U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers carry out a raid as part of Operation Cross Check in Sherman, Texas, on June 20, 2019.
Charles Reed | U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement | Reuters
An Alabama construction worker and U.S. citizen who says he was detained twice by immigration agents within just a few weeks has filed a lawsuit in federal court demanding an end to Trump administration workplace raids targeting industries with large immigrant workforces.
The class-action lawsuit, filed Tuesday by concrete worker Leo Garcia Venegas with the public interest law firm Institute for Justice, demands an end to what the firm calls “unconstitutional and illegal immigration enforcement tactics.”
Venegas, who was born in the U.S., lives and works in Baldwin County, Alabama, a Gulf Coast area between the cities of Mobile and Pensacola, Florida, that has seen immense population growth in the last 15 years, and which offers plenty of construction work.
The lawsuit comes just weeks after the Supreme Court lifted a judge’s restraining order that had barred immigration agents in Los Angeles from stopping people solely based on their race, language, job or location.
The court has repeatedly allowed some of the Trump administrations harshest immigration policies, while also leaving open that legal outcomes could shift as cases play out.
The new lawsuit describes repeated raids on workplaces despite agents having no warrants nor suspicion that specific workers were in the U.S. illegally, and a string of U.S. citizens — many with Latino-sounding names — who were detained.
The Department of Homeland Security “authorizes these armed raids based on the general assumption that certain groups of people in the industry, including Latinos, are likely illegal immigrants,” the suit argues.
In a May raid that swept up Venegas, video shot by a coworker shows him being forced to the ground by immigration agents as he repeatedly insisted he was a U.S. citizen. The lawsuit says the agents targeted workers at the building site who looked Latino, while leaving alone the other workers. Venegas was released after more than an hour, according to the law firm.
Venegas was detained again at another construction site less than a month later.
“It feels like there is nothing I can do to stop immigration agents from arresting me whenever they want,” Leo said in a statement released by the law firm. “I just want to work in peace. The Constitution protects my ability to do that.”
Venegas, who specializes in laying concrete foundations, says he was detained both times despite showing his Alabama-issued REAL ID driver’s license — a higher-security identity card available only to U.S. citizens and legal residents.
Immigration agents told him the ID card was fake, before eventually releasing him. He was released after about 20-30 minutes.
“Immigration officers are not above the law,” Institute for Justice attorney Jaba Tsitsuashvili said in a statement. “Leo is a hardworking American citizen standing up for everyone’s right to work without being detained merely for the way they look or the job that they do.”
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
