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A federal judge on Tuesday evening issued an order preventing the Trump administration from conducting extensive immigration arrests in Washington, D.C., unless there is a warrant or sufficient cause to believe the individual poses an immediate flight risk.
In Washington, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell approved a temporary injunction requested by civil rights and immigrant advocacy organizations in their legal challenge against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Attempts to reach the department for comment late Tuesday were unsuccessful.
Typically, officers carrying out civil immigration arrests must possess an administrative warrant. As per the Immigration and Nationality Act, they can only proceed with arrests without a warrant if there is probable cause to suspect the person is unlawfully present in the U.S. and likely to flee before a warrant can be secured, according to Judge Howell’s decision.
The American Civil Liberties Union, alongside other attorneys representing the plaintiffs, contended that federal agents had been routinely patrolling and setting up checkpoints in areas of Washington, D.C., with significant Latino immigrant populations, indiscriminately stopping and detaining individuals.
They provided sworn declarations from people they say were arrested without warrants or a required assessment of flight risk and cited public statements by administration officials that they said showed the administration was not using the probable cause standard.
Attorneys for the administration denied it had a policy allowing such arrests.
Howell, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, a Democrat, said the plaintiffs had “established a substantial likelihood of an unlawful policy and practice by defendants of conducting warrantless civil immigration arrests without probable cause.”
“Defendants’ systemic failure to apply the probable cause standard, including the failure to consider escape risk, directly violates” immigration law and the Department of Homeland Security’s implementing regulations, she said.
In addition to blocking the policy, she ordered any agent who conducts a warrantless civil immigration arrest in Washington to document “the specific, particularized facts that supported the agent’s pre-arrest probable cause to believe that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.”
Howell also required the government to submit that documentation to plaintiffs’ attorneys.
The ruling is similar to two others in federal lawsuits that also involved the ACLU, one in Colorado and another in California.
Another judge had issued a restraining order barring federal agents from stopping people based solely on their race, language, job or location in the Los Angeles area after finding that they were conducting indiscriminate stops, but the Supreme Court lifted that order in September.
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