Judge issues injunction restricting immigration arrests in nation's capital

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A federal judge late Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from making widespread immigration arrests in the nation’s capital without warrants or probable cause that the person is an imminent flight risk.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington granted a preliminary injunction sought by civil liberties and immigrants rights groups in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

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

Officers making civil immigration arrests generally have to have an administrative warrant. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, they may make arrests without a warrant only if they have probable cause to believe the person is in the U.S. illegally and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained, according to Howell's ruling.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other plaintiffs' attorneys argued federal officers were frequently patrolling and setting up checkpoints in Washington, D.C., neighborhoods with large numbers of Latino immigrants and then stopping and arresting people indiscriminately.

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

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

Howell, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, a Democrat, said the plaintiffs had “established a substantial likelihood of an unlawful policy and practice by defendants of conducting warrantless civil immigration arrests without probable cause.”

“Defendants’ systemic failure to apply the probable cause standard, including the failure to consider escape risk, directly violates” immigration law and the Department of Homeland Security's implementing regulations, she said.

In addition to blocking the policy, she ordered any agent who conducts a warrantless civil immigration arrest in Washington to document “the specific, particularized facts that supported the agent’s pre-arrest probable cause to believe that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.”

Howell also required the government to submit that documentation to plaintiffs' attorneys.

The ruling is similar to two others in federal lawsuits that also involved the ACLU, one in Colorado and another in California.

Another judge had issued a restraining order barring federal agents from stopping people based solely on their race, language, job or location in the Los Angeles area after finding that they were conducting indiscriminate stops, but the Supreme Court lifted that order in September.