A federal judge ruled Thursday that Border Patrol agents in California’s Central Valley continued making illegal stops and arrests even after she ordered them to stop, finding that agents acted “without considering or complying with law Congress enacted.”

Judge Jennifer Thurston of the Eastern District of California granted a United Farm Workers motion to enforce a preliminary injunction she issued previously. That injunction barred Border Patrol agents from detaining people in the Central Valley without documenting specific facts and reasoning behind each stop. Thursday’s ruling found agents violated that order by again relying on broad assumptions about day laborers rather than specific evidence of immigration violations.

“Agents detained these people, demanded to see their ‘papers’ and questioned them about their immigration status all without any legal basis for doing so,” Thurston wrote in the decision.

At the center of the case is a July operation in Sacramento where agents swarmed the parking lot of a Home Depot, detaining a group of day laborers. Court records show agents arrested 11 noncitizens and one U.S. citizen during the sweep.

After the Sacramento raid, Gregory Bovino, then serving as a Border Patrol sector chief, stood in front of the state Capitol building and told Fox News that “Sacramento is not a sanctuary city. The state of California is not a sanctuary state. There is no sanctuary anywhere.”

Thurston, based in Fresno, ruled that the Sacramento sweep violated her earlier order, which itself grew out of similar raids in Kern County.

Federal government attorneys argued in court documents that the Home Depot parking lot operation was based on surveillance, intelligence gathering, and what agents described as “common knowledge” that workers congregate in Home Depot parking lots. Government attorneys said federal agents used surveillance video covering the Home Depot and surrounding areas, with filings suggesting the possible use of a drone.

But Thurston’s ruling raises pointed questions about how Border Patrol is documenting its operations. According to the decision, agents submitted nearly identical reports for multiple stops during the operation, a pattern that suggests the documentation was not reflecting individualized assessment of each person detained. Thurston’s original order required agents to document specific facts and reasoning before or during each stop, precisely to prevent the kind of broad, race-based profiling she has consistently criticized.

During a hearing tied to the earlier order, Thurston told the federal government directly: “You just can’t walk up to people with Brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers.’”

Thurston’s original injunction also prohibited agents from carrying out warrantless arrests without first assessing whether a person presents a flight risk. That requirement reflects a basic procedural protection that the judge found agents bypassed during the Sacramento operation.

According to one legal expert cited in court records, Thursday’s ruling gives the Trump administration an opportunity to come into compliance before consequences escalate. The ruling grants the UFW’s enforcement motion but stops short of immediately imposing sanctions, leaving open the possibility of further action if agents continue operating outside the court’s parameters.

The United Farm Workers, which represents agricultural workers concentrated heavily in California’s Central Valley, brought the original case after agents conducted raids in Kern County that the union argued were sweeping up workers without cause. The Sacramento Home Depot raid extended the pattern from the agricultural fields that define the southern end of the valley into the state’s urban core.

Border Patrol did not respond to a request for comment on the ruling.

The case sits at the intersection of federal immigration enforcement authority and constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, and Thurston has shown little patience for arguments that operational urgency justifies sidestepping both. Her ruling Thursday did not treat the government’s surveillance justification as sufficient, noting that common knowledge about where workers gather does not substitute for individualized suspicion.

For California’s agricultural workforce, the legal fight carries direct, daily stakes. Workers who gather at Home Depot lots or in rural areas near farm labor camps are, in many cases, the same workforce that moves through the state’s produce supply chain. That workforce spans Kern County onion fields and Sacramento construction sites alike.

The ruling does not end the litigation. Enforcement of the preliminary injunction remains active, and the court has preserved its authority to impose consequences if agents continue to operate in ways Thurston has already twice found unlawful.

Whether the administration will bring its Central Valley operations into compliance with the court’s documentation requirements, or whether this case will eventually produce contempt proceedings, is a question the next several weeks are likely to answer.