Alabama judge freezes ICE construction site tactics after US citizen targeted

A federal judge in Mobile, Alabama temporarily blocked three immigration enforcement practices at construction sites after finding they likely violated the Fourth Amendment, following a case brought by Leonardo Garcia Venegas, a Florida-born concrete worker. Venegas says masked officers jumped a fence, tackled him and his brother, rejected his Alabama STAR ID as fake, and held him for over an hour before releasing him without charge; weeks later he says a similar incident occurred inside a nearly finished house.

Chief U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Beaverstock, a Trump appointee, rejected the government's argument that officers never need a warrant to enter a construction site and found no factual support for suspecting Venegas was 'an alien.' The government, which denies the policies exist, argued the stops were brief and reasonable and that workers have no privacy interest in job sites they don't own.

Beaverstock pointed out the contradiction directly: if the policies the government denies having do not exist, then pausing them costs the government nothing. Class certification and other claims in the case remain unresolved.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.