On January 7, 2025, heavily agricultural Kern County, California, fell into chaos as Border Patrol agents unconstitutionally targeted people for stops based on their ethnicity in executing “Operation Return to Sender.” While Kern County is well over 200 miles from the US-Mexico border, and officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity, residents have been stopped discriminatorily based on their apparent ethnicity—then subjected to property damage and even physical assault.
The order to launch a Kern County crackdown came from El Centro Sector Border Patrol Chief Agent Gregory Bovino in the lead-up to President Trump’s second term. Chief Agent Bovino directed officers to target people based on unconstitutional factors. While higher-ups lacked advanced notice of this operation, the Trump administration has since endorsed Chief Agent Bovino’s heavy-handed tactics, even naming him “commander-at-large” and authorizing him to carry out similarly aggressive and extraconstitutional operations throughout the nation.
These operations have devastated public confidence in law enforcement. The administration’s mass deportation agenda has set immigrant communities and their local police at odds, compromising public safety in the process. The ensuing distortion of law enforcement priorities has also been profound: thousands of state and federal officials have been pulled away from operations targeting terrorism, child exploitation, and human smuggling to smoke out low-level immigration violations.
If the Administration has its way, the Border Patrol’s manhandling of Kern County is not yet over. However, the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) filed a class action lawsuit seeking to enjoin Border Patrol agents from conducting illegal stops in the Eastern District of California. The district court granted UFW’s request for a preliminary injunction, and the government has now appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
Cato, along with the Law Enforcement Action Partnership and Center for Policing Equity, has filed an amicus brief in support of UFW. Absent the preliminary injunction, federal agents plan to resume stopping Latinos en masse without reasonable suspicion, arresting them without a warrant or probable cause that they pose a flight risk, and coercing them into summary expulsion from the United States. The Ninth Circuit should affirm the preliminary injunction.
