A federal judge scorched ICE on Friday for the way it’s carried out immigration in Oregon, saying the deportation agency “intended to strike fear” in the state, and he ordered severe limits on how arrests can be made.
U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai, a Biden appointee, was withering in his criticism of the enforcement surge under President Trump, repeatedly putting the word “voluntary” in quotes when he spoke of migrants who chose deportation rather than fight.
He said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are casting “dragnets” over the state, then swooping in, asking “few questions” before “shattering windows, handcuffing people and detaining them at an ICE facility in another state.”
“This Court has previously described ICE officers’ field enforcement conduct as brutal and violent. The practices are intended to strike fear across large numbers of people throughout Oregon,” he wrote.
The issue before him was ICE’s ability to make immigration arrests without a warrant.
Under the law, migrants believed to be a flight risk can be arrested without getting an administrative warrant.
The Trump administration has taken an expansive view, arguing that illegal immigrants in general, by dint of their unauthorized status, are flight risks.
Judge Kasubhai, though, said officers need to make individualized assessments before the risk of escape in each case — and document them.
He said that hasn’t been happening.
“Unsurprisingly, these abuses spike when ICE shifts its focus from targeting specific individuals and instead conducts widespread sweeps targeting ‘collaterals,’” he wrote, using a term ICE uses for when illegal immigrants who aren’t targets for an operation but are still deportable are encountered during an operation.
The Biden administration largely put collateral arrests out of bounds, but the Trump administration has widened the aperture, insisting that those in the country illegally should be arrested when they’re found.
ICE denied there was any pattern or practice of warrantless arrests, but the judge said the arrests he’d seen belie that.
He said officers make arrests while asking few questions, meaning they couldn’t have made an individualized determination.
Judge Kasubhai previously put a hold on warrantless arrests. His new ruling is a more lasting preliminary injunction.
He joins judges in Colorado and the District of Columbia in ordering limits on warrantless arrests.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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