SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — U.S. Border Patrol agents have publicly boasted about indiscriminately stopping and arresting Latinos, farmworkers and day laborers in Kern County in January 2025 and have “vowed to continue dragnet sweeps across Central Valley,” the ACLU reported.
During the January 2025 Kern County operation led by El Centro Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, “agents swarmed a Home Depot and Latino market, among other areas frequented by laborers.” Border Patrol also “pulled over cars along rural highways near farms and in predominantly Latino neighborhoods in Bakersfield and demanded the occupants’ papers,” the ACLU stated.
Seventy-eight people were arrested during the raids in Kern County, and records do not show that agents had any knowledge of who the individuals were when they were stopped. “Only one individual had an immigration history,” the ACLU said.
In February 2025, the United Farm Workers, along with five Kern County residents, sued the federal government and “got a court order prohibiting Border Patrol from stopping people without reasonable suspicion and arresting them without warrant if agents haven’t established that the individual is likely to flee,” according to the ACLU.
In April 2025, a federal district court judge ruled that during “Operation Return to Sender,” Border Patrol agents “likely violated the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure,” CalMatters reported. The judge ordered agents to halt their raids in California’s Eastern District, including Sacramento.
Border Patrol has only continued to disregard the constitutional rights of Eastern District residents despite court rulings.
Bovino and his agents then moved on to Los Angeles in June 2025, “where they spent weeks aggressively pursuing Latino-looking workers outside of Home Depots, car washes, bus stops and other areas” while wearing masks and using unmarked vehicles, CalMatters reported. “Witnesses described unmarked Chevy trucks, agents dressed ‘like soldiers,’ and people being grabbed and handcuffed with no explanation. At least one U.S. citizen was chased and detained during the operation.”
When they were temporarily barred from conducting raids in Los Angeles, Bovino and his Border Patrol agents moved back north in July 2025. There, they “stopped people outside a Sacramento Home Depot, even though they had no reason to believe any individual they detained was in the country unlawfully,” according to the ACLU.
Selvin Osbeli Mejia Diaz, a senior at Valley High School who had fled to the U.S. because of violence in Central America, was “tackled and arrested” during the raid, CalMatters reported. In his declaration, Diaz said he “was walking to the store to buy a shirt when an unmarked Chevy pulled up behind him. A masked agent burst out from the vehicle, tackled him to the ground, and handcuffed him without asking any questions,” according to CalMatters. “I think they saw me and figured they could arrest me because I looked Latino,” Diaz said.
The ACLU reported that the plaintiffs in UFW v. Noem are now asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold that April 2025 preliminary injunction. The plaintiffs argue that “people who live and travel through Latino neighborhoods and agricultural areas in the district face an ongoing, credible threat that Border Patrol will violate their rights during future immigration raids.”
“Roads through farming communities in the Central Valley would become traps. People going about their daily lives taking their children to school or commuting to work would run the risk of being stopped and arrested, regardless of their immigration status,” said Bree Bernwanger, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California.
“No one in America should be targeted because of the color of their skin, the language they speak, or the type of job they do,” said Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers.
Bovino, in an interview near the Sacramento Home Depot parking lot, said, “We’re here to stay. We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to affect this mission and secure the homeland.”
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