Court ruling: ICE violated the law in raiding a Van Nuys factory that led to 130 arrests

Immigration agents violated the law when they raided a Van Nuys factory and arrested some 130 workers suspected of being in the country illegally in 2008, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

Though the case is more than a decade old, it could affect pending litigation pertaining to arrests of multiple people, which often happens during immigration-related raids.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were not permitted to engage in mass detentions, interrogations and arrests at the factory “without individualized reasonable suspicion.”

The panel of three judges reversed the deportation order of the man who sued the government: Gregorio Perez Cruz.

Cruz was interrogated and arrested on Feb. 7, 2008 during a raid at Micro Solutions Enterprises, a printer cartridge factory in Van Nuys.

Federal agents had a search warrant for employment-related documents, and arrest warrants for eight employees.  But the agents arrived at the workplace with two buses and five vans, expecting to arrest as many as 200 people, according to court records. After blocking the factory’s exits, they detained, interrogated and arrested approximately 130 workers.

The agents then forced those workers “to undergo repeated interrogations without attorneys” and held dozens of them without food or water for more than 18 hours, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which represented Cruz along with Los Angeles attorney Noemi Ramirez.

The ruling is likely to invalidate deportation orders for others affected by the raid as well as some other cases across the country, said Ahilan Arulanantham, an ACLU attorney who has handled the case since 2008.

Some cases for the 130 people detained 11 years ago are still pending, Arulanantham said. Some have been allowed to stay in the country, including some who were granted asylum and others who were not deported by the Obama administration.

Fewer than 10 were deported, according to Arulanantham.

Immigration officials did not reply to a request for comment.