Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals hears arguments over Border Patrol stops

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday heard arguments in the federal government’s effort to remove a preliminary injunction governing immigration enforcement in California’s Central Valley, stemming from the first high-profile Border Patrol operation of the ongoing mass deportation effort.  

“Operation Return to Sender” took place in January 2025, just a few days before President Donald Trump took office, as a sort of test case for the heightened immigration enforcement to come. Border Patrol agents from the El Centro sector traveled hundreds of miles north to Kern County and conducted stops of people like farm workers or day laborers in places like Home Depot parking lots.

Border Patrol said they made 78 arrests over the course of the three-day operation. The United Farm Workers and five people detained in those stops sued the federal government in the Eastern District of California, alleging several people were taken down to the El Centro station, detained and coerced into agreeing to “voluntary” deportation.

As that litigation continues, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction, barring Border Patrol from making stops in the Eastern District without reasonable suspicion, or making warrantless arrests without probable cause, and requiring agents to document each stop made.

The federal government appealed up to the 9th Circuit, which heard oral arguments Wednesday over whether that injunction should remain or be removed, centering on the question of if it’s reasonable to expect that a similar operation might happen again.

“There was a brief three-day operation. That is over,” argued Department of Justice attorney Michael Velchik. “We have a new administration, two new secretaries. We currently do not have any enforced interior enforcement operations.”

Velchik argued the plaintiffs do not have standing for the injunction or any basis to believe they may be unlawfully stopped in the future.

“To the extent that we choose to engage in future enforcement operations, we’re committed to doing so in a way that respects the Fourth Amendment,” he said.

“They have shown that there is a realistic threat that the injuries they have already experienced will recur,” argued Bree Bernwanger, an attorney for the ACLU, which sued on behalf of the UFW. “In 77 out of 78 of the arrests that the defendants made, their agents had no knowledge of a person’s immigration status before the initial stop.”

“The government claims that raids across Bakersfield, California, and the Central Valley last year were a one-time thing. We know that’s not true,” Bernwanger said in an interview after the arguments. “The public and the court should not have to have blinders on and just take the government at its word.”

That same Eastern District federal judge who issued the injunction last April ruled earlier this month that the federal government violated the order in raiding a Sacramento Home Depot just a few months later in July.

“What started in the Eastern District of California last January has now already clearly spread,” Bernwanger said. “Border Patrol agents pulling people over on the side of the road, knowing nothing about who they were, just to demand their papers, grabbing people in Home Depot parking lots, profiling people because they looked Latino – we’ve now seen that in Chicago, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C. across the country.”

Neither Customs and Border Protection, nor its parent agency the Department of Homeland Security responded to questions about the lawsuit or Border Patrol’s potential future operations.

There’s no deadline for the 9th Circuit to issue a ruling though it could come within an estimated three to 12 months.