Ninth Circuit Court Allows Border Patrol to Continue Raids

A federal appeals court decided on Monday that Border Patrol agents may keep carrying out immigration enforcement actions in California.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a temporary order issued the previous year by a district judge appointed under the Biden administration. That order had barred federal agents from detaining people unless they first had reasonable suspicion of an immigration violation.

The dispute grew out of large-scale immigration operations that Border Patrol agents conducted at farms across California the year before, prompting a major legal fight.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit handed a setback to an agricultural workers’ union by lifting the preliminary injunction that had forbidden Border Patrol from making detentions without reasonable suspicion that the individuals had broken immigration laws.

U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston, appointed by former President Joe Biden, had entered the injunction in April 2025. The Department of Homeland Security argued that the United Farm Workers of America lacked standing to pursue its class-action challenge to the sweeps in California’s Central Valley, which the union said involved detaining and arresting farm workers in ways that violated their Fourth Amendment rights.

Agreeing with the government, the panel explained in its four-page ruling that the district court had looked only at the plaintiffs’ claims of past harm. Although earlier injuries can support a request for monetary damages, they do not by themselves establish the standing needed for forward-looking injunctive relief.

The judges also held that the union had to demonstrate a likelihood of imminent future injury to justify keeping the preliminary injunction in place. They found unpersuasive the union’s argument, raised during oral proceedings, that the department’s alleged pattern of routinely infringing on its members’ Fourth Amendment rights was enough to show that future harm was likely.