In August, President Donald Trump instituted a federal takeover of the D.C. police department after declaring a “crime emergency” in the city. Thousands of federal law enforcement officers and National Guard members were deployed, resulting in a surge of not only criminal arrests but also civil immigration arrests. Over 40 percent of the arrests made during Trump’s 30-day federal takeover of D.C. were immigration related, according to the Associated Press. Now, a lawsuit is challenging these arrests, saying that many of them violated federal law.
The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia by four plaintiffs and CASA, a national immigration rights organization, alleges that federal immigration officers did not follow proper procedures when making arrests during Trump’s D.C. crackdown. Although immigration agents are allowed to make an immigration arrest without a warrant, the officer must have “reason to believe” that the individual is in the U.S. in violation of any immigration law or regulation and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. This “reason to believe” standard is considered equivalent to probable cause in immigration cases.
Four of the five named plaintiffs in the case were arrested without a warrant, detained, and ultimately released on immigration charges during Trump’s federal takeover. In each instance, federal officers failed to either inquire about the plaintiff’s legal status or assess whether they were a flight risk, or both, before making an arrest.
One plaintiff, Jose Escobar Molina, was approached and immediately handcuffed by plainclothed unidentified federal agents outside of his apartment building on the morning of August 21, despite having a valid Temporary Protected Status for El Salvador since 2001 and living in D.C. for 25 years. The officers did not have a warrant and never asked for Escobar Molina’s name, identification, immigration status, or about his ties to the community—ties that are often used to assess whether someone is a flight risk.
According to the lawsuit, when he told the officers that he had legal immigration status, they replied, “No you don’t. You are illegal.” After being put into a vehicle, he pressed the issue again and told the officers he had “papers.” To which the driver responded by yelling, “Shut up, bitch! You’re illegal.”
After spending the night in immigration detention, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervisor realized that Escobar Molina did, in fact, have legal status, and he was finally released.
Another plaintiff, named only as “N.S.” in the suit, spent nearly four weeks in immigration detention before being released, despite having a pending asylum application after fleeing Venezuela. Federal agents arrested N.S. in a Home Depot parking lot without asking any questions about where he lived, for how long, or anything else about his ties to the community. Without making an individualized determination as to whether he posed a flight risk, federal officers “pulled N.S. out of the driver’s seat, threw him against the car, handcuffed him, and provided him a clear bag in which to place his belongings, before placing him in the back of a van,” according to the complaint.
Both men, along with the other plaintiffs arrested without a warrant, now live in fear of being arrested and detained again as immigration arrests continue in the nation’s capital.
In a post on X, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asserted that the lawsuit’s allegations are “disgusting, reckless, and categorically FALSE,” and defended DHS law enforcement’s use of “reasonable suspicion” to make arrests, rather than conducting “indiscriminate stops.”
But the issue at the heart of the complaint is not whether the officers had the “reasonable suspicion” to make the stops—stops that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote could be made by considering factors like race, ethnicity, and speaking Spanish—but whether officers had probable cause to make the warrantless arrests that followed.
“They’re not even doing the bare minimum as far as asking individual questions about a person’s immigration status,” CASA Legal Director Ama Frimpong, told The Washington Post.
Federal law requires immigration officers to have “reason to believe” an individual is both in violation of an immigration law and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. These measures are in place to protect individuals from wrongful arrest and detention. But clearly, laws meant to protect people’s rights are dispensable when standing in the way of Trump’s mass deportation goals.