Judge limits immigration arrests in nation’s capital with preliminary injunction

A federal judge late Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from making large-scale immigration arrests in the nation’s capital without warrants or probable cause indicating the person poses an imminent flight risk.

US District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington issued a preliminary injunction requested by civil liberties and immigrant rights groups in a lawsuit against the US Department of Homeland Security.

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An email to the department after business hours Tuesday was not immediately returned.

In general, officers who conduct civil immigration arrests must have an administrative warrant. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, they may only make warrantless arrests if they have probable cause to believe the person is in the United States illegally and is likely to flee before obtaining a warrant, according to Howell’s ruling.

The ACLU and other plaintiffs’ attorneys said federal officers would frequently patrol and set up checkpoints in Washington, D.C., neighborhoods with large numbers of Latino immigrants and then randomly stop and arrest people.

They presented sworn statements from people who say they were arrested without warrants or a required flight risk assessment and cited public statements by department officials that they said showed the department was not using the probable cause standard.

Lawyers for the administration denied that it had a policy allowing such arrests.

Howell, who was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, said prosecutors “have demonstrated a high probability of an unlawful policy and practice by the defendants of conducting warrantless civil immigration arrests without probable cause.”

“Defendants’ systematic failure to apply the probable cause standard, including the failure to consider flight risk, directly violates” the Immigration Act and the Department of Homeland Security’s implementing regulations, she said.

In addition to obstructing the policy, it ordered any agent conducting an unlawful civil immigration arrest in Washington to document “specific and specific facts that support the agent’s pre-arrest probable cause to believe that the person is likely to flee before an arrest warrant can be obtained.”

Howell also asked the government to provide these documents to the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

The ruling is similar to two other rulings in federal lawsuits also involving the ACLU, one in Colorado and the other in California.

Another judge had issued a restraining order barring federal agents from stopping people based on their race, language, occupation or location in the Los Angeles area after finding they were making random arrests, but the Supreme Court overturned that order in September.