Border Patrol accused of detaining legal residents in Northern California racial profiling lawsuit
An operation in Northern California led to arrests and removals of people regardless of citizenship or status, a recent lawsuit against Homeland Security and Border Patrol alleges.
In early January, as the days of the Biden administration wound down and the Trump era loomed, five dozen Border Patrol agents deployed to predominantly Latino Kern County, 300 miles from the California-Mexico border, and began what they say was a targeted search for criminal immigrants.
But attorneys for some who were subjected to their tactics that week said it was a “fishing expedition” targeting people of a certain skin color, regardless of citizenship and status. In a lawsuit filed on Feb. 26, they allege that agents abused their power, made arrests without warrants and used trickery to get people to agree to leave the country. These actions left the region shaken, they said.
“They stopped us because we look Latino or like farmworkers, because of the color of our skin. It was unfair,” Maria Guadalupe Hernandez Espinoza, 46, a grandmother, said in a statement.
Hernandez Espinoza, who was arrested on Jan. 7 after working her shift at a tomato greenhouse, is one of at least 40 people who were removed from the country under what is known as voluntary departure, the ACLU states in its complaint.
On Jan. 8, agents arrested Ernesto Campos Gutierrez, 44, a U.S. citizen and 20-year Bakersfield, California, resident, the lawsuit states. He was on his way to a gardening job when agents blocked his truck, slashed his tires, dragged a passenger from the truck and arrested them, the complaint adds. They accused Campos Gutierrez of alien smuggling and held him for four hours, according to the lawsuit filed by United Farm Workers and five others. He was not deported.
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