, Frimpong ordered that agents must document “the specific, particularized facts that supported the agent’s or officer’s prearrest probable cause to believe that the person was likely to escape before a warrant could be obtained.”

Advocates argued the analysis should include community ties, like whether a person has a job and a home and a family, but the judge declined to require those specifics if the escape risk can be shown through other factors.

She also declined to require agents to document cases where they talk to someone but don’t arrest them.

The government asked for a two week delay to decide whether to appeal before the order takes effect. Frimpong denied that, saying the government “cannot reasonably assert that it is harmed in any legally cognizable sense” by being ordered to follow the law.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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