A federal judge ruled Thursday that U.S. Border Patrol agents in California’s Central Valley continued making unlawful stops and arrests after she had explicitly ordered them to stop, granting a motion by United Farm Workers to enforce her earlier injunction.

Judge Jennifer Thurston of the Eastern District of California wrote in a concise decision that agents had “again detained individuals without reasonable suspicion,” relying on broad assumptions about workers rather than specific evidence of immigration law violations.

The ruling gives the Trump administration an opportunity to come into compliance before consequences escalate, according to a legal expert cited in court proceedings. Thurston did not immediately spell out what those consequences would be.

The underlying case stems from a July operation in Sacramento, where Border Patrol agents swept through a Home Depot parking lot and stopped a group of day laborers. Court records show agents arrested 11 foreign nationals and one U.S. citizen during that operation.

Following the Sacramento raid, then-Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino stood outside the state Capitol and told a television news program that “Sacramento is not a sanctuary city. The state of California is not a sanctuary state. There are no sanctuaries anywhere.”

Thurston, who is based in Fresno, found that the Sacramento parking lot sweep violated her earlier order, which grew out of similar enforcement operations in Kern County. “The agents detained these individuals, demanded to see their ‘documents,’ and questioned them about their immigration status, all without any legal basis for doing so,” she wrote.

Federal government attorneys argued in court filings that the Home Depot operation was built on surveillance, intelligence information, and what agents described as “general knowledge” that workers congregate in Home Depot parking lots. Counsel for the government contended that agents used video footage as part of their justification for the stops.

Thurston rejected that framing. Her original injunction, issued last year, barred Border Patrol agents from stopping individuals in the Central Valley without documenting specific facts and specific reasons for each stop. It also prohibited warrantless arrests unless agents first assessed whether the person posed a flight risk. The judge found agents had satisfied neither requirement at the Sacramento location.

During a hearing connected to the original injunction, Thurston addressed federal attorneys directly, saying: “You cannot simply walk up to brown-skinned people and say, ‘Give me your documents.’”

The United Farm Workers, which brought the original lawsuit, argued that the government’s conduct after the injunction was issued demonstrated a pattern of noncompliance. The union represents agricultural workers throughout California’s Central Valley, a workforce that has faced repeated enforcement operations over the past year.

Border Patrol did not respond to a request for comment before publication.

The ruling arrives as immigration enforcement in California’s agricultural regions has intensified under federal policy priorities in 2026. Kern County farmworker advocates have documented multiple stops in recent months that they say mirror the conduct Thurston found unlawful in Thursday’s order.

The legal question at the center of the case is straightforward but consequential for enforcement agencies operating in the state: agents must be able to point to articulable, individualized facts before stopping someone, not simply the person’s presence in a location where immigrant workers are known to gather.

Thurston’s order does not block immigration enforcement in the Central Valley outright. It requires that agents document the factual basis for stops, that arrests without warrants be preceded by a flight-risk assessment, and that the government maintain records sufficient for the court to evaluate future compliance.

Whether the administration moves to comply, appeals the injunction, or tests its limits again will shape what comes next. Legal observers have noted that the grant of the enforcement motion keeps the case alive and preserves the court’s ability to impose stronger remedies if violations continue.

The UFW lawsuit is one of several active in California federal courts challenging the manner of immigration enforcement rather than enforcement authority itself. Plaintiffs in these cases have generally argued not that agents lack the power to enforce immigration law, but that they must do so within constitutional limits on stops and detentions.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed separate actions challenging federal immigration operations in the state, though the UFW case proceeds on its own track through the Eastern District.

For day laborers and farmworkers in the Central Valley, the practical stakes are immediate. Workers who gather at shopping centers and agricultural staging areas to find daily employment have described curtailing their movements since enforcement operations began appearing in those spaces last year.

Thurston’s ruling does not resolve the broader immigration policy disputes playing out in Sacramento and Washington. What it does is put Border Patrol agents in the Central Valley on notice, with a federal judge’s finding of noncompliance already in the record, that the court is watching how they conduct stops.